Failure or just an ordinary lesson in patience?

I remember the end of the holidays of 1999 in every detail. Together with my Father and my younger Brother, we went sowing oilseed rape. For those of you who were not brought up in the countryside, I will just drop a hint here: sowing is considered one of the most important agricultural practices employed in oilseed rape cultivation.

Since my early childhood, my Grandfather, and later my Dad as well, have kept raising my awareness that the most important elements ensuring a good sowing of oilseed rape include the sowing date, the number of plants per area unit and sowing depth.

That memorable day was no exception in this regard. We took care of all the elements with due precision.

The only thing left to do was tend the seedlings and then await a good crop during the harvest in July. In any case, we expected it to be just as it was every year.

Much to my surprise, however, when I rang up home during one of my holiday trips, I heard the dejected voice of my Dad, who was informing me that the entire crop had been destroyed just a few days before the harvest by a hailstorm lasting only half an hour.

At that moment, I did not know what to tell him over the phone. I felt anger. And chagrin. And sorrow.

That evening, I spent a lot of time pondering on the fact that all of our work had gone to waste. I wondered: Why did that happen? Where did we make a mistake? After all, everything was done in keeping with the accepted rules. My final thought was: Why must that have happened to us?

I do not even want to recall what I felt then — how deeply I was concerned about what would come next. Our investment in the sowing of oilseed rape was an extremely expensive undertaking at the time, especially given the fact that the field on which we sowed the seeds was several hectares in area. Our large family had to grapple with the problem of how to make ends meet in the coming months (simultaneously covering the losses incurred in relation to the investment).

Exactly 15 years have passed since those fateful holidays.

History has come full circle. The reason I recall those events from my memory while writing this article is because this very week the work done by me and many other employees of the company I work for has failed to produce the intended results. Something that a whole team of people have been working on for several weeks just met a “hailstorm” and closed the possibility of reaping a good crop in the form of long-standing business cooperation with a prospective Client over the next few years.

We have sown well. We have put all our energy and extraordinary involvement into the proper preparation of the “ground” for cooperation. We have brought our best individuals, tools and measures available into play.

Did something go wrong anyway?

While trying to analyse the situation and reflecting on the areas where we went wrong, as well as in what way we should have approached the assessment of the prospect of success of our undertaking and many similar conclusions drawn afterwards, I realised a few extremely important things:

• A good sowing, that is, the one that meets all criteria, does not necessarily guarantee a good crop at the end (we have no influence on many factors that can change the context of a given situation rapidly and, consequently, change the course of events).
• The results of our work are marked by patience. Success is something different than winning every competition in which we decide to take part. Sometimes, what is far more important is the lessons we learn from clashes of this kind, as well as the experience we would never be able to gather in any other way.
• One must be careful with self-criticism and drawing conclusions after a lost fight (especially “in the heat of the moment”, when we are not given the complete picture of the situation).
• A business relationship means working with people. Sending and receiving signals becomes effective if we know the full (or at least broader) context of a given situation. Our readiness to see what fits our business aesthetics does not always go hand in hand with what our potential Client, Partner, etc. expects from us.
• We have our limitations and not too much depends on us. Paradoxically, the ability to accept a given decision with humility, even if it entails the loss of a possibly lucrative contract, relationship, etc., gives us the strength to pick ourselves up and continue to fight for new objectives and face new challenges.

In some ways, doing business is similar to growing crops. The quality of the work done, combined with patience, will increase our chance of reaping an appropriate crop.

And what if a hailstorm passes our field from time to time, causing a lot of damage? Let us remember, then, that we can always return to the granary, fill our sacks with the seeds again and continue our sowing with renewed hope.

Paweł Mikler

PS

Perhaps the question I posed in my text — Where did we go wrong? — does not fit the situation. We did what we had influence on at a given moment…