Futurist Jim CarrollDaily Inspiration: "A Gentle Reminder: One person's concept of success is another person's idea of failure" - Futurist Jim Carroll
A few days ago, I finished the book "After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul."
It was a good read, and so after I was done, I went to Amazon to find another book about Apple or Steve Jobs. The algorithm threw me a book titled "Tim Cook: The Genius Who Took Apple to the Next Level."
So let me get this straight: according to one book, Apple in the post-Steve Jobs era has been a failure, 'losing its soul,' while at the same time, Tim Cook is a business genius.
Got it.
This got me thinking though - how can a company or an individual at the same time be a failure and success?
In essence, one person's success is another person's failure.
In the case of Apple, both can be true. The book I read emphasized that while Tim Cook is a genius at maximizing the operations of Apple, becoming an efficient streamlined superpower, the company saw few great product innovations under his reign. Notably, only AirPods and the Apple Watch emerged as entirely new product lines, and so from that viewpoint, it was a product innovation failure. At the same time, he masterminded issues related to supply chain, production, manufacturing, and more, leading it to become an efficiency powerhouse. Failure and success wrapped up in one!
The fact is, this conundrum of different viewpoints is important to your personal development. That's why you should never obsess over how others might think you are doing - what matters is how YOU think you are doing. What doesn't matter is the judgment of others - what matters is your judgment of yourself.
The definitions of success and failure are often very different, and so this should guide you in the value you place on those assessments by anyone other than yourself!
All GNU social JP content and data are available under the