It’s easy to give up after you’ve experienced failure at work. You’ll hear about lessons learned or coming back stronger or whatever, but it is just lousy. Winning is so much better. Sometimes we work in departments that win so often, failure is not even a thought. When you win this often, it slowly goes from winning to just doing your job. It doesn’t mean anything; it’s expected for you to always have a good outcome. “It’s what we pay you for!” Without the option of failure, winning means a lot less. The risk of reaching a high standard should have equal rewards and penalties for coming up ahead or short of expectations.
After a failing effort in a major project, it is a good to assess the circumstances that caused the failure. This will require turning down the “finger pointing” mentality and figuring out what needs to happen for things to improve. Sometimes I will go into an area where numbers are declining or the departments has fallen short of expectations over a number of months and I’ll ask employees about the problems. It’s not uncommon to hear things like, “I just do what they tell me” or “This place has been going downhill.” These types of comments tell me a lot and should really wake you up as a manager or supervisor.
If an employee feels like they are just doing what they are told, they don’t feel like their opinions have any value. They may even feel that they are worthless to the department for that matter. I have always said on this site that it is so important to give new leaders a big introduction when they are coming into a job for the first time. A speaker always needs a nice introduction to let the audience know where they are coming from and to get an idea of what to expect. The people in the department need to know that people know their introduction, people respect their experience and contribution and that they are being heard when they speak. Your greatest subject matter experts are the people who do the job every day. Their opinions should be valued and respected.
When employees feel a department is going downhill or is a mess, it’s usually because they have heard it elsewhere. They are seeing it in the actions of their leaders or recognizing it from the way they are treated. When a department starts getting sloppy and the leaders do not address the issues, it can become very problematic. Eventually the few holdouts who were doing a good job will see that there are no standards for good work. Once your department has fallen under the “nobody cares” spell, it’s hard to break.
By this time, management will usually step in to address the problem with blanket statements of how things need to change. The only problem here is that the bad employees were doing what they felt was their best and the good employees got fed up with the bad employees efforts and started slacking off in their own work. By the time management addresses everyone with the issue, all of the employees feel they are talking to the other people. When you feel tempted to get in front of the department and give the “We need to start doing a lot better” speech, take the time to isolate some instances that are the problems you are troubled with and address those issues through discussion or training. Employees usually feel someone does care once some time and effort have gone into a quality training and development program.
After a big victory for the company, you’re best employees may get a “good job out there” type of statement and that’s the end of things. Now that the company has failed, the failure penalties far outweigh and winning benefits. Now the best employees are being talked down to or even second-guessed for their daily decisions. I’ve heard of employees who have gotten awards for years of service and extraordinary achievement in their department feeling like they didn’t know how to do their jobs anymore after they way leaders dealt with failure. Making everyone feel uncomfortable or confused about their job or expectations is not a method for building a team of winners.
Look at all of the variables that went into the failure. What was the contributing factors? If a shipping company fell short of their shipping goals for a quarter, they would need to look at all the different reasons. Without making excuses, surely weather could play a role if the conditions greatly slowed travel. Other variables might be pricing for services, competition in the area, shipping methods, online options, etc.
In short, when a company, department, or team has failed, it is important to assess the problem without pointing fingers. I would make a list of issues and how we plan to address them. I would bring in subject matter experts who know the job and get their opinions. You want to then present your finding to the employees in a productive and positive meeting. You’ll want to address that you have great employees doing great things, but you’ll be looking to address some shortcomings and here is how we plan to do it in order to get back to what we do best….win!
In closing, I want to mention that these same assessments need to be made when you’ve achieved all your company or department goals. What things did we properly address along the way that led to huge successes. Who were the standout employees who drove us and set the standard. What variables played a role in the victory and how can we take advantage of these again in the future. Winning and losing are all a process in business, unfortunately we often address the failures more often and in all the wrong ways. I hope this helps you the next time you have to regroup after a failure and get back to winning again. If this helped you, please share this and help me grow my readership. Thanks and I will see you next time.
