President’s Message – March 2023
I haven’t read this book, Failing Forward: Turning Mistakes Into Stepping Stones for Success by John C. Maxwell, but in my gut I know what it is about. The title says it all. It is about overcoming the fear that grips you when you realize an initiative or effort just is not working the way you thought it should. It is about realizing that fear is what holds you back from making it right. Whatever IT is.
You can read a number of studies about why initiatives fail. You will read about buy-in, measurable goals, and communication. What is usually harder to get to, and what most of us really need, is a game plan for how to recover once something has failed.
I am not an expert in failing forward. I am an expert in feeling the inadequacies of recovery from failure and pushing past them to try again. Here is my game plan for gearing up for starting over with an initiative.
- When your hard work on an initiative is sending you doubt signals, look at them. Work can be hard. Work should not send you home with anxiety to curl up with your pet or mug of choice.
- This is a personal acknowledgment. Once you tell yourself there is a failure, you can gear up for telling others.
- You are not the only one involved in initiatives. Others have put time and effort into a direction that needs to be reset.
- This is a great time to get stakeholder feedback. Was lack of communication the biggest issue? Was it commitment from stakeholders? You might need an outsider to help you diagnose the key issues that are barriers.
- Reset. Knowledge in hand about what went wrong will help you identify a course forward and restart the initiative at whatever point that might be needed.
As we move into the spring and are already a quarter of year in, what needs to be reset in your goals?
“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Laurie Lumish, CPSM
Director of Marketing & Business Development, Degenkolb Engineers
[email protected]
President, SMPS SF Bay Area Chapter
