Falling forward

My young daughter came to the dinner table where I was working, laptop and papers spread out in front of me, and asked me to kiss her stuffed teddy bear good night. My wife came up behind her, patted her on the pajama bottoms, and told her to run upstairs, she would be right behind her. My wife rubbed the back of my neck and asked how long I was going to be working. I looked up at her with tired eyes. 

I was working on a special project that had been added at the last minute. I had spent much of the weekend on it and I still wasn’t done. “I’m going to see if I can put in a few more hours of work tonight, catch a couple hours of sleep, and then get up early and get into work before 5:30, before any of the craziness, and see how much more I can get done before my meeting with my manager,” I told her. 

She kissed me goodnight, told me that she was worried about me, and asked that I give her a call the next day to let her know how the presentation went. I considered chucking my laptop to the floor and running upstairs to be with my wife and daughter, but I knew that I had to get the work done. Instead, I put my head in my hands and wondered how I had gotten myself into this precarious position. 

Needing to say “no” — but instead saying “yes”

A few days earlier, my manager had asked my team and I to take on the last minute request. It was for one of our biggest internal clients and had several significant moving parts. My team was already slammed so I took on much of the work myself. When my manager and I spoke, I considered pushing back, but we hadn’t been working together all that long, were still feeling each other out, and I wanted him to know that he could count on me. 

Of course, I had bit off more than I could chew, and I ended up scrambling to put everything together. I had a few creative ideas, but I didn’t have enough time to flesh them out and while the plan covered the bases, it failed to break much new ground. To my way of thinking, it fell flat. 

In the final hours, I tried to cover the biggest gaps and to use an old saying that locals where I grew up used to throw around all the time, I tried to put “lipstick on a pig.” In short, I tried to cover or hide the biggest flaws. “Oh, what have I gotten myself into,” I screamed at myself on my commute into work. 

Of course, my presentation the next day went fine enough, but I was honest with my boss about where I thought the project deliverables were failing. He agreed with me, but also pointed out areas where he thought I was being too hard on the work and myself. 

An honest conversation

We talked some more about how I had gotten to this point, putting in crazy extra time to present something that even I was not in love with and chided me for not coming to him sooner. I pushed back on ways that he could communicate better and the two of us could get on the same page. 

I haven’t thought about the project in years, but it comes up every now and again. In many respects it was a failure. I failed to achieve our agreed upon results. In other respects, though, I consider it one of the biggest wins of my career. Thanks to the project, I learned much about myself, managing others, project management, working with leaders and have been sure to not make the same mistakes twice. When I see projects begin to fall off the tracks, I refer often to that project and make sure to bring in others to ensure that we’re all working toward the same goal.

Which mindset are you?

Researcher Carol Dweck has written extensively on fixed and growth mindset. A fixed mindset means you believe intelligence, talent, and other qualities are innate and unchangeable. The mindset takes the approach that you are what you are. If you’re not good at something, you typically think you will never be good at it. By contrast, a growth mindset means you believe intelligence and talent can be developed with practice and effort. People with a growth mindset tend view failure as a way to overcome challenges and setbacks. 

Dweck’s research shows that failure can be a painful experience for folks with a growth mindset, but it doesn’t internally define who they are. “It’s a problem to be faced, dealt with, and learned from.” I’ve long found the approach that we take to failure — no matter what it might be — to be fascinating. 

I write more today on failure in my story, Making a run for it, on Writing from the Heart of The Matter. In the post, I write on how I experienced a key failure while a member of my high school cross country team and how I was able to keep a growth mindset to turn a failure into a mini success. The event happened decades ago, but the idea of failing or falling forward still sticks with me today. 

What’s your fallback approach? Do you have more of a fixed mindset or do you seek out continuous learning? Does your mindset change depending on a specific situations? At work? Or home? Let me know your thoughts and perspective. 

Related Story:

Making a run for it

On The Heart of The Matter

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