Try & try again

It’s not impossible to overcome failed projects at work

You’ve been waiting for years to get a chance to do something big at work. Maybe you want to pitch a new product, conceptualize a new service or form a new group, and when you’re finally given the chance, what happens? You fall flat on your face. How do you bounce back from an embarrassing failure at work?

The first thing is to realize that there are worse things that could happen. “Failing at work is a part of working. No one died, no one was kicked out on the street. It was just a miscalculation at work,” says Peter Elm, an HR attorney in Dallas, Texas, who specializes in corporate restructuring.

“Granted, that miscalculation may cost your company millions; but the only reason companies succeed is because they take risks, and if you’re called upon to lead one of those endeavors, you’ve already won over someone in your company. Someone who thinks you are capable of doing great things. And unless you work for a megalomaniacal taskmaster, you’re going to get cut some slack.”

Own it

Elm says any extra leeway won’t come if you distance yourself from your work. “There are few things worse in the corporate world than an employee who will not take responsibility for what he or she has done,” he says. “If you made a miscalculation or if you relied on data that was erroneous, admit it. If you underestimated the amount of people who needed to assist you, own up to that as well. You’ll gain a lot of respect if you stand behind your projects, good or bad.”

In fact, Elm says the easiest way to get a new opportunity is to admit that you made some missteps and then summarize how you would address them in the future.

“The people sitting in the corner offices probably have more failures than they do successes. But the bottom line is that they don’t give up when things don’t work out,” Elm says. “They realize that they can take what learn from a failed project and apply it to a new product or service. That’s how successful projects are born.”

Protect the team

Tracy Amente says she has had her share of failed projects in her 17-year marketing career, but the Denver-based mother of two says she knows better than to throw her co-workers under the bus when things don’t work out.

“For the most part, your co-workers will have worked just as hard as you to make a project a success, so the worst thing you can do is blame them, either publicly or privately, when something fails,” Amente says. “You’re just making yourself look bad. You’re alienating yourself from your group and you’re making your manager realize that you don’t have what it takes to lead a team.”

Amente says that her own experiences have taught her to take a measured approach after a project is complete, regardless of whether or not the project sank or scored. “I get my team together for lunch or after-work drinks and we talk about what happened,” she says. “I always make sure to lead the discussion and list the mistakes I made as well as some of those decisions I stand by, even if they failed.”

After Amente finishes speaking, she says it’s much easier for her co-workers to offer up their own shortcomings in terms of the project. “People are very candid. We’ve had instances where people will openly admit they just never fully believed in what we were trying to do, so they didn’t get fully behind it and we’ve had people who literally cry at the table because they put their heart and soul into something that didn’t work out,” Amente says.

When the meeting is finished, Amente goes back to her desk and writes up a summary of what was discussed and then shares that summary with not only her co-workers but her manager as well. “I just put it out there. And I do it as quickly as I can. You don’t want things to linger. You don’t want people to over-think something that didn’t work out,” she says. “If you learn new information down the road that may have contributed to your lack of success, you can certainly learn from that; but it’s best to just rip off the Band-Aid and figure out how to heal that wound so you’re ready for the next battle.”

Amente says she also spends a lot of time on self-reflection when things don’t work out. “I need to get outside my head a bit and really think about what I could have done differently,” she says. “And then I like to do lots of reading, lots of research. I’ll look for anything and everything that relates to what we did and I try to incorporate what I’ve learned into the next project.”

Elm says Amente’s approach is perfect. “If your manager has any character or substance, they won’t judge you on what went wrong,” he says. “They’ll judge you on what you learned from the failure and how you’ll use that knowledge the next time you get an opportunity.”