Prominent personalities open up about failure and learning from it

Failure that dreaded word. The fear of failure curtails growth and inhibits people from taking risks. Getting people to talk about failure, especially their own, is the singularly most difficult thing to do. In Why I Failed, Shweta Punj does just that by getting leaders to share experiences of when they did not succeed and how they turned it around to their advantage to emerge indomitable and stronger than before. This book shows that it is okay to fail as long as you treat failure as a stepping stone for greater things.

Review:

We've all read various success stories. If not read, heard. Derived inspiration for them. Thought about them much later. Wondered how the achiever did it. Told ourselves, if they can, so can we. I know I have, I am sure most of you have too.

But, rarely comes a book where achievers talk about the times when they failed. And, miserably. Abhinav Bindra, Anu Aga, Madhur Bhandarkar, Narayanan Vaghul, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Captain Gopinath, Sabysachi Mukherjee, Narayana Murthy, Dr Prathap C Reddy, Sunil Alagh, Subhash Ghai, Ajit Gulabchand, Sminu Jindal, William Bissekk, Sanjeev Goenka and Shankar Sharma - each an example in him(her)self in being an achiever on the global scene, yet they have failed miserably in what they do, at some point of their lives. Why did they fail? What happened? There is always a reason, and in Why I Failed: Lessons from Leaders, these people talk about the same.

India was ecstatic when Bindra won the Olympic medal. And equally bitter when he didn't. The same person who was showered with bouquets was now being thrown brickbats. What no one thought of was, why? Why did he drop out so soon? Bindra analyzes and tells us why - I was not desperate enough to win. Courageous!

When Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw was setting up Biocon from scratch, it wasn't easy. She didn't take the easy way out, but raised money for her entrepreneurial venture and trying to build credibility, when the first batch of enzymes failed. Shaw confesses that in the initial years, she failed to get the best talent for her venture.

Subhash Ghai, a FTII alumni, wanted to be an actor. But every film he auditioned for, went to his FTII batchmate, Rajesh Khanna. Thus began the five-year jinx. How Ghai never gave up his love for films, despite no success in the one thing he knew he was born to do - act. Reading about what Ghai has to say, about his failure and learning from it, one also realizes, how big a word love is and that there can be advantages even in disadvantageous situations.

All in all, and extremely good read; short and precise. Perfect, crisp editing makes the good a very good handbook to go back to, from time to time, to draw inspiration from.

Firstly the subject matter is new so I got interested in buying this book. Going through this book was beautiful experience as it always showed that passion, love and aggression always triumphed in the darkest hours and pulled the people out from the near sure gallows of life.
I particularly got inspired by some of the stories like Anu Aga taking on Thermax and driving it on her intuition rather than solely depending on the team of experts; Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw for foraying into the area which was not comfortable to the woman and shining greatly in her endeavor and never losing hope; Sabyasachi Mukherjee for always taking correct decisions, which were so tough and yet clinging to them with soul; Sminu Jindal for sheer grit and expertise in turning around the sick projects and nursing them back to normal and discharging them and when all this happens even we tend to forget that she is paralyzed from waist down.
I also got to learn that in the times of difficulty nobody is there and it is by our self determination and undeterred resolve only that we can come out of the darkest corners in which the life has pushed us. This is aptly shown from the life story of Sanjiv Goenka. Also learned from the story of Shankar Sharma that when life starts to take back it does not give reasons for it and when the law makers only become law breakers it is very difficult for anyone to escape. And also that being ruthless is not an option but a compulsion.
Shweta Punj has given a good book but initially we feel that if the story was little longer it would be good and in the later part we can notice that the stories have expanded and it is a good reading. Sometimes a paragraph or two creep up from nowhere and we can feel that they don’t belong here and were added to increase the literary content.
Nevertheless a good book as it provides the encouragement to all the people and makes us

The first thing that captures your attention as you hold Shweta Punj’s inspirational work “Why I Failed” is the book’s cover. It has a ‘thumbs down” sketch on it, with the words ‘Lessons from Leaders’ written upside down. You got it — when you turn the book upside down (which you will if you’re interested in perception puzzles), these words turn right side up, and the sketch becomes a “thumbs up”. It’s a simple enough design, quite obviously driving home the point of the book—it’s your perception that determines success and failure. And that you can, with a little bit of effort, turn that thumbs down right back into a thumbs up.
To illustrate her point, Punj has chronicled “sixteen failure aka success stories” in the book—sixteen well known people from different walks of life and their tryst with failure. The list is quite diverse, ranging from Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Narayan Murthy, Anu Aga and Prathap Reddy to the likes of Abhinav Bindra, Madhur Bhandarkar, Subhash Ghai and Sabyasachi Mukherjee. The stories are interesting and inspiring, both things that the book aspires to be. And you could be surprised at some of the ‘secrets’ that are revealed—you would have believed quite the contrary. Abhinav Bindra, for instance, attributes his miss at the London Olympics to his calm and relaxed state of mind. “In London, I was relaxed, composed and calm. Theoretically, it should have worked well. But it doesn’t work that way. You have to have rage. You have to be desperate.” And that’s when we thought being composed was the secret to success! The book analyses various ‘types’ of failure, which Punj has neatly organised into categories, complete with ‘definitions’ of sorts. There’s ‘failure by design’ as in the case of Narayanan Vaghul, one of India’s financial architects, who chose to fail in the eyes of the world rather than compromise with his principles and feel like a bigger failure. And then there’s ‘perceived failure’ and failure of life’s circumstances. Punj has used another kind of failure – social failure – in the context of Sminu Jindal, the businesswoman who leads Jindal Saw – while in a wheelchair. This categorization however, feels a tad uncomfortable; can— and should— a person’s physical disability be termed as ‘failure’? Even if that was the reason for a whole lot of setbacks in her life, a world of hurdles that would not ordinarily be standing in the path of a ‘normal’ person, disability can at best be an obstacle, not a failure. In the zest to categorise the myriad reasons that cause people to stumble and fall, perhaps this tiny but important detail has been overlooked.
Punj’s background as a business journalist has played a big role in the shaping of the book, as company turnarounds and business decisions –both sound and unsound – have been discussed in much detail. Every leader’s story is a revelation of sorts, and there are those tiny nuggets of wisdom to be picked up from each. The ‘words of wisdom’ bit has been a tad over-emphasised, though. Each section is followed by bullet points under two headings, ‘Why I failed’ and ‘Advice’, almost in the manner of a school textbook on value education. But if that’s the author’s way of drilling it into the reader who’s looking for a morale-booster and a way to come to terms with failure, she’s bang on target.