Failing on an important and visible project hurts—it can hurt a lot—but not all failure is bad. In fact, failure is an integral part of the learning and development process. You learn by adjusting to each little glitch and incorporating those lessons into your project definition, planning, organizing and controlling for future projects. The key is to reframe the way you think about failure and the steps you take to adjust to it.
Perhaps no better proving ground of the value of failure is in an effective project post mortem. Done well, project post mortems inform important ways to improve future projects by evaluating key aspects of the immediate past project’s successes and failures. Done right, any failures are accepted and examined as a team with the understanding that failures, big or small, good or bad, are inevitable.
Here are some positive ways to reframe project failure:
- Think ahead. Anticipate and plan for various scenarios based upon your current business strategy, organizational culture and project team dynamics. The future is uncertain but the more we can predict it, the less we will experience unexpected failures.
- Include the Team. Engage project team members as problem solvers by acknowledging and uncovering obstacles you can anticipate and how their ideas and actions can help overcome them.
- Strive to Learn. Encourage the idea of being smart about failures so lessons learned are passed along in what should be a culture of continuous learning. Make sure that your level of innovation, risk taking and learning mindset matches the project sponsor’s risk tolerance.
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