Mistakes? Reevaluate & Learn

I was reading The Times of India, Mumbai edition, yesterday, when a headline caught my eye – "I walked into the CEO's room to demand a role." It was an article by Sujit John and Shilpa Phadnis, talking about Sangita Singh who is the senior VP and head of healthcare and life sciences vertical at Wipro. The article basically talked about how she had got her job and then one day, walked into the then CEO Vivek Paul's California office and quite literally told him that she would like to head the IT company's marketing division. At that point, he had never seen her before; she didn't even know where his office was. His first reaction on seeing her was to say that he was busy. But she hung around and he finally called her in and when she told him what she could do, he said, "Give me a business plan," thinking that it wouldn't happen. But she says, "I went back to him with a business plan." They decided that they would take a chance with her and three weeks after that presentation, the job was hers.

 

Sangita Singh, as you know, has risen in the ranks in Wipro from that point on, to now being senior VP. She finished by giving three things that were important in her life and I thought that it made interesting reading. The three things, she says were:

I've learnt always to learn from my failures. My failures have been my biggest university.

I go out and look for anybody and everybody who can coach me on the facets that I am not good at, or even if I'm good, how to make them sharper.

I also observe people who are good role models, and these could even be my subordinates, or outsiders, but I observe them and see what I can learn from them.

 

These are valuable lessons for us, even on this call, as we look at our own lives and the things that we are doing and ask the question, "How are we moving through life? How are we doing in our spheres of work and life itself? Are these three areas important in our lives? How do we look at failures? Do we take the time to create opportunities? I love the way that she walked into the CEO's room and told him what she could do. Sometimes we allow life to just take us down a path. We go where the wind blows, we don't bother to do anything else and if an opportunity presents itself, we take it. But here's a case where you can create your own opportunity. I thought to myself – that's something that we ought to consider from time to time. How can we take the oars of our lives and say, "I want to create a path? I'm not going to let the future mold me. I'm going to mold the future." That's a valuable point for us.

 

Then we need to look at failures in our lives. How do we learn from failures? Are there lessons that we can pull? Dr. Guy Winch, writing in the Huff Post, says, "There are 4 keys to learning from failure. It has to do with reevaluating:

·       Reevaluate your planning.

·       Reevaluate your preparation.

·       Reevaluate your execution.

·       Focus on variables in your control.

 

Sometimes we just throw the baby out with the bathwater and say, "I've failed in that," and throw everything out. We don't take the time to look at it and say, "There may be some things I can learn from this." So you go back to the planning stage, then go back and see whether you prepared well for it. Then, did you execute well? Sometimes failure can make us feel passive and helpless. We think that, despite trying, our best efforts were not sufficient. But we need to look at some of the variables in our control and say that these are things that we can change. There are things that we couldn't change, but these are things that I could. What more could I do? We would then be able to bring those changes in.

 

I love the Andon cord that is found in Toyota's assembly lines. In most assembly lines, there's a cord that you can pull to stop a production in process if you see a mistake. Andon cord in Toyota assembly line is something that every worker is pushed to pull at the slightest notice of something wrong. They will not give their piece to the next person unless it is right. So, when the Andon cord is pulled, if it is not fixed in a minute, the entire production comes to a stop and they will fix the problem.

 

That's a good thing for us too, to have an Andon cord in our lives, as we look at the things that are happening, even before they begin to be failures in our lives, we are able to reassess and maybe get things on track.

 

The second thing she mentioned was that she loves to be coached by somebody. It was interesting! I was looking at a recent survey that was done out of Stanford and the Miles Group. In it they found that "Lonely at the top" is still so true. The higher you go, the lonelier it gets. David Larcker, who led the research team says, "What's interesting is that nearly 100% of the CEOs in the survey responded that they actually enjoy the process of receiving coaching and leadership advice. Yet only 66%, two thirds of them, receive leadership advice." Stephen Miles, the CEO of the Miles Group said, "Even the best-of-the-best CEOs have their blind spots and can dramatically improve their performance with an outside perspective weighing in." Do we have people around us who can speak into our lives, who can give us a different perspective? Somebody not really connected with the things we are doing, but whom we can go to and talk to and get their counsel.

 

Thirdly, she said, "I look for role models." Look for people who are good, doing well, who have lived lives of integrity and honesty and have done well for themselves and have touched lives all around them. When you think of such people, you think of Dr. Abdul Kalam and Tendulkar, people who have come from humble beginnings but have made it big because they were willing to do the hard work to get there. Dr. Abdul Kalam would always say, "Dream, dream, dream; then translate your dreams into thoughts and then your thoughts into actions."

 

Good word for us, as we look at where we are today, what we are doing today. "Am I on a good trajectory? Am I just going through the motions? Have I lost zeal and enthusiasm?"

 

I was reading about Vivek Paul, the CEO to whom Sangita Singh went. When he got on board, his main objective was to take Wipro from 491 million to a 4 billion company in 4 years. An ambitious goal! When he had taken it to great heights, at some point he went in and said, "I sense a restlessness. I'm not challenged enough. I've got to leave." And he left. Sometimes we need to look at our own lives and see whether we are restless. "Am I in this place for too long? Have I lost that challenge? Am I just going through the motions? Am I just letting the wind steer me? Do I need to take charge? Do I need to create an opportunity so that I can shape the future?" then we need to look at our own lives and say, "Have I learnt from the mistakes of the past?" sometimes it's easier to just put the mistake down, it's demoralizing and discouraging. There's disappointment and embarrassment and hopelessness. But have we learnt from those mistakes?

 

Finally I just want to challenge you.  Pull the Andon cord when you have to. Press 'Pause' in your life. Stop what you are doing for a second and see whether you need to make any changes, whether you are on a path that is going to fail or not bring out the best in you. Cull the data; analyze the data and then incorporate the data. Sometimes that's easier said than done. Sometimes we don't have the wherewithal to help us to do all of those things. But words from Scripture encourage us. Psalm 3 says, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding and he will make your path straight." A good word for us. Take all that we have around and then go to the Almighty God and say, "You make sense of this for me and then lead me on the path that will help me to optimize who I am," because He created us to be all that we can be.

 

I hope that it's a good word for you this morning as you look at your own life and I look at mine. We create opportunities, learn from our life lessons, mistakes and don't be afraid to pull the Andon cord when you have to.

 

Let me pray with you. Almighty God, help us to see the world and the things around us through Your eyes, to look at the opportunities that are out there and create them. Help us also to look at our past, at the mistakes we've made, not to dwell on them, to learn from them and apply them and move on, wiser for having done it and then, never to be afraid to press 'Pause' in our lives and ask the question, "Am I doing what I'm supposed to be doing? Am I doing it right? Is this what I should be doing?" in all of this, would you give us your wisdom. Would you lead us on a wonderfully straight path? We ask this in Your name, Lord Jesus. Amen.

 

•       Sujit John & Shilpa Phadnis, "I walked into the CEO's room to demand a role."http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/software-services/I-walked-into-CEOs-room-to-demand-a-role-Wipros-Sangita-Singh/articleshow/26716518.cms

•       Dr. Guy Winch, "The 4 Keys to Learning from Failure." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/guy-winch-phd/learning-from-failure_b_4037147.html

•       David F. Larcker & Stephen Miles, 2013 Executive Coaching Survey, http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/cldr/research/surveys/coaching.html.

•       Amy C. Edmondson, "Strategies for learning from Failure," http://hbr.org/2011/04/strategies-for-learning-from-failure/ar/2 

•       Toyota's Andon cord.

•       Psalm 3:5-6, "Trust in the Lord..."