Failure Is a Team Effort—So Is Growth

In most situations, where a project fails, there is a not a single reason for the failure. Of course, organisations that go on the blame game are often looking for a single reason. But it’s not that simple.

Think about a project you’ve been involved in that failed. Maybe it didn’t outright “fail” - failure is a continuum after all; but maybe there were elements of it that were not as successful as intended. Why was that?

Scope, budget and time are our familiar bedfellows in this environment. The scope was increased, the budget was decreased, the timeline was decreased. But there are other common reasons too. Resources were prioritised somewhere else. Decisions took too long to be made and/or the wrong calls were made on the big decisions. Dependencies were not completed in time or to the right quality.

It’s easy to build up a list. Failure is not a binary model, it’s a contributory model. There are often many reasons that contribute to project failure. It’s always the way in a complex system, there are many truths, not a single truth.

Have you considered that the reason your project failed is because of you?

It’s a hard one to consider, but you may benefit from giving it a moment’s thought. If failure is a contributory model, what contribution did you, your actions, or your inactions, make to the failure of the project? It cannot be zero. But did you think about it?

We are all in the habit of active retrospection on either the superficial or the things that are in our stewardship. We want our teams to have an honest conversation about their work and their results and have genuine insights about what changes will make both better. We encourage that. But do you encourage the same about yourself?

We know that understanding how to improve things makes things better. There is value in taking a moment to think about how to improve ourselves, to examine our impact on the last project and to understand what changes we can make to ourselves to make things better next time.

Have you thought about doing a retrospective on you?

Gather the team and your stakeholders into a room. Ask someone to facilitate the session, ideally someone who is good at coaching. Take a structured exploration through your actions and inactions, the impact that had on the people working on the project, the impact on the work and see if there are themes, blind spots or weaknesses that you have that need addressing.

You should not be at this meeting. Let people talk about you, without you being in the room. It will create a more honest conversation. Make sure the meeting is solely focused on improvements. Have the team deliver you the output. In the perfect world, the coach who facilitated the meeting walks you through the outputs.

You should be able to ask clarifying questions, but only those. You can ask questions to understand more, but not to challenge.

When that project failed, you contributed to the failure. If you’re not taking the opportunity to learn lessons and improve, how do you know you’re not doomed to repeat history? It’s hard and uncomfortable, but it’s the way to grow and improve.

Be brave and take the bold step to getting better. The people who are the best Project Managers, the people you admire, they already actively do this. Borrow the practice from them and start on your journey to emulating their capability.