This morning I read two different blog posts about defining success. One was on Inc.com’s Great Entrepreneurial Minds written by a woman who had just attended the Inc 500 conference in Chicago. She was surprised to find out that in a group of fellow successful entrepreneurs, none of them thought they had “made it” yet. Now this may be part of what makes an entrepreneur successful — never being satisfied with the status quo, but at the same time, having an idea of what success means to you will help you manage better and grow your business in accordance to your dreams.
The other post was by Elizabeth, who runs “A Girl’s Guide to Managing Projects“. Elizabeth blogs about how to recognize a successful project. She rightly points out that it all depends on what success is defined to be at the start of a project. If a project is started and there is no clear measurement of what success is — at the end of the project it will be hard to determine whether it was successful or not.
To someone who has never run a marathon before the definition of success may be to get across the finish line. To a seasoned competitive marathoner the definition may be to finish in under 2 hours, before any other competitor in the same age/gender bracket. Two VERY different measurements of success!
So plan for success — and know when you reach it!
Sabrina
Mommy CEO
Sabrina has served as CEO of Palo Alto Software since 2007.
