Member-only story
Why you need to get it wrong before you can get it right
Today, I got it wrong. It was a meeting with our biggest stakeholder and sponsor. My job exists because of money from him, so presenting in front of him is a bit of a big deal.
My colleague and I presented some updates, and my colleague shared a pitch for the next steps to tackle a problem very matter-of-factly. That’s when it happened.
About 4 other stakeholders chimed in with “well, actually…”.
Instead of being embarrassed about getting something wrong, I was thrilled. Why? Because I see failure as one of the silent milestones. I don’t think there has ever been a successful project where I didn’t get something wrong in order to get it right.
You see, my colleague and I had asked most of these people many times “is this right? with supportive responses. We continued to share our plans and received crickets in response.
It took announcing something wrong in order to get the feedback we were really looking for. And that’s always how it goes.
There’s a quote (I think it’s by Tom Kelley) that states we prototype because when you put something in front of someone they won’t tell you what’s right about it, but they’ll tell you 100 things that are wrong about it.
