Football quarterback relies on a "database" of failed decisions

From Sports Illustrated's Monday Morning Quarterback column. Nick Foles of the Philadelphia Eagles is having a great season, including a remarkable run with no interceptions - but he almost did throw one:

On Sunday, trying to get some insurance for a 24-21 lead with four minutes left, Foles had a 2nd-and-7 at his 34-yard line, and he faced a heavy rush. Instead of throwing it away, Foles floated one down the middle of the field into coverage. Cornerback Patrick Peterson picked it off—and there went the Foles streak. But a late flag came flying, and Tyrann Mathieu was called for holding wideout Jason Avant.

[Translation of above for people who don't follow American football - the quarterback dropped a few steps behind the line of scrimmage and looked to pass. As guys from the other team came close to tackling him for a loss of yardage, he threw the ball inadvisedly down the middle of the field, where there were lots of opposing defenders. One of them caught the ball for an interception. However, the referee called a penalty on another player for holding, and the play was negated and the interception didn't count.]

“Man, horrible throw, horrible decision,” Foles said from Philadelphia an hour after the game. “When I saw the flag and heard the call, I said, ‘Thank you God.’ I learned my lesson there. But that’s what I try to do: I build a database with decisions like that, and I learn from them. If I get that same look [defensive formation] the next time, I’ll make a different throw, or I’ll throw it away.”

Do you have a database for your decisions that don't work out, and what you'll do differently the next time you're faced with the same situation?

20 tips to deal with failure from Leadership Freak

There's nothing in this Leadership Freak post ("When Projects Fail") that you wouldn't know if you had read all the 500 or so posts on this site. On the other hand, if you don't have time to read 500 posts today, Dan Rockwell does a fantastic job of summarizing 20 lessons to use when that project goes awry. I like these tips in particular:

6. Step up to excellence not down to mediocrity. Excuses are the path to ease, insignificance, and irrelevance. “How can we be better?”

7. Pick the scab. Dig into issues optimistically and respectfully. The goal is improving next time, not blaming and putting down.

15. Believe improvement is possible.

16. Don’t assume working harder will make things better. What will you do differently, next time?

18. Explain how you’ll do better next time. Be specific. Clarity is the mother of success.

19. Put it to bed.

20. Re-vitalize momentum. Examine what happened with what’s next in mind. Create a win and celebrate.

The lessons show the balancing act we perform when managing failure. Care, but not too much. Be brutally realistic, but don't lose hope. Learn your lessons, but move on.

If it were easy, it wouldn't be that interesting to study, would it?

VC Mark Suster recalls a painful sales loss, and what he learned from it

This is the second story from Mark Suster's 2010 post "Embrace Learning: It Will Make You Stronger." Suster recalls how one of his startup companies, a collaboration software maker, lost a deal it thought was all wrapped up. I a similar experience almost 20 years ago and many of the lessons are exactly the same.

In the 2003/04 timeframe I was living in the UK and running my first company. I had been competing to win a contract at Thames Water, the largest water company in the UK. They were looking for a collaboration tool to manage all of their large water development projects. The initial contract was worth about $500,000 and the whole value of the contract would have been worth a couple of million over the years. I was working hand-in-hand with my close friend and associate Stuart Lander who was running our UK office and with one of our local sales reps.

We had initially been told that we had no chance because they had previously purchased Documentum and it would mean changing the system entirely. They had a team trained up in Documentum and we certainly had enemies from the inside. But we worked the account tirelessly for months. We helped the write out their requirements for a system. We met everybody in the organization. We had every reference client we worked with call their senior team members (we had already won a major project at Scottish Water, Anglian Water and another at a large water company in Paris, France).

There were about 8 initial contenders for the work and in the end it came down to just 3 of us. As the founder & CEO I personally went and met with as many people at Thames Water as I could. We felt this was a marquee account and one that would help us take our collaboration tool global as Thames owned assets all over the world. Winning the contract meant that we would hit our quarterly revenue figure and be in good position for our annual sales target.

And then the news came. A woman named Trish Hannon called me with the good news that we had won the project. I was to tell noone until the contract was signed. I immediately put a full team on contract management and another on drawing up an implementation plan.

DefeatI later learned one of my biggest lesson in sales. You are most vulnerable right after you have won a deal. It is when you’re competitors have nothing to lose. It’s when the people who are part of the decision making process who don’t support the decision seek ways to undermine you. That is when you potentially become complacent.

Two weeks after winning the deal and well into implementation planning we released a new version of our software. We had made the decision that we would no longer be supporting IE v 5.5 (we would support 6.0 and 7.0, which was in beta). Even Microsoft publicly said that there were security flaws with 5.5 and that people should upgrade. But Thames Water was still on version 5.5. We assumed they would take our advice and upgrade. We had discussed this with Trish.

An internal resource inside Thames Water used our upgrade and lack of 5.5 support as a way to re-open the decision. How could a company like ours be so callous as not to support their software (even one more than 4 years out of date)? Did we really have good change management procedures if we were willing to launch products without backward compatibility. And so on. They decided to re-open the competition for 3-4 more weeks. I knew THEN that we had lost. We fought hard to stay in the game.

They hired a consultant to help them with the review. They stopped allowing us to contact them directly. The momentum had shifted. Something happened and it was clear to me that this IE issues was just a smoke screen. Somebody had gotten to somebody senior in the Thames organization. It just so happened that the consultant they hired to chose a software vendor worked for a company that had owned one of our competitors. It was a tiny little collaboration company that only had a presence in the UK (and therefore couldn’t meet their international needs). And surprise, surprise the decision came back 3 weeks later than none of the preferred 3 vendors had won but rather this tiny little competitor owned by the consulting company charged with doing the review.

Outrage. Scandal. Surely inside Thames they would see it for what it was. Given that it was a public tender the chairman of our board had encouraged us to think about launching a complaint with the UK government agency in charge of such reviews. We talked with lawyers. We felt totally deflated. We decided it wasn’t worth the fight. We licked our wounds and moved on.

I am still not over that loss. I sometimes call Stuart and we recount what happened. But that loss was really important in my career. It taught me a lot of lessons. We spent enough time dissecting it to really learn.

Here are my take aways from the loss:

1. In a sales campaign you always need to call as high as you can. If you don’t, your competitors will. If you don’t know them, somebody else does. They may not overturn decision, but they sometimes do.

2. No deal is ever done until the ink is dry and the money is in your bank account. Never take your win for granted.

3. You are most vulnerable right after it has been announced that you won (I will write a separate post on this). This is the most important lesson I learned from this experience. All other lessons were sort of obvious. This one was eye-opening.

4. We in the tech world extol the virtues of lots of product releases and rapid innovation. I hear Silicon Valley firms bragging all the time about how often they release software. In the consumer world, maybe. In the corporate world this strategy is flawed. Many large clients prefer stable technology and no changes – even sometimes when there are known security flaws. When I was at Salesforce we launched a new version of our UI. We gave users the choice to upgrade or keep with the classic UI. Years later 10% of users were still on classic. Go figure.

5. In every deal where you have serious competitors there is always somebody on the inside against you. You need to find out who that is and neutralize them.

6. No matter how much your customer tells you that they love you and that they favor you it is possible they are telling other people the same thing or some variation of this. (you would have thought I would have learned this lesson in high school ;-)

7. No matter how much large clients tell you they want transparency in pricing, they always seem to fall for the same old trick. Competitors price low to get in the door and then nail them with scope control, change orders, product extension costs and other hidden items. You can try to convince them of your “pay no more once you’ve signed up” model but they fall for the other guy’s pitch every time. Low numbers are sexy. I stopped trying to win this argument and chalk it up as some sort of human condition that I can’t change (like thinking that $14.99 = $14).

8. Time is the enemy of all deals. If you have a chance to close something – don’t let it drift.

9. Losing sucks. But at least it has made me a better competitor.

VC Mark Suster learns from a failed pursuit of a venture investment

Mark Suster's "Both Sides of the Table" blog is a great resource for startups and managers. I found a 2010 post in which he outlined the positive value of losing - its ability to teach deep lessons. Here's one of the two stories he tells in the post:

Last year I lost a deal in a company that I wanted to invest in and that I thought I should have won. I was angry – mostly at myself. Rather than blame the team that I thought should have chosen me, I became reflective. They were in LA and I was in LA. They had a prominent NorCal investor already so I thought a SoCal lead would make sense – that I could help them in a more hands-on way. They had agreed!

I had lost a previous deal where the team said they liked me but didn’t know my partners well enough so I promised myself never to let that happen again.

So I organized a team dinner with all four of my partners and all three of their founders. I wanted to be sure that they knew how much all of our partners loved what they were doing with their company. I wanted to be sure that they felt they knew all of my partners well so they could see why I joined up with them in the first place – they are smart guys who have a 20-year track record of winning. 15 companies North of $1 billion exit. And they are normal, down-to-earth people as well.

After dinner on a Thursday night I thought we had the deal and that the team knew how hard I would work on their behalf if I were chosen. By Monday morning after their board meeting in NorCal I didn’t get a return phone call. I knew what this meant. Good news always comes quickly, bad news takes time to simmer. By the time I got through to the guys on Tuesday we had lost.

I knew that the, “I’m really sorry” message was coming. I embraced it with honor and didn’t give them a hard time. But I obviously asked, “Why did it happen? I need to learn for next time.”

There were two main reasons that I could distill from their kind words of solace: 1) the existing NorCal investor didn’t know me well enough & 2) the new NorCal investor had a good knowledge of and presence in China, which they believed would be critical.

I decided to put both of those issues to bed in 2010. I came several times to NorCal (where I grew up, actually) and went and met several partners from each Silicon Valley firm. I didn’t want this to happen again – that people didn’t know me. I also made several trips to New York & Boston. Next year I’m going to spend time in Seattle and Boulder in addition. I realized that it is not enough to know one partner per firm and it is not enough for only the management team to like you. VCs have a seat at the table in deciding future investors.

I also spent two weeks in China and vowed to make it back frequently. China is indelibly an important part of the future of the global technology system. Although I had lived and worked in more than 10 countries – it wasn’t good enough. I didn’t know the one that mattered most to their future. And for my own good I vowed to have relationships in China and knowledge of the local markets. I’m not looking to invest there – I’m looking to understand the trends, the people, the innovation, the regions and how China can become an integral part of any of my portfolio companies as they scale.

Former Campbell CEO Conant learns lessons from his long-ago firing

Douglas Conant, the recently-retired CEO of the Campbell Soup Company, posted on the HBR Blog Network last week about his early-career firing and what he learned from it. He describes in devastating language the feelings of that moment:

I was greeted by the Acting Vice President of Marketing and asked to step into his office. Our company had recently changed ownership and things had been a little chaotic, but I still felt good about my ability to contribute. But once I was in the Vice President's office, I learned that my position had been eliminated — and that I needed to pack up my belongings and leave the building immediately. In other words, I was fired. Ten years of my career was over in a snap. I was devastated and I was bitter. I went home to my wife, my two very small children, and my one very large mortgage... feeling every bit the victim.

But like us all, Conant possesses the ability to bounce back. Now, decades after the event, he sees how that process was a turning point, and he points to one reason - the outplacement counselor he worked with after his firing became an important mentor and teacher:

Neil was a wonderful, crusty New Englander who didn't tolerate a "victim" mentality for a minute. With Neil's guidance, losing my job became a valuable learning experience about what leadership should be. For some, these thoughts may constitute a "blinding glimpse of the obvious." But I have found them extraordinarily powerful in their simplicity.

First, I learned the power of connecting with people by being fully present — in every moment. Neil's first words to me were "How can I help?" During every one of our meetings, he listened so intently and earnestly. He wasn't trying to guide the conversation and he was not at all judgmental. His interest clearly came from a genuine desire to understand and to help. Neil was fully present in every moment, in a sincere and earnest way....

[Second,] before I was fired, I had kept my head down and on my work. As a result, I was sadly disconnected to the business world beyond the company. I felt remarkably alone.

Neil told me to build a network of people to solicit ideas and advice for my job search. Then I was to cultivate that network with the hope of identifying some job opportunities and using some of these people as my references. The time to build a network is always before you need one. It took me an extra six months to find a job because I had to build a network from scratch before I could really ramp up my search for a job.

These are powerful lessons that I've had to learn myself (much like Conant, the hard way). I wish I had read this ten years ago!

Elizabeth Sosnow: What I Learned From Getting Fired

This story is from Elizabeth Sosnow, Managing Director of BlissPR, and was first published in the BlissPR blog.

In this story, she recounts early lessons from getting fired from a summer job, and picking up a new one. [Elizabeth's dad is John Bliss, who has contributed several stories to this site.] Thanks to Elizabeth for allowing us to reprint it here.



What I Learned from Getting Fired…or, How to Start Becoming a Boss

I was fired once.

I was seventeen years old, working for a gift store in my home town. My job was to be a “jack of all trades,” from running errands to wrapping gifts to encouraging customers to make a purchase. I was speedy at errands, terrible at gift wrapping and mediocre at sales.

Meanwhile, my employer was running out of money, dodging creditors and avoiding invoices. My job began to include answering angry calls while she hid. Looking back, I can see that my boss had no time to be kind to a teenager…her professional life was falling apart.

My one bright spot that summer? My daily walk to buy a sandwich at the deli across the street. The owners were unfailingly kind to me, with a friendly hello or a warm word.

The busiest day of the summer arrived – the annual “sidewalk sale” where retailers unloaded their old inventory for low prices. My boss had me running for 12 hours straight. My high point was selling a pair of very expensive cubic zirconia earrings during the rush – my biggest sale ever.

But when the hordes cleared, she pulled me into her office and fired me on the spot. I was devastated.

After taking the weekend to lick my wounds, I realized I wanted to say goodbye to the deli owners. Somehow, they had become my friends. I just couldn’t disappear without a word, even though I was ashamed to tell them what had happened. I knew I wasn’t blameless – there are always two people involved.

I walked in to the deli, admitted what had happened…and they offered me a job on the spot. Not only that, it was at a higher salary for a shorter work day. They told me they’d always liked me, and they knew I wouldn’t let them down. I was stunned.
I worked at the deli for two summers and loved every minute. Honestly, I probably did let them down sometimes, but I’m also pretty sure they didn’t regret the job offer.
They taught me a little lesson on how to be a good employer virtually every day, including:

Set Fair Boundaries – and Stick to Them: How about the week that I strolled in 15 minutes late for four days in a row? They simply smiled and docked my pay for an hour. I was never late again.

Pay Attention to Individual Needs: The deli wasn’t always a hot bed of creativity. It was my job to draw up the “daily sandwich specials” sheet. Every day, I got more elaborate with it — more doodles, more colors, etc. They weren’t annoyed. Instead, they were patient…and only drew the line when my masterpieces started to consume more than 20 minutes of time.

You Need to Understand Who an Employee “Is,” While They Figure Out “Who They will Be:” One young male customer became increasingly interested in me. After one date, I knew he wasn’t for me. But he kept coming into the deli and I didn’t know how to handle the aggressive attention. Instead of being irritated with me, they let me hide in the back of the store one day, even though it left them short-handed up front. Maturity takes time, and people don’t “grow up” all at once, even in a terrific work environment.

Helped Me Begin to Understand Responsibility for Others: The deli had a number of refrigerated cases to hold all of the cold cuts, cheese and salads. During my second summer, I was promoted to “Manager” of the other summer employees. One of my responsibilities was to make sure that all of the doors to the cases stayed firmly shut, so the cold air stayed inside and the food stayed fresh. Well…the doors were sticky and didn’t slide shut easily. After warning me to keep an eye on it several times, my boss calmly started docking me (and only me) a quarter every time he found the door open. Simply put, I earned a higher wage than the others and therefore more was expected of me. End of story.

Now that I’m a boss myself, I try to remember the lessons that all three of those folks taught me that summer. Perhaps, in the end, it boils down to each of us understanding that the employer-employee relationship is a very much a two-way street.

What about you? What have you learned from a boss or an employee in the past? What kind of advice would you offer to a seventeen year old just starting out in the workforce?

SoundCloud founder Eric Wahlforss: "Be Even Bolder"

From an interview in The 99 Percent with Eric Wahlforss, co-founder and CTO of social audio service SoundCloud:

What's the one piece of advice you know now you would have given to your younger self when first starting out SoundCloud?

Be even bolder than we have been. Looking back, we could have moved even faster in pursuing our vision, but I think we're finally up to speed now. Then again, it's really easy to say things like that in hindsight.

[Disclosure: I write occasional articles for The 99 Percent]

New York Giants and Jeremy Lin demonstrate how to accept and learn from mistakes

I'm still basking in the afterglow surrounding the Giants' recent Super Bowl win. A Sports Illustrated article mentioned something that might have helped develop the remarkable resiliency that characterized their late season and playoff performances. Here's a brief excerpt:

During the bye week following a 4-2 start, director of player development Charles Way invited fighter pilots from Afterburner Inc., a corporate training company, to address the team about the value of "debriefing" sessions. Pilots returning from missions build trust through sessions in which they sit in a room together, stripped of name and rank; each speaks openly about mistakes he made during the mission. Players also received a copy of a book by one of the pilots, James D. Murphy, the title of which expressed the ultimate goal: Flawless Execution.

Soon Manning and Tuck, respectively, were leading offensive and defensive debriefings the day after games. Coaches were not present. Meetings lasted from 20 minutes to an hour. "I wasn't coaching anybody," Manning says. "I was just coaching myself, looking at what I needed to do better and telling everybody. Then everybody would talk about what they needed to do to improve."

Says linebacker Mathias Kiwanuka, "There was a time there when we needed every single minute of [debriefing]. It wasn't about calling people out. It was an opportunity to see everybody hold themselves accountable. The big part of why we're here is that fingers don't get pointed. These kind of teams don't come along very often."

If accountability and execution characterized New York's undefeated run from 7--7, those qualities were beacons during the Super Bowl.

This practice recalls some of Robin Ely's great research on learning among oil-platform workers and Amy Edmondson's work on hospital nursing teams, as well as Justin Menkes writing on leadership. Learning and performance are enhanced when people are unafraid to share mistakes, when they look to themselves first ("owning their missteps") instead of blaming others.

In a similar vein, here's what Knicks sensation Jeremy Lin said in his postgame interview after hitting the game-winning shot against the Toronto Raptors: "I did a horrible job on Barbosa and Calderon... Shump did an unbelievable job... I let them get into a flow early, and that's on me. He bailed me out." Very little about his good performances, a lot about what his teammates did well, and what he can improve. Here's the interview: