Learning From My Failures: Twenty Years Ago Today (with a nod to the Beatles)

It’s in all the books on leadership, be they on sports or business: “We learn more from our failures than our successes.” I am here to tell you today it has been true for me. This is the first of an occasional series on my failures and what I learned from them.

So far, these blogs have been about success. That makes sense, right? You might not read the blogs otherwise! We may learn (hopefully) from our failures, but we don’t talk about them much, do we?

Almost twenty years ago to the day (how many got the Sgt. Pepper's reference?) , I managed my first project for a commercial enterprise. I was made project leader of a long running production project, building a large number of complex electronic boxes for a US DOD customer. The project needed refreshing, its quality had never been good and now its profits were drooping as the team continued to use old methods. First the success part: I was able to cut hours of assembly per unit by about 30%, made the monthly output more predictable and increased quality. This translated into a large positive dollar impact for my company.

So where was the failure? It was in the way I did it, the horrible way I felt afterwards, and how I was without a follow-on position for a few weeks.

I used classic command and control management: trusting no one, trying to keep track of all the minute detail of what everyone was doing. Why act this way? I didn’t trust them, and was trying to catch them doing something wrong. They weren’t going to cause me to fail!

The team had little affection for me to the point where it was uncomfortable and I was actually removed from the project because I was so overbearing! Recent coworkers uniformly express disbelief when I tell them that part of the story, I suppose because I seem so otherwise now.

It ultimately all worked out, as I moved on to another part of the organization, where the projects I worked on had great success over a number of years, including a six-sigma-quality manufacturing project. But the experience left me battered and bruised, and I am sure a number of the team were, as well. Some of them had been friends at the beginning of the project, and no longer spoke to me by the end.

I was also angry and frustrated that the “success” I created within that team was not better appreciated and that I was “put on ice” for several weeks by management. I am sweating a bit right now as I remember those experiences. And who knows what would have happened to my career had I not been “picked up” by the new project team. I doubt I would be writing these blogs.

What did I learn? It took a while, but that was the planting of a seed on how to manage people right and be successful at the same time. On subsequent projects, I was more aware of my impact on people and their feelings. Slowly over time, an approach emerged that allowed my desire to win and my driving nature to sublimate itself into a team environment, and I became viewed as a good people person. It did not happen overnight, far from it.

And ultimately, it was probably a good thing that I was not made to feel successful by my management. Had they done so, I may have been vindicated in my approach and have continued to manage that way to this day, which would have been a real shame.

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