Dealing with Failure
Three questions I learned from failing that I always need to answer in order to deal with past failures;
- What lesson(s) did I learn? The greatest return from a failure is the knowledge it brings that no success can. Success breeds a sense of invulnerability, while failures tends to make sure we stay humble. Humility means listening more - think about it, you listen a lot more when you fail than when you succeed. Take a moment, post-mortem the failure to learn what lesson is there to be learned.
- Who/What was responsible? Easy answer is always someone else, but no failure is exclusive, failure never lives in a vacuum. The other answer that many people have been too quick to assume is that it was him/her alone. Many times it is a combination of aspects: situations, finances, resources etc. Determining what they were, who they were, means having tools to see the problems BEFORE so that appropriate workarounds can be developed to curtail future failure. Learning what aspects/people lead to the failure, it isn't personal it is the fact.
- How could I have avoided it? You know the lesson you needed to learn, you now know who or what caused/influenced the failure; what is the plan to avoid it? This is the area of combining the lesson learned with the responsible influences. With both bits of information, now comes the real knowledge - the application of information. What could have been done, what work arounds are available and has all the influenced parties agreed to the the process to avoid it.
Three steps, simple to the point. Every time I have applied this, it has given me everything I needed to achieve success. Give it a try.