How to make use of a failure

There's a nice post on LinkedIn by Maria Gottschalk titled "Moving Through Failure." Gottschalk's advice is similar to that of Dean Shepherd in "Lemons to Lemonade" and seen in many other posts on this site. Gottschalk usefully urges us, when reflecting on failure, to ignore external factors and focus on the things we did that contributed to the failure, and how we can act differently in the future to prevent a similar failure. And she shares her own failure story:

At one time, I worked as an internal researcher for a large organization. I was responsible for a key customer research project. After reviewing the yearly numbers, I became extremely alarmed that if strategy wasn't altered, we were bound to lose customers. I reported this information to leadership - and they were visibly shaken - but they did not shift strategy. They felt confident that they had things under control. I suspected that they didn't fully realize the levity of the situation, and unfortunatley as the year progressed, sizable customer losses followed. Ultimately, I hadn't convinced them to take action. The onus was on me. A clear failure on my part - as it was my primary role to counsel them.

I do realize that I was not in control of their chosen course of action. However, moving forward, I always make one last effort to change opinions, by meeting separately with individual stakeholders. Only, at that point am I fully satisfied that I have done my part - my "homage" to the original failure.

Despite the fact that others were truly accountable for the decision, Gottschalk showed a sense of agency by scrutinizing her role and making a concrete decision to do more the next time she was faced with a similar situation.