Success tells you something worked. But it’s remarkably quiet about why.
Failure sounds like a megaphone blasting in your ear from six inches away. And it’s the most useful feedback there is. It’s also the most expensive, which may be why so little of it gets used.
Feedback only works as a loop. Something happens, the signal comes back, something changes.
Most businesses are drowning in signal and starving for feedback. The good news gets read twice. The bad news gets filed, explained or ignored. And the loop stays open.
Then there’s the signal that never makes it back at all.
3M spent millions trying to create a super-strong glue. What they got barely held. It took years and a bookmark that kept falling out of a hymnal to see what they’d actually made. The Post-it Note was in the failure the whole time. It just needed someone to read the signal.
They say the only way to fail is to quit. But quitting once you’ve learned the lesson is what you paid the tuition for with your time and money. The real failure is quitting before you’ve learned what you needed to learn.
Most of what gets called failure isn’t. It’s data you don’t use.
And possibly still can.
The richest feedback in any location walks out the door every day unseen. The people who came in, looked around, and left. Every one of them is a signal. About the greet, the timing, the staffing, the offer, the follow-up.
Most of it never gets counted. So, the loop never closes. Like skipping class, the tuition bill keeps coming and the lesson never gets learned.
They say success repeats itself. Failure only does if you let it.
P.S. Most retailers have the signal. What they’re missing is a fast way to read it. The Trakwell Assistant, new in Trakwell 3.0, lets you ask any question about your stores and get the answer, with the chart, in seconds. Close the loop.
