I need a setback or two, a failure here and there to build resistance, keep my coping mechanism, in working order to keep me on my toes, to, yes, do some soul-searching as well. Failure makes one introspect. It is an opportunity to take stock, as it were, do some necessary strategy/policy revisions, an opportunity to make career corrections. When you're right on top it's difficult to see what goes on below.

I believe failure is one of the signs that you are moving. You can only stumble when you're on your feet and moving. And there is this to consider—the rapid changes driving today's business world call for decisions, actions in the face of uncertainty.

It's unrealistic to presuppose that all these actions will result in success. The possibility of failure looms large. There are bound to be stumbles, bad falls even. In fact I always maintain that if you've never failed it means you've been extraordinarily lucky or you're an extraordinary liar. Or, what's most likely, you haven't lived. Bill Gates says he likes to hire people who have made mistakes. "It shows they take risks. The way people deal with things that go wrong is an indicator of how they deal with change."

What I find difficult to cope with is not failure, as in systems breakdown or a wrong decision but human inconsistencies. These are the most difficult factors of planning and strategising. Obviously there is no solution or formula for such unquantifiable factors. And yet one cannot pretend they are not there, and wish them away! I set a great store by human beings and I find it hard to accept that sometimes what I see is not what I get.