Here's how you can navigate failure in IT Consulting with resilience.

You must understand your customers business needs/ objective’s; less important is the IT “ Stuff”. If you make a mistake, speak directly to the customer buyer and apologize in your first sentence. Next, commit to fix the issue on your “ dime”…step up and fix it; don’t play the blame game.

1- Embrace and Learn from Mistakes, acknowledge that failures are opportunities for growth. 2- Cultivate a Growth Mindset, adopt a positive and proactive approach. 3- Enhance Communication and Collaboration, collaborative efforts can lead to more effective solutions and help overcome obstacles. 4- Implement Contingency Plans, develop backup plans and risk mitigation strategies. 5 - Seek Support and Mentorship, seek support from colleagues, mentors, and professional networks.

1 - Be Brutally Honest with Yourself Confront the failure without excuses. Acknowledge every detail, even the painful ones, to fully understand what went wrong. This raw honesty is essential for creating a realistic path forward. 2 - Break the Problem into Manageable Parts Dissect the issue into smaller components. Analyze each piece to identify what failed and why. This approach makes the problem more manageable and reveals specific areas for improvement. 3 - Learn from the Setback View failure as a learning opportunity. Identify gaps in your knowledge or processes, and use these insights to avoid future pitfalls, turning failure into a steppingstone for growth.

I try to reframe failure as a learning opportunity. Sounds cliché, I know, but it really shifts your mindset. Instead of beating myself up, I ask, "What can I take from this?" I've learned to do a post-mortem on failed projects. What went wrong? Where did we miss the mark? It's not about pointing fingers, but finding lessons for next time. Transparency is key. If I mess up, I own it. Clients and colleagues respect honesty more than excuses. I lay out what happened and, more importantly, how I plan to fix it. I've found that having a support network is crucial. Whether it's mentors or peers, having people to talk to helps put failures in perspective. Plus, they often have great advice on how to recover.

It’s one thing to recognize the importance of analyzing outcomes to identify opportunities for improvement and incorporate process and methodology changes ahead of the next project. It’s quite another to conduct that kind of analysis rigorously. Here are some frameworks that can be effective: • Root Cause Analysis (RCA) • Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) • SWOT Analysis • Risk Analysis and Management Review • Scenario Analysis The above approaches bring slightly more rigor and apply a specific lens to the analysis than lessons learned workshops or post-mortems alone.

When a project failure occurs, large or small, and the outcome analysis is complete, it is essential to ensure that the lessons learned are shared appropriately to enable continuous improvement. Tactically, learnings that will directly benefit the current project delivery effort can be shared promptly via lunch and learns, team meetings, or group emails. More strategic matters that will benefit future client engagements should be communicated broadly at a practice-wide meeting, for example. Other avenues include incorporating them into the formal project methodology and conveying them as part of standard onboarding and level-specific training.

Failure often results in us taking it personally, thinking we are unworthy or unable to achieve the goal at hand. But it's super important to reframe any failure as a learning exercise. If you can take something away from the failure then you are better and smarter today then you were before you failed. And of course once you identify the reason for the failure don't make the same mistake twice. Failing often is part of the bumpy road leading to a successful outcome