Wins, Losses, & Victories!

Remember that big project that you and your team worked on for weeks, months, maybe even a year?  Remember the sense of accomplishment that you felt once it was over and a total success?  Do you remember how you felt as your colleagues, clients, and maybe even competition cheered your success.  It felt amazing right?  Of course.  You are proud of your work and accomplishments when they meet or even exceed our your expectations.  On the other hand can you think back to that last project or event that you worked extremely hard on that was a complete and total failure?  Yes, I know the first thing you want to do is push it out of your memory but do you remember how you felt?  It is common to feel discouraged and embarrassed when you work hard and your expectations are not met; therefore, your goal is to have more wins than victories after you have invested vast amounts of time and resources.  Unfortunately, there is no absolute way to guarantee that you always garner the success you desire; however, you can easily improve your success rate by constantly working to evaluate your wins and losses.  After wins you should meet with your team immediately to find out what worked, why it was so successful, who were the major players in your success, how you can reproduce it and were there any new opportunities or threats that presented themselves?  Moreover, after failures meet with your team immediately to evaluate what went wrong, how you can ensure that it won't happen again, did you best utilize your resources/staff, how can you tweak your execution next time to get closer so the success you desire.  The evaluation process is the most important step in your work because it helps you to reproduce successes and minimize failures.  The evaluation process helps to make both wins and losses victorious!  Make sure that you take the time to evaluate the work that you have done so that your organization can continue to grow and flourish!  -Derek A. Terry, Principal Consultant www.ConsultingDAT.com