Strategic Failures: I Am Not The World

In this space I have often mentioned the common strategic failure commonly called the “I am the World” fallacy; it’s the belief that some people have that everyone in the world likes the same foods, colors, clothing, cars, movies, books, television programs, furniture, vacation activities, appliances, climates, landscaping, sports, drinks, weather, building designs, sports teams, cities, states, nations, or many other things, just because they do. But in recent years I’ve started noticing a related problem that I think might be almost as disastrous, and potentially even more insidious. Until somebody comes up with a better name for it (or tells me that they already did), I’m going to refer to this as the “I am not the World” syndrome…

During my time working with entrepreneurs and some of their more problematic new business concepts I saw this kind of fallacy far more often than simple logic would suggest. To many of these people, the fact that dozens (or thousands) of other firms had attempted to launch the same exact business, possibly even on the same exact site, and ultimately failed, was irrelevant to their own plans and would be casually brushed aside. Obviously, those previous failures had been attempted by people far less clever, hard-working, likable, determined or knowledgeable than themselves, and all of the previous attempts to launch such a venture had only needed their input in order to achieve utter triumph. Well, their own input and a six-figure low-interest loan secured by your tax dollars, that is…

The odd part of this concept is that if you look around you there are examples all though our modern world. I don’t mean the people who believe that they can get a million-dollar job right out of college with a B.A. in English, or even the students who seem to believe that they can write a term paper at 4:00 AM for a deadline of 8:30 AM the same day and still receive an A for the assignment. Both of those behaviors are traditionally, really, and can ultimately be solved without more than a somewhat regrettable loss of time or money. The really bad examples are things like people who ignore all of the evidence about texting while driving (or drinking and driving, for that matter) and wind up causing inexcusable harm to others, as well as themselves, because obviously THEY can do these things safely. Evidence to the contrary doesn’t apply to them; only to people who are somehow less special…

Now, I would be the last person to tell anyone that they can’t change the rules of the game, find a different path, or try a more oblique approach to a traditional problem – but then, that’s kind of the point. I’m not saying that all of the previous attempts are irrelevant, nor would I advocate dismissing anyone else’s difficulties or failures. On the contrary, I began studying ineffective strategies and analyzing failed companies precisely because I believe that the best way to avoid making mistakes is to avoid the ones other people have already made. By the same token, I’m not going to tell anyone that their new service, product or strategy will not work just because similar ventures have failed, but I will ask them to explain why they believe their approach is superior – and if their reply comes out to “Because it’s ME!” I’m going to assume that they are suffering from the aforementioned strategic fallacy…

It’s a widely-known, often repeated statistic that nine out of every ten entrepreneurial projects fails – and it’s also true that nearly all successful entrepreneurs have had multiple failures for every project that succeeds. The fact is, creating a new company, let alone a new industry, starting with only a good idea and a lot of hard work really is extremely hard, and even the people who are exceptionally good at it will fail nine times for every time they succeed. The last thing anybody can afford to do is ignore all of the examples of the people who have already tried something and failed. Because if they do, they’re probably going to end up the same way…