Best Stuff on Earth= Best Fail of the Year
One of my biggest failures in this year haunts me to this day, much like Wendy does the 90s and in this post let’s talk about how the legacy of Snapple and an incrementally small case study in Negotiations class, knocks on my frontal lobe at least once a day. I was a teacher in my former life, so case study means APPLY YOUR LEARNING. I will start by saying the facilitation could have been better, but I take the L. Anyways, back to MY failure, we each had different information given under different roles with one goal “make money” These were the questions.
- Do you change the product portfolio? Specifically, add product lines, subtract product lines, keep them the same? Add/Subtract/Same
- Do you add a sports drink? Yes/No
- What do you do with pricing? Raise the price, lower the price, keep the price the same? Raise/Lower/Same
- What is the image that you aspire to achieve? Provide a word or two.
- What do you do with the label? Change the label, keep the label the same? Change/Same
- Who is your spokesperson? Provide the name.
- What do you do with the ingredients? Change the ingredients, keep them the same? Change/Same
The professor required one-word answers with no clarification (teacher red flag— bruh, let’s be honest, you didn’t wanna read, engage and grade) so that already threw me for a loop.
First failure. I got lost in the sauce. For number one, I advocated for put add because the professor said do you change the product portfolio. In my head, we are changing it by adding fruit flavors and decreasing teas, the most significant change is to add, so answer, add. I didn’t learn til after the professor meant net net. And oddly enough we all agreed net net to decrease. One classmate said add flavored teas but no new fruits flavors, and cut old back teas. Another said something similar. But my focus what are we adding?
Second Failure. I advocated for change in the spokesperson, which was the answer, but did not do so aggressively. Why? It was a two day negotiation. We talked about it the first day, and I chose harmony over advocacy. In a multiparty negotiation, you have to give a little. And I was working with some people that in the past had called me aggressive, a know it all, etc. So yea, I said ya’ll can have this one.
Third failure. I didn’t speak my team’s language and was not clear on OUR intent. They kept saying things like, “I don’t think the professor meant that,” and “If you look at the case, I think they are trying to say the answer is,” “I think the professor is trying to trick us.” I kept saying what is our goal and strategy as a corporate team? . I wanted to talk business, do business, APPLY MY FUCKING LEARNING. Had someone said to me, “Kim, you want to add lines and decrease lines, the overall change in the portfolio would be a decrease because we are reducing the production capacity,” I would have been more receptive than “the paper says I am a Production specialist and don’t want to so I don’t think we should.” I put everyone’s role position on a table, and yea majority rules with 7 roles. The answers were clear as day, but I didn’t care; I was focused on learning from the process and not the product.
We got 4 out of 7 right.
Tips to Prevent Failure
- Ask for help, clarification, or extended understanding early and always. I didn’t say often cause that depends on a lot of factors. But that is it, it’s that simple, no paragraph needed.
2. Be vulnerable and manage that vulnerability. Brené Brown describes vulnerability as “uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure,” and “being brave is feeling scared or awkward, accepting those feelings, and moving forward anyway.” I lean into uncertainty; growing up in chaos makes me crave it. Funny enough, I wasn’t worried about the grade. I was willing to risk it all. For me, it was the emotional exposure that presented a problem. At the moment, I was aware of how I felt being on a team with these people. I was worried about being myself because I was worried about how it would be perceived. I have been told my red flag is I am uncompromising, cold, and unyielding. Now I could have said blahzé blahzé, but I should have had a conversation with myself and been vulnerable with myself. So often, we blaze down the path of I am a boss ass bitch and move out of step with ourselves and on top of others. Don’t get me wrong, I’m going to be me, but I can also be considerate. I can be more self-aware of how I feel in those moments. And if you are worried about perceptions, manage how it hits. Look at Beyonce. She could be vulnerable with all of us in Lemonade, BUT, and I mean big but, she manages that vulnerability to the point that we don’t even care that Jay cheated. We focus on the bravery, candor, and beauty of it all. In the face of failure, recognize we bring something to every table we come to. When you feel emotionally exposed, uncertain, or recognize a risk focus on how you feel, how you want to act, so you don’t react—reactions are messy, and move with informed intent.
3. Establish your why (and in teams get everyone’s in alignment). Don’t get lost in the sauce. I can’t tell you how often people tell me, “We are all a team!” Honey that is not enough. I don’t know what we are playing for or towards in those five little words. Have you ever been in a breakup or in the middle of a relationship and started to think, “why are we doing this ?” That is a genuine question that you shouldn’t just brush off. When I am in relationships, I sit down every month and ask myself, “are we still doing this,” and mentally and sometimes physically write down why. I feel like most of us catch ourselves in the middle of a failure and instead of asking why am I doing this, ask ourselves how do I get to the end of this. Now I am not telling you to not manage risk to cushion the fall. I am telling you that when you feel it, instead of asking how ask yourself why to get some clarity. Clarity is a hell of a cushion.
The flags, fear of failure, and unfixing mindsets
Get yourself some good friends. They make it easier to start building up your toolkit to encounter failure in the future. My buddies and I call them red flags and green flags; you play enough, and you start to realize your red flags are often your green flags. Like I said early, my red flag is I am uncompromising, intense, intolerant of the indolent, and I am intimidating. Now let me pause to say if you are like me and get intimidating as a flag, take it with a grain of salt. “Intimidating” is caused by other people’s fears of the unknown or differences. My green flags, I am efficient, provide an eagle eye perspective, hold my people and projects to a high standard, and have an unapologetic authenticity. The same reason I succeed is often the same reason I fail.
Now I will be honest ya’ll, I don’t fear failure. I don’t think you do either. You just want to avoid feeling disappointed, being disappointed, or disappointing others. It’s the worst. We all have that screw-up in the family, and you ask yourself how do they feel so unbothered by failure. It’s cause they don’t feel disappointed and fuck up and say fuck it. Now don’t do that. But do practice feeling those feelings and sorting through them. Stop saying it’ll be fine. Feel your feelings.
I am terrified of starting my new job only cause I don’t want to disappoint my family, future colleagues, clients, or myself and because it is “intimidating”, an unknown unknown as Samuel Jackson would say. But when that “fear of failure” creeps in, I not only talk to myself about how I am qualified, awesome, creative, etc. I prepare to prevent failure. I look at each of those feelings, find the fact, and how I can avoid that happening. Whether that be fitness classes, Linkedin learning, tea every day, whatever. And most importantly, talk to me about how IF I do fail, that doesn’t define me, how I am strong enough to recover and intelligent enough to grow from it. That disappointing things aren’t a death sentence. The people that I am most afraid of disappointing, more importantly, want to see me win. Think about that, someone cares about you that much. You care about you that much. So lead with love. What would you tell someone you love, who told you they were afraid of failure. Now tell that to yourself. It always brings me back.
Classroom to Corporate 