{"id":12550,"date":"2014-10-28T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-10-28T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/post\/truly-ok-fail-bridging-gap-project-execution-financial-management\/"},"modified":"2022-01-03T15:26:46","modified_gmt":"2022-01-03T20:26:46","slug":"truly-ok-fail-bridging-gap-project-execution-financial-management","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/blog\/truly-ok-fail-bridging-gap-project-execution-financial-management\/","title":{"rendered":"Is It Truly OK to Fail? Bridging the Gap Between Project Execution and Financial Management"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why the right failure, failure you can learn and build from, should be supported in the pursuit of progress.<\/h2>\n

A notion I keep reading about and hearing at IT industry events is that failure, in service of achieving objectives, is OK. <\/em>In certain cases, such as in the pursuit of innovation, failure is encouraged, because logic and experience tell us we can\u2019t expect to know everything from the start and we will glean valuable insights from failure. Terms such as \u201cfail fast\u201d and \u201citerate and adapt\u201d in the IT world are almost clich\u00e9 today.<\/p>\n

I agree in the virtue of failure as part of the pursuit of excellence. Because we learn from our failures, it makes sense to include failure as part of the equation for execution on objectives. But here\u2019s the rub – while it\u2019s clearly part of the equation related to project execution, allowing and accounting<\/em> for failure has not gained a foothold as part of the equation in project finance.<\/p>\n

I was recently at a CFO technology roundtable in Boston where the idea of allowing for failures in IT initiative delivery was mentioned more than once. For example, because Big Data is a relatively new competency, experimentation (trial and error) often means that firms start in the wrong place, such as targeting analysis before the data set has been defined and effectively architected. CFOs, for their part, are expected to be efficient and never waste a dollar, if at all possible. Our finance brothers and sisters are working without a net, so to speak. I\u2019m sure they would find it more than a challenge to share the story with their C-suite peers that, \u201cOur discretionary technology budget is 20% over forecast because we failed, and that\u2019s OK.\u201d Colleagues around the table would be shooting daggers with their eyes and may be wondering if the messenger had lost their marbles. Yet, it\u2019s exactly the message that I believe needs to be delivered, assuming there are meaningful learnings and growth in execution that come from that failure.<\/p>\n

Over the decades in IT, frameworks and best practices have been developed, countless books have been published and the IT discipline has evolved. Despite all of this, projects in today\u2019s world continue to fail by some serious measures<\/a>.\u00a0Why? Because projects are difficult to deliver. Team dynamics, location and individual personalities, along with complex technology, lofty objectives and tight timelines, make project delivery challenging. I\u2019d hazard a guess that most firms live somewhere between \u201cso-so\u201d and \u201cadept\u201d on the Success Spectrum (above) and I\u2019m sure we all fall short of \u201cperfection.\u201d Maybe I\u2019m the only one not in on the joke. But assuming I\u2019m not, I feel that the right to fail is often more words than actions. It sounds righteous in a speech or as part of an event panelist response, but the words are empty because very few who hold leadership roles have built to bridge connecting execution expectations to financial expectations. I submit it\u2019s time to build some measure of failure into projects\u2019 financial expectations.<\/p>\n

Of course, every firm\u2019s leadership team is free to chart the course of their organization. My goal is not to say that every firm needs to adopt the notion of allowing for failure in execution. But when it comes to project delivery, since often times we are blind to many variables, the right failure, which you can learn and build from, should continue to be encouraged in the pursuit of progress. This idea needs to be carried throughout the entire organization to reap the real benefits of the virtue of failure. That includes accounting for failure in project finance. Establishing exactly how to account for failure within a firm should be based on some aspects of how the firm operates. But some simple ingredients may include:<\/p>\n