Transforming failures into opportunities

From falling short of achieving our New Year’s resolutions, to underperforming in personal and work projects, in everything we do, we encounter failures. Some are smaller, some are bigger. Some generate greater reactions from us than they should, even when we understand that their magnitude is not so big.

So how should we approach them better? I propose as solution to adopt a project management process in all our endeavors – either personal or work projects.

Failing is scary

How many times did you abandon something because it’s too hard, without even trying enough? How many opportunities you threw away because you feared the risks too much? And how many times did you overinvest in minimizing weaknesses, and in doing so missed out on harnessing the strengths and opportunities?

We are genetically programmed for loss aversion, so everything we do will be focused on reducing and avoiding failure, whether we like it or not. So we tend to overthink the importance of our errors, while striving to under-sell them. But what if we would change the way we think of errors?

A new name for failure

Here is how we could set ourselves up to building improvements repositories: both for personal setbacks, and as well for our work projects. Because the word failure is too hard and, once you come upon it, you should try to make the best out of a bad situation, let’s replace it with a synonym: Lesson to be learned.

This will allow us first to frame things positively, to cut ourselves some slack and to focus on acting upon correcting failures, instead of the failure itself.

Testing it out

If you’re new to this process, you shouldn’t put all your expectations behind it. It might be that this is not what your project needs most urgent, so it’s always good to start small. For example, try out implementing workshops on a work package, or with a subcontractor, and build the lessons learned repository. We can make such repositories for every little goal we try achieving, and we can make it frequently in the work we undertake. The feedback loop is a lot shorter than you’d think! Being more frequently involved in learning from failures will in turn keep everyone on the look-out for possible weak points.

And it’s not only this repository that gets better, but also the risk register. Together, these two have a great impact on adherence to performance goals.

The cost equation

So why is this relevant? We all have heard about lessons learned repositories before, right? This is not a new notion.

That’s correct, but most of the time we fail in taking out the lessons thorough enough. We defend ourselves behind the “Less is more” sophism, behind lack of resources, or behind being too busy. So we focus on justifying partial solutions, scope deviations, or time delays.

The problem here is in the cost-benefit analysis: how much weight do you give to a lessons learned workshop that you should hold at the end of the project, and what return on investment does it bring to the project? Well, none, right? The project is over already! Yes and no…

The lessons learned workshops have more of an intangible value, by improving the overall knowledge base, the know-how of you and your colleagues, and driving approaches and estimations in initiation of future projects. Can you estimate the cost that is saved over time, if you learn 20% more from setbacks? Is it worth now to put in a couple of days collective effort in doing this?

The fair approach

But again, your project is finishing, you have lots of closure documentation to prepare, and you might even know your lessons learned are not complete – but you lack the time and resources to dive deeper into this activity…

What is then the right way to do it?

When lessons learned workshops are driven by the organization, and are considered overhead costs, they do not add value to only one specific project. They increase the know-how of the whole organization and, by doing so, they make it more competitive.

So let’s spend more, to learn more!