Why it fails

Some live by the motto: If you aren't failing you aren't taking big enough risks. Said another way, if everything you try turns out exactly as planned and feels very comfortable, you probably aren't stretching yourself. And if you aren't stretching, you aren't growing.

A fairly common understanding of failure is setting a goal but not achieving it. We tend to believe that knowing whether or not you achieved a goal is fairly simple and straightforward. But in truth, failure is often in the eye of the beholder.

Imagine yourself in each of these three scenarios and whether you'd consider yourself to have failed:. Notice that the differentiator in all three of these failure analysis examples is an ideal we've set in our minds.

Measuring goal achievement can be a subjective and political activity. And in each of these examples above, you can sense that the individuals tried hard and performed well in their efforts.

Perhaps that common definition of being in failure mode as "not achieving a goal" isn't so accurate and straightforward, after all. In a "winning-is-everything" society, how do we handle and define failure? This is the tagline for a documentary series called Losers.

It profiles high-performing athletes or teams that have a major failure. One episode profiles figure skater Surya Bonaly. Still, she failed to medal in all three of her Olympic appearances. Finishing fifth in , fourth in , and tenth in Now retired as a professional athlete, Surya Bonaly works as a figure skating coach and a motivational speaker. Especially for young athletes of color.

Like the professional athletes highlighted in the documentary, you may find yourself afraid to fail. Reframing is a technique used in coaching to see a situation in a new light.

Photographers move the lens around to get different angles on the same shot. We can similarly change our perspective on situations to see them differently. If the definition of failure is not achieving a goal, then does meeting a goal equal success? To some extent, yes. But that definition feels too confining. Success is psychologically bigger than goal achievement itself. And importantly, it is possible to feel like a successful person even in the face of failure. In a speech to students at Figure Skating Harlem, Surya Bonaly said, "You don't have to wait for a medal to make your life different.

Feel good about it. Feel positive and move on. An outcome goal discussed earlier was to run a marathon in under four-and-a-half hours. In order to achieve that outcome, the runner would have been engaged in process goals along the way in order to make the outcome more likely. She would have run five or more days a week.

Joined a marathon training group. Managed her dietary intake. Purchased the necessary equipment. And devoted countless hours to her training. But in our society, we do not tend to acknowledge and appreciate those process achievements. Instead, we make the feeling of success contingent upon the outcome. Your project manager needs to be able to deal with all of the project logistics.

They need to be able to. While this seems to be obvious, projects fail because their manager was not able to balance all of the above. Make sure your PM can handle it. We all like cutting corners and saving money, right?

Not allotting adequate funds to a project can have serious consequences. Initially underfunded projects come back late, over budget, and are often missing features or have quality issues. The moral of the story?

Otherwise, your project is going to fail. For a project to be successful, you have to plan, implement and test. This needs to be done with communicative managers who realize that cutting corners and saving money will not necessarily lead to the best outcome.

For what other reasons do projects fail? Start by writing your thoughts and ideas. Talk them out with friends and do one thing a day that will help your overall vision. It won't be perfect, but if you're persistent, the easier it will be to deal with failures along the way. Each failure is simply feedback of how to perfect your craft.

Know that nothing works unless you do and know that what you envisioned will not happen exactly how you thought it would, but that is what makes the distance between where we are and where we want to go so exciting. Monster Wants to Know : How has fear or failure driven your success?

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