{"id":3149,"date":"2014-02-17T17:15:32","date_gmt":"2014-02-18T00:15:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.caddmanager.com\/CMB\/?p=3149"},"modified":"2014-02-17T17:15:32","modified_gmt":"2014-02-18T00:15:32","slug":"learning-from-failure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caddmanager.com\/CMB\/2014\/02\/learning-from-failure\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning from Failure"},"content":{"rendered":"

I ended the last series on Critical Conversations about CAD<\/a> with some quick advice on what to do when you fail.\u00a0 I wanted to revisit that topic and provide some additional comments on learning from failure. When failure happens you have to review how you got in that position.\u00a0 How could things have gone so bad?\u00a0 What can we do to avoid this from happening again?<\/p>\n

Reevaluate what really happened.\u00a0<\/strong> Do not just take the surface and obvious items that everyone can see.\u00a0 Look deeper.\u00a0 The obvious things might be key to finding root causes, but some things might lay just under the surface. Uncover more than you may have done in the past. Review the obvious and peel back each step to see if the failure was a gradual decline or a sudden fall.\u00a0 Did each step work as expected?\u00a0 Did the result of each step completely meet expectations? If not – Why not?\u00a0 You have to keep asking “why?” Why did this happen?\u00a0 Why did we not see this? Why did it not work?<\/p>\n

Rethink what you might have done.<\/strong>\u00a0 What might you have done at each step that would have improved the outcome? If we applied more resources, what would have happened?\u00a0 If we had more budget would it really have mattered?\u00a0 Throwing money at a problem does not guarantee success.\u00a0 If we had another team member in the mix we could we have made better progress?<\/p>\n

Get input from others.<\/strong>\u00a0 Specifically, someone that was not involved with the planning and execution.\u00a0 Some items may be obvious to others and seem hidden from your sight.\u00a0 Others may see it immediately while you may have to look beyond your preconceived perspectives.<\/p>\n

Think about what you will do differently next time – then actually do it.\u00a0<\/strong> Do not only devise or speculate on what you might change in the future…\u00a0 actually change something.\u00a0 Doing things the same way and expecting things to come out differently is pure folly.\u00a0 Manage the change so that you know that what was changed actually impacted the outcome.\u00a0 Too often we change too many things at the same time and never discover which ones had the greatest effect.<\/p>\n

Don’t do nothing.<\/strong>\u00a0 Doing nothing only permits anyone to grab at what might have caused the failure and what might turn it into success.\u00a0 There is an inability built into each one of us to see beyond our immediate perception. We need to see beyond our original planning and seek to do better next time through specific modifications in our approach.<\/p>\n

Don’t come to a conclusion too quickly.\u00a0<\/strong> Some may ask “how long do we analyze this failure before we move on?”\u00a0 You should ponder your failures as long as it takes.\u00a0 Seem subjective? it is.\u00a0 Do not move forward until you have at least three actionable reasons for the failure.\u00a0 Don’t move after the first one you find.\u00a0 Don’t move on until you have specific actionable items to work on.\u00a0 Straining to find more than three can stagnate and frustrate.\u00a0 Three items seems like a good start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I ended the last series on Critical Conversations about CAD with some quick advice on what to do when you fail.\u00a0 I wanted to revisit that topic and provide some additional comments on learning from failure. When failure happens you have to review how you got in that position.\u00a0 How could things have gone so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"series":[],"class_list":["post-3149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cad-management"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caddmanager.com\/CMB\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caddmanager.com\/CMB\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caddmanager.com\/CMB\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caddmanager.com\/CMB\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caddmanager.com\/CMB\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3149"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.caddmanager.com\/CMB\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3151,"href":"https:\/\/www.caddmanager.com\/CMB\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3149\/revisions\/3151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caddmanager.com\/CMB\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caddmanager.com\/CMB\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caddmanager.com\/CMB\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3149"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caddmanager.com\/CMB\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=3149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}