Did you know that Proctor & Gamble has a “Wall of Failure” in their internal museum?
Or that Coca-Cola’s unfortunate New Coke misstep is a popular feature in their publicly-available archives?
Or that, on a more positive note, Coca-Cola was able to plumb those archives for historical information about the 1918 influenza pandemic to glean ideas for how to handle Covid?
What have you learned from your organization’s history?
When a project goes south, there are plenty of opportunities to point fingers and lay blame.
What’s often overlooked is – what can we learn? What knowledge can we bring forward to make future projects more successful?
When a project reaches a triumphant and successful end, there are plenty of celebrations.
But what’s often overlooked, again, is – what can we learn? What worked especially well, that we can bring forward to make future projects even more successful?
All change is learning. We learn how to do things differently, we discover new approaches, we blunder, we regroup, we figure things out.
And if we don’t pause to recognize what we’ve learned, we’re doomed to repeat failures – and to forget the surprises that helped create success.
Curious about learning from failed and successful change? Drop me a note through my contact form and we’ll set a time to have a conversation – not a sales pitch!