Learning from Failure

There’s been many wise sayings around learning from one’s failures. Have you heard any of the following: maybe on a motivational poster, on a tea bag, or from an older-and-wiser somebody?

• Fail fast.
• Failure sucks, but instructs.
• Don’t be embarrassed by failure; learn and start again.
• We learn more from our mistakes than from our successes.

There are hundreds of adages like these from many cultures over the centuries. Recognizing this, should I not publish my failures front and center?

I’m adding a new section to my resume. In addition to traditional sections like Education and Work Experience, I’m adding a new section: Failures. I’ve got plenty to choose from, but here is just one to grace my resume, along with the lessons learned.

FAILURE: I was a bright-eyed technical writer who inherited hundreds of pages of software technical documentation. In the midst of making many updates and revisions, I scoffed at a term being used repeatedly that I considered to be arcane. Using a global find-and-replace function, I swapped the word out with one I considered to be more appropriate. The final work was sent to the printer and a tall stack of bound printed copies a few days later.

Not long after the copies were distributed internally, I received an unpleasant email from our CEO. He had learned from our implementation team that this long-trusted-very-familiar word was changed throughout the documentation. As I was soon to discover, the word I considered arcane was actually a key vocabulary term for the users of the software and implementation team.

The CEO’s decision? Trash the stack of publish manuals, revert the word back, and re-publish the manuals. (Yes, my mistake cost the company thousands of dollars.)

LESSONS LEARNED:

1. Be aware of hubris.
2. Talk to the customer (internal/external). Something may seem outmoded or incorrect, but there may be a backstory. Listen.
3. Consider how changes–even seemingly minor ones–will impact end-customers.
4. Don’t hesitate to ask a more experienced person for help in a quick sanity check: “Hey, I’m thinking about changing something, what do you think?”
5. Just because something is easy to change (like a global find-and-replace function) and gives one a feeling of accomplishment, doesn’t mean one should do it.
6. While the decision and blame was clearly and singularly mine, I was not shamed. Management’s response shaped my approach to leadership and management.

#learningfrommistakes #personalgrowth #failures #success