Pre-emptive DFWVF post, since it’s almost Friday and things are kindda light so I wanted to share something different with you:

Those who don’t learn from their mistakes are bound to repeat them.

This is the time of the year that people set out to make big new years resolutions, most of the time opting for drastic changes to their behavior patterns stretching years if not decades.

Try something different this year. Instead of looking forward and making changes, look back at the mistakes you did this year. Is there something you did this year that you regreted? Did you lose a deal over something trivial that could have gone either way? Did you offend or hurt someone with your actions or words? Is there any little thing you could have done all year long that would have made 2007 a spectacular year for you? Is there anything you ignored that could use more attention?

Note: This is going to be painful, not for the weak heart..

Admitting your mistakes to yourself can be gut wrenching. Not only does it relive some of the most negative things about who you are and what you did, but it also brings the feelings of regret, anger, (if you’re not over it even vengence) and hopefully humility. But now you are older, hopefully wiser and can look at the events with a little more clarity.

To make this easier, here are a few tips:

1. Make it simple – everything that went well is a success, everything that went wrong is a mistake.
2. Make it relevant – of the above mistakes, are there any that you would repeat?
3. Make it slim – narrow down the mistakes to ten that you feel ought to be addressed in the first two months of 2008.

The first step is the giant list of everything that could have gone better. The second step is a filtering process, making sure that the mistakes are indeed mistakes and not just business decisions that affected you negatively in the short run. For example, while it may seem like a mistake to kill a product line that was profitable in the short term it may be a good decision if it opened up resources for a more profitable project with a longer payout term. Finally, be realistic – you’re only going to be able to focus on this stuff for a month or two before you start making new mistakes.

Example: Lost clients

Lost clients are both the most difficult event to experience and the easiest mistake to make, that is under your control that is. So start there. Take a look at the accounts you lost this year, opportunities that were missed.

1. Find out why the client left you. Was it your fault, was it their fault, was it that they perceived it to be your fault?
2. Find out if its really a mistake. Losing a low profitability client that is a drain on support resources can be a net positive. Holding on to a bad client that is badmouthing you to the potential prospects is worse than getting rid of their client and the problems they cause your reputation.
3. If it was a mistake, find out what you did wrong.
4. When you find out what you did wrong, find a way to fix it. (customer will almost always tell you what actually caused #2)
5. Fix it, document it, make it a part of the process.

Step five is far longer than I made it seem and there is a secret twist to it. There is what you think happened, and then there is what your client thinks happened. You probably spent hours trying to make it right for the client, pulled an all-nighter on a support call with a vendor, comped half the support cost and still got dumped. Why? Because the client lost confidence in your ability to handle the problem after it wasn’t fixed immediately.

That calls for a company policy of notifying the customer within the hour of the extent of the problem, possible charges, different resolution steps, counseling/resolution steps to be mentioned in the future, etc.

Remember, policies are set after you realize you suck and you messed up. They also come as a definition outside of the logical loop, which means: We have policies because we didn’t reason through our rules correctly.

Take a day

This can take a whole day to put together and is best done somewhere comfortable where you can do nothing about fixing it. I urge you to do this especially if you’re a geek. The first problem you spot you’ll try to fix, right there and then, which is the wrong way to do it. The best way to do it is to get all your mistakes on the paper, meet with your team (or if you’re one man shop) or trusted peer and review them. Get someone elses input. Call some customers and tell them you’re considering doing something new to improve your service. Run it by a competitor and ask them what they are doing?

Finally: Act. Learn from your mistakes before you have a chance to repeat them. Define a short term strategy and a long term strategy – sometimes its easier to quickly patch the problem areas than to prolong the issues in order to get it perfect. Start something today, make a small dent in the problem you are facing and put a one hour block each week to continue chipping at the iceberg of problems. No big mistake gets fixed in a day. Take small steps. Process & strategy are long term plays, they take a lot of molding, tuning, tweaking, modifying and work – but they all start with just a little tiny step.

This weekend is a perfect time to take that first step.

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