If we’ve learned anything from experience, it’s that most things in life never go according to plan. Despite that, most business coaches worth their salt, would tell you that making a plan before venturing into anything worthwhile is an obviously good idea.
I believe it was Benjamin Franklin who said, “By failing to plan, you are preparing to fail.” If you think about it, it simply makes sense to plan a course of action before diving headlong into it. Doing that will ensure a high probability of success.
Still, having a plan doesn’t mean things will pan out as planned. This is the reason why the ability to pivot and course-correct is important even when you have a good plan. As someone who has spent about two decades in the project management profession, course-correction is something I’ve always come to expect.
During the years when I was actively leading corporate project teams, I learned to expect the unexpected. This served me well because it allowed me to quickly overcome that initial, instinctive negative emotion that comes with unexpected changes.
When the project is eventually completed successfully, one activity I used to earnestly look forward to was “Lessons Learned.” Depending on the project, this could be an all-day activity (or longer) involving most of the people who worked on the project.
As the name implies, we would recollect what we didn’t know when the project began, what changes occurred during the project execution, and what was done to steer the project back on course. All of these would be documented so that the next project could incorporate these learnings.
Funnily enough, once we were done, we would file these documents away to never see them again! And when that next project comes around, we repeat the mistakes and then go through the entire process again.
In hindsight, this usually happened because the project manager of that next project is typically different from the one who learned the lessons of the previous one. As it is in project management, it proves true with many of our life experiences.
My conclusion: we don’t seem to learn from other people’s mistakes.
It’s almost as if we’re more comfortable with shooting ourselves in the foot just to experience the pain. It’s not enough to see and learn from another’s uncomfortable or painful experience. We want to live it! More about this in the next newsletter.
For this week, I’d love your take on a couple of things:
Firstly, why do you think we do this? Why do we forgo learning from others’ pains in favor experiencing it ourselves?
Secondly, please share any experiences you may have in this area. In what situations have you (or others you know) not learned from the experiences of others, and ended up making similar mistakes.
I’d love to get your perspective. Share it in the comments below.
Please don’t leave me hanging!