The 4 Biggest Lessons I Learned From My Worst Failure

The fall was spectacular. And sudden. It was like falling off a cliff. In late 2000, my company had opened five offices in five years. In September of that year, we finished our best month. It was almost double our previous best month. We were riding China’s first internet wave. Netease, Sina, Elong, and Eachnet were among our clients. They had lots of money, were aggressively growing, and needed to fill many key positions. Our candidates would interview on a Friday and start work on Monday. It was wonderful!

Then the internet bubble burst. Or more accurately, it exploded. It was suddenly determined that all the sexy, high potential B2C, C2C, and e-commerce business models in the market weren’t going to succeed. At least, not in the next few years. So in October, my company booked zero revenues. Then November, zero. And December, zero. Actually, we achieved negative revenues in those three months, because several candidates didn’t stay long enough in their job for us to get paid or our clients withdrew their offers.

The reserve cash I put away disappeared, like water down a sink. In the next year, I closed our San Francisco office, then our Taipei office, then Shanghai and Hong Kong offices. At the lowest point, I was five months behind in rent and two months behind on payroll. It was painful. But as they always tell you, you learn the most from your failures. In my case, here are the 4 biggest lessons I learned from my epic failure.

1) Your greatest strength can become your greatest weakness – There were two leadership qualities that I always prided myself on. The first is being a caring leader. I was someone who is extremely supportive of my employees, even if they didn’t perform well. As long as they worked hard and had a good attitude.

But because of this, I tended to carry many so-so and even poor performing employees. I wasn’t objective about a person’s performance, or lack of performance. When my company began failing. I remember telling a friend, an executive in a multinational company, that I didn’t think many of the people I had could help our company recover, and I wasn’t sure what to do with them. When I finished, he said, “It sounds like you’re running a charity, not a business. If it was me, these employees you’re talking about wouldn’t still be in my company.”

I’m also a positive, optimistic person. I have a can-do spirit and attitude. That’s a great outlook to have when facing many situations. But sometimes, you need to be objective and critical about your situation. But when our ship was sinking, I was giving “we’re going to all get through this together” speeches. Somebody should have hit me over the head with a frying pan!

You compete and win with your strengths, not your weaknesses. So, of course, you want to recognize and value your strengths. But in my case, both my caring personality and optimism were out of control. They were killing my company. What I learned is that sometimes, your strengths need to be checked and balanced. If not, they can turn into huge weaknesses.

2) You’re never as good as you think you are – When you’re having early success, it’s easy to think that it’s because of how awesome and brilliant you are. Everything you do is working. Clients want to do business with you and people want to work for you. All your problems and challenges are related to how to grow your business faster. Of course, this is all because of you.

But when the wind stops blowing, that’s when you really see how good you are. When you find out how well you can really sail. In my case, after the internet bubble burst, both my company’s and my own shortcomings and weaknesses became very apparent. Our people, our capabilities, and my leadership, none of these were as good as I thought. 

Now, when I experience success, I maintain a more objective and grounded view of how that success was achieved, and why it happened. Trust me, it’s much better for your ongoing, continued success to have a more humble, balanced view of your capabilities and achievements.

3) Your ego can’t save you – When my company was collapsing, I could have done many things much sooner, and to a much greater degree. Like, closing our offices and letting people go. These are never easy to do, but sometime it’s just what needs to be done.

But I couldn’t bring myself to do them. I felt so proud of building up our five offices. I liked flying around each week and saying that I was visiting our office in Taipei or Hong Kong or Beijing. I liked feeling like a rising star who was on his way to building a business empire. But this ended up being short-lived. When things go bad, then it all becomes lies and false ego.

The fact is, sometimes you make a bad choices. You’ve overextended yourself. Or you’re holding on to things that you should be letting go of. Whatever it is, you’ve got to be mature enough to face the realities of your situation, and then respond appropriately. Otherwise, you’ll end up in an even deeper hole than what you’re already in.

4) There’s no disgrace in moving on – In your career, you may try and do something very challenging and significant. You’ll invest your heart and soul, your blood, sweat, and tears into it. Hopefully, it will be successful. Or it might just succeed for a period of time, and then that time will pass and you need to move on.

I had a very difficult time moving on from each of our offices. My company has my family names, the Wangs and the Lis, on it. Everything was personal to me. I was caught up in what people might think. How it would look to others to downsize my company.

So when I had to close offices, I delayed that decision by 3-6 months for each office. This probably extended my recovery period by at least a year, as I went further and further into debt.

I learned that, rather than hang on, sometimes, it’s much better to move on. It makes more sense to let go of something and recognize that it has a better chance of existing in the future in another way or form. Once I let go of our other four offices, I was able to focus my limited resources and efforts on just one market. That’s how I rebuilt my company, where in 2008, Wang & Li Asia Resources was recognized as China’s Recruitment Firm of the Year at the Annual ChinaStaff Human Resources Awards.

Of course, nobody wants to experience failure. Believe me, it sucks! But if you do, you have two choices. You can crawl into a hole and disappear, feeling hurt and wounded. Or you can do a lot of soul-searching to try to understand why it happened and to get the most valuable things that come with failure. Those are the lessons, understanding, and maturity that can result from going through difficult times and dealing with disappointment.

Hopefully, you’ll choose the latter. And then just maybe, you’ll also get a second chance to continue to do what you love doing, and do it much better than you did before.

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从事业巅峰跌到谷底，失败教会了我这四件事

那次失败是猝不及防地，如堕悬崖的。到2000年下半年为止，我的公司在五年内连开了五家办公室。当年九月，我们创下了有史以来最好的业绩，几乎把上一个最佳年度的成绩翻了一番。我们赶上了中国第一次互联网大潮。网易、新浪、艺龙、易趣网都是我们的客户。他们资金充足，发展迅速，许多重要岗位都急需人才。我们的候选人周五面完试，下周一就能入职工作。简直棒极了！

紧接着，互联网泡沫破灭了，更准确的说，是“爆炸”了。突然间，大家认为市场上各种充满魅力、潜力无限的B2C、C2C和电子商务业务模型都无法获得成功，至少在接下来的几年都将如此。所以到了10月，我公司连一点收入都没有。11月也是零收入，紧接着12月也是零收入。事实上，那三个月我们不但没有赚到钱，反而一直在亏损，因为有几个候选人在岗位上工作的时间不够长，导致我们拿不到钱，甚至还有一些客户收回了offer。

我的储蓄基金瞬间没了，就好像水冲进了下水道，消失地无影无踪。次年，我关+掉了旧金山的办公室，接着关掉了台北办公室，然后是上海、香港的办公室。在最困难的时候，我拖欠了五个月的租金和员工两个月的薪水。那种感觉痛苦至极。但俗话说得好，吃一堑长一智，从这次惨烈的失败经历中，我学到了以下四个道理。

1）你最大的优势也可能是你最大的劣势 —— 一直以来，我都对自己身上的两大领导力特质引以为豪。一是关心员工。只要员工工作努力，态度端正，即便他们表现不佳，我也会尽全力帮助他们。

但正因如此，很多表现一般，甚至表现不好的员工也能在我公司里混日子。在员工的表现上，我不够客观。记得公司开始走下坡路的时候，我和一个在跨国公司担任高管的朋友说，我觉得很多员工都无法帮助公司重振旗鼓，但我也不知道该拿他们怎么办。听完后，他说，“听起来好像你开的是一家慈善机构，不是一家公司。如果我是你，你说的这些人现在肯定已经不在我公司了。”

此外，我还是个积极乐观的人，乐于尝试，不怕困难。大部分时候，这是个优点。但有时，你必须客观辩证地看待所处的环境。在公司这艘大船下沉的过程中，我一直和大家说，“我们一定能携手渡过难关”。当时怎么就没人狠狠敲我一脑袋呢！

要想在竞争中拔得头筹，你得善用自身优势而不是你的劣势。所以，你必须得了解并珍惜你的自身优势。但在当时的我身上，“关心员工”和“乐观积极”这两项优势都已经失控了。它们在慢慢地“杀死”公司。从这次经历中，我学到一点——有时候，优势也要注意管控，否则，它们就会变成巨大的劣势。

2）你永远都不如你想象的那么好 —— 年轻轻轻就成功的人很容易会觉得自己聪明伶俐，才华洋溢，事事都能成。很多客户想和你做生意，大家都想来你公司工作。要说有困难和挑战，那也是在苦恼如何才能更快地把公司发展壮大。当然，你会觉得，这一切都是因为有你。

但是，只有当你不再能借势而起时，你才能真正看清自己的能力。当你看清自己掌舵的能力究竟如何。互联网泡沫破碎后，公司和我自己的劣势暴露的一清二楚。我们的员工，我们的能力和我的领导力并不像我想象的一样好。

现在，在获得了成功后，重新审视成功的过程和原因时，我维持着一种更客观和脚踏实地的态度。相信我，对自己的能力和成绩保持谦卑、客观的态度更有利于你获得长远的成功。

3）放下自我 —— 在公司分崩离析的过程中，我原本可以尽早采取很多行动，比如早点关闭办公室，解雇员工。虽然这些事做起来不容易，但有时你必须得这么做。

但我就是下不了手。我开了五个办公室，我自豪万分。我享受每周飞来飞去，告诉别人我在考察台北、香港或北京办公室的感觉。我享受自己就像一颗冉冉上升的星星，打造着一个商业帝国的感觉。但这一切都是昙花一现。事情开始朝糟糕的方向发展时，一切都变成了谎言和虚假的自我想象。

事实是，有时候，你会做错选择，你会透支自己，执着于早该放手的事情。无论哪种情况，你都应该更成熟地面对现实情况，采取合适的措施。否则，你就会跌入更深不见底的深渊。

4）继续前行并不丢人 —— 在职业生涯中，你可能会尝试做一些非常具有挑战性、非常重要的事情，全身心投入其中，经历种种心酸苦累。但愿你能成功。但也有可能，你的成功只会持续一段时间。随着时间流逝，你得学会释怀，并且收拾心情，继续前行。

每一次我关闭一家我们的办公室，我都会痛苦地无法自拔，难以释怀。我的公司名字里有我父母的姓——“王”和“李”。我有非常私人的情感在里面。我在乎别人对我的看法。我把公司规模缩小了，别人会怎么看我？

所以，当我不得不关闭一间办公室时，每一次，我都推迟了3-6个月。我的低谷期和恢复期至少因此延长了一年，我欠的债也越来越多。

从这一点我学到：有时，不要过于执着于一件事，释怀朝前看反而会更好。勇敢放手，要明白在未来我们换一种方式做可能会更好，这才是应该做的事。放手另外四家办公室使我更能专注，好好利用有限的资源和精力来拓展一个市场。我就是这样从失败中站起来的——2008年，在一年一度的中国人力资源管理奖中，王李亚州资源荣获“中国年度猎头公司”的称号。

当然，没人愿意体验失败。过来人告诉你，失败的感觉烂透了！但如果你真的失败了，你有两个选择：一是找个地洞钻下去，带着一颗千疮百孔的心消身匿迹；二是审视内心，搞清楚为什么会失败，从失败中吸取更多教训。困难时光和沮丧时光能教会你许多经验，明白许多道理，变得越来越成熟。

希望你能选择第二种方式来面对人生中的失败。也许你会有第二次机会来继续你热爱的事业，甚至会比第一次做得更好。