What do you learn from failing?

Most times you learn to fail some more…you spend most of your time covering up the failure, justifying why you failed to yourself and looking for a new job…failure is a great kick in the ass, a humbling, leveling, humanizing experience AND if you’re mature enough (aka thick skinned) you can actually learn from it. Get a beer, cold cold beer, sit in a bar you never went to before and start to think very objectively what happened and why. If your thoughts go to those typical places like:

• Not getting the backup/support needed
  
• Other people sabotaged you
  
• Everyone knew from the beginning that it would fail
  
• Inability to control the unknown
  

STOP….that’s called the Blame Game…go back two steps, order another beer and try again. If you start to think about how you:

• Could have been more proactive in communicating issues
  
• Performed a better risk analysis
  
• Better communicated current issues and potential impacts
  

Then you’re probably going in the right direction. Whatever the outcome of the failure (aka: out of work) the reflection is powerful, painful and a catalyst for growth.

(image via http://despair.com/)