Free What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20 by Tina Seelig Page A

made judgments about corporate culture that were incorrect. I wish I had spent more time paying attention and less time making assumptions.
    Quitting too early: While running my own business I hit the wall. It got incredibly hard both technically and organizationally, and was going to take a tremendous amount of effort to find my way to a solution. I wish I had been confident enough to fully commit to finding a solution.
Academic Failures

    Not doing my best: The first two years of college I didn’t put my focused effort into all my courses. I missed the chance to extract the most value from the classes—a chance I can’t get back.
    Relationship management: I had a challenging relationship with my PhD advisor. I wanted to spend a lot of time teaching and she felt I should spend most of my time in the lab. I wish I had found a way to better align our goals.
Personal Failures

    Avoiding conflicts: I had a boyfriend in college, and as we closed in on graduation we were both stressed about where we were going next. Instead of dealing with the questions directly, I blew up the relationship. I wish I had been able to talk honestly about what was going on.
    Not listening to my gut: My uncle died in New York. I lived in California and several people urged me not to travel to the funeral. I have always regretted it. I learned that there are some things you can’t undo, and that in situations such as these I should do what is right for me, not necessarily what others want me to do.
     

    Willingness to take risks and reactions to failure differ dramatically around the world. In some cultures the downside for failure is so high that individuals are allergic to taking any risks at all. These cultures associate shame with any type of failure, and from a young age people are taught to follow a prescribed path with a well-defined chance of success, as opposed to trying anything that might lead to disappointment. In some places, such as Thailand, someone who has failed repeatedly might even choose to take on a brand-new name in an attempt to reboot his or her entire life. In fact, in the 2008 Olympics, a Thai weight lifter attributed her victory to changing her name before the games.
    The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), 1 which publishes a detailed annual report on startup activity around the world, looks at cultural differences in risk taking and comfort with failure. The GEM team found that important factors contribute to a society’s risk profile. For example, in some countries, such as Sweden, the bankruptcy laws are designed such that once your company goes out of business you can never get out of debt. Knowing that failure has drastic, long-term consequences for you and your family is a huge disincentive to try to start a company in the first place. The culture in other countries is equally unforgiving. Once you fail, your friends, neighbors, and colleagues will always view you as a failure. A recent issue of the Wall Street Journal describes humiliating tactics currently used by debt collectors in several countries, including Spain. 2 The collectors literally show up at individuals’ houses in bizarre costumes, with the goal of drawing attention from the neighbors and shaming the debtors. Why would anyone in these communities risk public ridicule by taking on any unnecessary risk?
    This is in sharp contrast to Silicon Valley, where failure is acknowledged as a natural part of the process of innovation. Steve Jurvetson, 3 a partner at the venture firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, describes failure as the secret sauce of Silicon Valley, while Randy Komisar of KPCB notes that being able to view failure as an asset is the hallmark of an entrepreneurial environment. Randy also says that when he sees people who have never had a failure, he wonders what they have really learned from their experiences.
     

    On the most basic level, all learning comes from failure. Think of a baby learning to walk. He or she starts out crawling and