It seems like April Fool’s Day is as good as any to discuss deals that in retrospect feel like a fool’s errand. This month we take a look at why sometimes, it is good to look back and examine our navels.
There is a peculiar emotion that humans are subject to that drive us forward and makes it difficult to look at past failures. I’m sure the psychology majors out there could tell me why this is, but I’m more interested in what happens if we resist that aversion and for a moment or a little longer, we take a look at that initiative, acquisition, new product or whatever that failed.
Our clients ask us to come in from time-to-time when a major investment has gone off the rails and help herk it back on track. Once we are done and the trains are running smoothly again, I always want to do a post-game review and understand how we got here. While we do this navel gazing, I impose a critical ground rule to ensure positive forward progress and not something else.
No Blaming
Often the negative consequences of a major investment gone awry are prodigious. We pay dearly for these lessons, often millions. And it is precisely because we do, that we need to keep the blame game at bay. If we blame people and punish them for failing, they won’t try new things. They will only stick to what’s safe and secure, or worse leave for a business that does value innovation and development.
Also, attaching blame stimies the open discussion of what went wrong. Actions and causes are obscured to protect the individuals involved. Thus, we can’t learn from the expensive lesson we bought.
Open Eyed Review
Assisting our clients in these situations has yielded some valuable insights. First among them is all is not lost. Where there is life there is hope. Most of the time when we sit down with the thought leaders and folks on the line at our clients, we find that they are closer to a solution or success of some sort than they thought. Usually, they need to stop spinning their wheels and changing course and settle on a single course to make progress. In every case, a scorecard and visible progress chart help to keep people motivated and on-course.
During the post-game analysis, we usually find that the initial business case was flawed. Too naive, missing possible complications or too narrow in its focus, failing to take into account interdepartmental impacts or the need for cooperation from outside entities. Every major investment needs a business case. If for no other reason than to provide a basis for the scorecard that will track its progress and successful execution.
Leadership teams are often surprised by the complexity of large initiatives. As businesses grow, the size of initiatives to expand their capabilities grows. Soon, an IT project cannot be undertaken for less than a million dollars. And a failure of a million-dollar project is a much bigger deal than that of a $100,000 project. The bets get bigger. And so does the complexity of the initiatives. Eventually, any significant project cannot be held in the mind of a single individual so multiple project managers are needed and they must report to a program office capable of combining multiple projects into a single well-coordinated program to complete the initiative. Often, in post-game, firms find that they need to develop their program management resources and processes to avoid problems unearthed in early large initiative failures.
Another hallmark we often see in failed initiatives is that the business has bet the farm on a single initiative which it believes to be the way forward. And it turns out later not to be the case. An alternative to this approach comes from the world of new product development. It is to have many initiatives under evaluation and a series of stage-gates they need to pass to remain funded. In this way, the organization can kill bad ideas early and allow good ideas to continue forward and to receive the focus of the organization. We use this approach with clients that are developing new products, entering new markets, launching new businesses or sectors and evaluating potential acquisition targets.
As you can probably guess, this is just a teaser of the many kinds of lessons clients glean from the process of post-game analysis. But you should also get a sense that some really great ideas come from this process. I hope you try it soon. (But I hope even more that you won’t have a failure to analyze!)
Call To Action
When you have an initiative fail, make sure you harvest the expensive lessons you just bought:
1. Make sure the initiative can’t be salvaged by redirecting, reinvesting or repurposing the time, effort and money.
2. Bring together a mixed bag of thought leaders and front-line types to gain multiple perspectives as you analyze the effort for lessons and opportunities.
3. Don’t play the blame game, it’s very damaging.
4. Invest in the ecosystem and evolution of ideas by maintaining a portfolio of initiatives that complete for resources.
5. Invest also in the talent and processes around program and change management. This is critical especially as the organization grows.
I hope you found something to apply to your business in this MBR. Let me know either way.
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