Yet to succeed...

More than a year in new role; I am yet to succeed…

In the capacity of the first full time coach at Principal, Pune, I focus on helping project teams become good product teams for digital readiness – agility beyond IT. The new role has brought a paradigm shift in the way I have been contributing earlier. Acquiring new skills and knowledge, continuous learning are important levers for making things happen.

All learning are important but, the one that I find very interesting and hold close to my heart is – learning to fail successfully. Yes! You read it right. I am learning to fail successfully and be comfortable doing so again and again! Getting inspired by failures!

My organization and leadership team encourage us to experiment and learn. Innovation requires experimentation and failure is inevitable in the process. However, it took me some time to understand how I should look at it, to throw away the baggage around the word ‘failure’, redefine failure and be open and comfortable with it. Let me share the way I have learned to perceive failure now.

My role is all about influencing and making people think with an intent to bring the best out of the immense talent we have in our teams. This includes training, mentoring and coaching. The journey started with uncertainty – I didn’t know if I would succeed and enjoy doing this full time. This role requires approaches and styles which I feel has not been my natural strength. But, considering the culture prevalent at Principal, Pune, and the trust that has got built over 10 years of my association with the organization, I decided to explore it without over thinking on whether I would succeed or fail.

The journey began with a goal of exploring and exploiting the opportunity i.e. bringing out the best in the category. This required measuring against some industry recognized benchmark of a parameter that mattered the most. In keeping with organization’s mission of providing the best lives to their customer and enriching customer experience at center, I realized that the one metric that mattered immensely was the Net Promoter Score (NPS). I decided to consider this as a pointer on how I was doing. Just for the benefit of all, I provide below the interpretation of the NPS scores:

00 > NPS > -100: Bad. More detractors than promoters/passive. Substantial ‘thumbs down’.

50 > NPS > 00: Good. Okay. You have slightly more promoters than detractors/passive.

71 > NPS > 50: Excellent. Better. You have more promoters than detractors/passive.

NPS > 71: World class. Promoters outweigh detractors/passive. Significant ‘thumbs up’.

SurveyMonkey helped to get an average NPS across industry. It was 32 (Average from 167,357 Organizations from 4/1/2018 till 3/31/2019). The score prior to 4/1/2018 was 26. It was imperative that our score be above 26 but, anything closer would still be considered an average and not a differentiator. So, it was decided to set the goal as NPS > 71. Anything below this was going to be considered as failure.

The first engagement produced an NPS of 22. Absolute failure! Below even industry average. This made me feel ashamed and triggered retrospect. Taking a pause to reflect helped learn few things and accordingly pivot the approach for next one. Thanks to the support and encouragement I received from my leaders!

Implementations of the learning in next attempt raised the NPS to 60. Improved, but still a long way to go. The score was above industry average of 26 but, below the goal of 71. One more pause to understand what matters most to participants and customers. Another opportunity to unlearn, relearn and enhance the overall experience.

With further changes to the overall approach, the third attempt brought NPS to 75. Upward moment. Success? Hold on! It was certainly satisfying to have ‘world class’ score but, at the same time industry average had also moved from 26 to 32. The goal was therefore reset to 90. In the perspective of the new goal, I had failed again - Third time in a row and I am still working ??… Thanks to my peers and leaders for their continued support!

I am yet to succeed... Next attempt is under progress to get NPS > 90. Anything less would be failure.

On this journey of failures, I still stay bit disappointed as I am yet to succeed. I have failed but, that makes me think – what did I lose? The moment I ask myself this question, my failure becomes my inspiration! The NPS trend motivates, makes me stretch and go beyond my comfort zone, to change, improve and become better. I have failed consecutively in this role so far but, with each failure, I feel I am growing. I cherish these failures as they make me strive harder. My leaders and organization supports and encourages experimentation, risk taking and tolerance for failures. It plays a key role in exploring ambiguous but innovative opportunities. Failures trigger inquiries and blameless post-mortem with an intent to learn and improve – not punish or malign. @Principal, Pune fosters the spirit of setting up of well-thought ambitious goals, explore wild ideas, go beyond comfort zone and exploit opportunities to differentiate.

The journey continues, because… I am yet to succeed!