When everything goes as planned, we learn little. In fact, each success causes a little loss of hearing and sight. The spotlights blind, the applause deafens.
Failure, on the other hand, should heighten the senses. If we’re smart.
When something goes wrong, get out a notebook and make a reverse outline. Document steps in reverse and look for where things went wrong and what could have been done to prevent them.
Don’t point fingers. Be mature. Take responsibility. Learn something. There’s a term for this. It’s called emotional intelligence.
Of all the people who read this, about 2% will actually do it. The rest will think, “yeah, yeah, I know this stuff. I already know what went wrong.” But you don’t. You know the failure, sure. But you won’t take your time to see all the times you could have prevented failure. And, you won’t take responsibility. You’ll place blame.
Let’s say we hire a blind woman to fly a 747 from San Francisco to New York. The plane crashes. The smart person is going to look at how well they instructed and guided that pilot. After all, they knew she was blind. The mature person will take the responsibility. If you chose a blind pilot, you should have known she’d need more attention to complete the mission.
The other 98% of you will say it’s all the fault of that damn blind woman!
Get it?
Chris Reich, Business Teacher and Consultant
Chris@TeachU.com