#5 in our series of interviews with successful entrepreneurs in which they talk about the mistakes that helped shape their careers. Our guest is Monica Gould, who founded her business, Strategic Consulting Partners, after a successful career at MCI, and has sustained it for more than 10 years.
Monica, like so many of the entrepreneurs I’ve talked to, is very candid and self-reflective, and willing to talk about mistakes, to teach others and to ensure they themselves learn from them. I was struck by Monica’s sense of humor when she discussed the cobbler’s kids dilemma – while she helped companies improve their planning she tended to neglect planning for her own business (something I’ve experienced myself). I’m sure you’ll enjoy the interview.
0:30 How she got started
11:10 An early mistake…the “we can help you with anything” brand
13:30 Consequences of a consultant losing focus
15:15 A more recent mistake: how long to try to break into a new market?
17:10 “Time is your biggest commodity”
18:50 A difficult situation with a subcontractor
23:45 A final thought on planning…
I learned of this video of Randy Nelson, dean of Pixar University, from Garr Reynolds’ Presentation Zen blog. Garr points out many interesting facets of Randy’s presentation, but I was struck by the initial message in the talk, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot the past few days.
Randy says this (all in the first 1:30 of the video):
Two core principles of improv have always guided us. The first is: Accept every offer. If an improviser says to you, “It’s raining a lot in here today,” you don’t say, “Raining in here?” You say, “That’s why they gave us umbrellas.” It’s an offer. You don’t know where it’s going to go, but the guarantee you have: if you don’t accept that offer, it’s going nowhere. You’ve got a sure thing on the one hand: dead end. Or you have a possibility on the other.
The other principle is: make your partner look good. What a great thing. So you know on a team that anything anybody says to you, you’re going to get a chance to “plus” that, you’re going to get a chance to have that be on the table. And they’re going to try to make you look good, not make you look bad.
At Pixar, what we mean by “plussing” is this. You take a piece of work, you take something you’re working on collaboratively, and when it’s given to you, you don’t judge it. You don’t go, “Oooh, this is pretty good; this is what I’m going to do to make it better.” Or, “This isn’t so good, this is what I’m going to do to fix it.” You say: “Here is where I’m starting. What can I do with this? …How do I accept the offer and make my partner look good?”
This made me think of how I learned to collaborate, starting in engineering school and continuing as a programmer and software designer. Collaboration in that environment meant, largely, fighting over ideas. This is how we should design a data structure. We should design a home screen this way. It was a combination of thinking and persuasion. Whoever had a good idea and could persuade the others in the group of its merits, would win the argument.
In my mind, these weren’t destructive arguments. They were, in fact, thrilling. You won some, you lost some, and the results were often really cool.
But when I moved into management this method didn’t work so well. It doesn’t help quiet people contribute to ideas. It’s a peer method and doesn’t work well in a hierarchy. It can divide people. It can be intimidating.
So I’ve been thinking about how to apply the improv model to more situations. When someone comes to me with an idea, how can I, rather than dismissing it initially (which I am prone to do), “accept the offer”? And how can I use my capabilities, not to critique the idea, but instead to make my partner look good?
Simms recounts an experience hosting a panel in which he asked the speakers to relate stories of failures they suffered through. He was amazed at how willing the panelists were to discuss their mistakes, and how much they had learned as a result. He also encourages readers to be more willing to share their own mistakes. I heartily agree.
By the way, when reading “The Power of Positive Failure,” be sure to read the comments. There are some great mistake stories there. And if you want to read/hear/see more mistake stories, visit The Mistake Bank’s temporary home (http://mistakebank.com), which will bring up a set of posts from my work in gathering and learning from mistake stories. (You’ll find plenty of my own stories in there, believe me.)
I’m still a bit in awe of the sequence of events that took place in Major League Baseball two weeks ago. Armando Galarraga, a journeyman pitcher for the Detroit Tigers, retired the first 26 batters in a row, coming within one out of the twenty-first perfect game in the 125+ year history of Major League Baseball. The next batter hit a slow ground ball to the first baseman, who threw to Galarraga covering first, the ball appearing to arrive before the batter’s foot reached the base.
Except the umpire, Jim Joyce, emphatically called the runner safe. No perfect game. Innumerable replays that night and the next day confirmed that the runner, in fact, should have been called out. Galarraga was robbed, and he had every right to be incensed. His shot at immortality had been taken away by a bad call. What a crazy turn of events.
How much easier would it have been for Joyce to insist that he saw what he saw? How understandable would it be that Galarraga hold a grudge rather than forgive the person whose mistake cost him his name in the record books? Yet it is to these two men’s everlasting credit that they took the difficult path, the thoughtful path, and as such they taught us much more than perfection could have.
Welcome to the first in a series of podcasts in which we explore learning from mistakes with successful entrepreneurs. First up, John Bliss, founder of Bliss PR, discusses starting out working for the family business, then going out on his own, and what he learned along the way.
0:45 A brief history of Bliss PR
4:35 When you’re starting out, you’ll take any business you have
6:55 A mistake – sharing equity with a business partner
10:00 Another mistake – losing focus
12:20 A few hiring mistakes
15:30 Going downmarket in bad times
17:15 Learning from mistakes my dad made
19:40 “It’s a ‘we’ business”
(Thanks to John, and also to Elizabeth Sosnow for connecting us.)
In the April issue, he muses over “Why Businesses Don’t Experiment.” Naturally (perhaps I should say “Predictably“), he looks at behavioral reasons–companies seeking to avoid creating discriminatory situations (i.e., being unfair), or preference for action over insight leading to reliance on expert opinion–”Do this.”
There’s probably some pretty rational fear at work, too: the fear of making a career-limiting mistake. Relying on others helps to distance us from situations that don’t turn out right.
I experienced one more reason. I was in a large meeting with a client in which they were discussing whether certain actions by their staff were impacting revenue.
It was a plausible hypothesis, but it was a volatile moment in the industry & there could have been many factors contributing to the revenue loss.
Plus, even if the staff actions were the cause, what impact would changes make? What side effects would ensue?
It seemed to me a situation ripe for an experimental approach. But it was not to be. Action was needed–the shortfalls amounted to millions of dollars. “Come up with a plan by next week & start rolling it out.”
So, another impediment to experimentation: time pressure, real or perceived. We can’t wait for the results of an experiment; we need to act.
Since that experience, I’ve been thinking about what I can do to make a better case to my clients for experimentation. One requirement, I think, is to detect problems earlier, to buy a little time to put a mechanism in place to measure the effectiveness & side effects of a change.
Are there other steps to take to make experimenting easier?
I posted the following this morning as a comment to Michael Schrage’s HBR post entitled, “The Failure of Failure“:
Michael, you bring up some very provocative points in this piece.
One issue with disasters as learning events is that the deep level of focus on the exact sequence of events, while it performs a useful service (explaining the unexplainable & contributing to closure on behalf of victims & loved ones), is not that helpful for ongoing learning.
A disaster (brutal summary coming) is a chain of unlikely events occuring in sequence and causing a clearly terrible outcome.
The opposite scenario also occurs, with similar frequency–we call it a rousing success (exhibit A: Microsoft in the 1990s).
The issue with both scenarios with respect to learning is this: knowing the precise chain of actions & avoiding it (in the disaster case) or replicating it (in the MS case) actually obscures the much larger number of more basic lessons that help prevent failure or contribute to success.
For those reasons I prefer to look to mistakes rather than failures as learning situations. Mistakes are things people do that, upon reflection, they would do differently, given the chance.
Mistakes occur amid failure and success (& even in everyday plugging along). They don’t have the high profile of “failures,” yet the lessons can be more fundamental & useful. Mistake learning scales up & down–from ground level to the executive suite. And mistakes are ubiquitous. We all make them & can learn from them.
So, I’d propose this. Let’s shift the focus from learning from failure to learning from mistakes. We’ll all be a lot better off.
You may remember my project The Mistake Bank. It’s on hiatus now (isn’t that what broken-up bands say?), and someday soon I’ll be putting up a post on what I learned from that project. (Thanking Cynthia Kurtz for that idea.)
In the meantime, people are still screwing up and, thankfully, learning from those experiences. Most recently there was this post from Scott Berkun: “My Biggest Mistakes.”
Scott, in addition to being a great speaker and blogger, is a first-class mistake learner. His post “How to Learn From Your Mistakes” was an early entry in the Mistake Bank. It’s gratifying to see that he still appreciates the value of reflecting on his past actions, and retains the sense of humor that allows him to do so.
Each year we’ve narrowed down the Harvard Business Review list of 20 Breakthrough Ideas to a manageable five. For 2010, the magazine has done half our work for us; in the Jan-Feb issue, they present only 10 ideas. Here are the best of them:
1. “What Really Motivates Workers,” Theresa Amabile & Steven Kramer. Amabile & Kramer continue their fascinating diary study (see this earlier post discussing Amabile & Kramer’s work on creativity) & discover a key hidden link to worker motiyvation: the desire to see & understand their own progress toward a goal. Perhaps feedback (see this related post, and be sure to read the comments) is important after all? (There’s a similar sentiment behind one of last year’s breakthrough ideas, “The Gamer Disposition” – gamers need to know where they stand in relation to their goal.)
2. “The Technology That Can Revolutionize Heath Care,” Ronald Dixon. Electronic Medical Records are fine, but how about enabling more virtual contact between doctor & patient? Increasing such contacts can reduce expensive office visits & nip potentially-serious problems in the bud.
3. “What The Financial Sector Should Borrow,” Lawrence Candell. The government employs nonprofit research centers like Lincoln Labs & MITRE to provide guidance on military innovations. A parallel effort focused on the financial market would yield better insight & decisionmaking when it comes to regulating markets & financial instruments.
4. “A Market Solution For Achieving ‘Green,’” Jack Hidary. Municipalities can tap the power of the bond markets to finance environmental building retrofits. Borrowers are assessed increased property taxes to pay off their loans. Developers & municipalities win: property values rise & reduced utility costs exceed the tax increases immediately.
5. “Hacking Work,” Bill Jensen & Josh Klein. Seek out the “benevolent” rule-breakers in your company, & instead of crucifying them, study what they do & determine whether their workarounds can improve your business. [I haven't worked with a company yet that is ready to take this one on.]
(Disclosure: Jack Hidary invested in a customer of my former employer and I met him once. I’d be stunned if he had any recollection of that meeting.)
Our sons (8 and 6 years old) want to be video game designers when they grow up. We’ll download Kodu, and perhaps they can get a head start on that starting, like, tomorrow!
You can download the Kodu PC development platform from a link in this Kodu blog post.
#5 in our series of interviews with successful entrepreneurs in which they talk about the mistakes that helped shape their careers. Our guest is Monica Gould, who founded her business, Strategic Consulting Partners, after a successful career at MCI, and has sustained it for more than 10 years. 
My wife pointed out 
