We have all been there: our good idea bombed, failed, went kaput! And we sit in our office wondering what to do now? We pass through the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance. And still, we are left with, “Is that it?”
No! That is not it.
Instead of sticking your head under your past due bills, do this: Re-imagine the the project. What is re-imagining? According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, it is: to imagine again or anew; especially: to form a new conception of.
Here is a simple way to re-imagine. Begin by re-visiting the purpose of your project and the specific outcome that you expected it to deliver. Then look at the way you went about fulfilling on the delivering of the outcome. List the steps you took to make sure that the project would succeed. Your first go at the project failed, why?
Danger Alert: Avoid the pitfall of beating your self up newly for the failure, this is re-imagining; this is not a pity party.
Ask yourself, “What could you do differently that may make the project succeed?” Make a plan to implement those steps. Determine how long you will conduct your new experiment, and what the new measurements of success are. Make sure that your test is explicit and has a certain date to end. Usually, a week or two is long enough to tell you what worked or did not work. Do it again, making the adjustments you learned about in the last experiment. Keep on adjusting the experiment until you reach a successful outcome.
If you follow this simple way of re-imagining, you will begin to develop a muscle in creating workable solutions. You also will be engaged in the project, it will become a vehicle for your creativity instead of the end of your creativity.
Re-imagining gives you a direction to have something that you believe in become a real success. It also gives you the ability to be the leader of your business, even if your business consists of one person—you.
I would enjoy reading your comments about re-imagining. When have you re-imagined a project? What happened?
Re-Imagine the Scene…sometimes I even think we imagine failure, when it is just not the movie we were running in our heads. Those of us that are planners have movies of everything, and when the scene is different, we perceive doom and failure. When asking yourself that important question, “What could you do differently that may make the project succeed?” , it is also important to realize it was YOUR SCENE…Re-Imagine the SCENE…you may not have failed, even though you FEEL that way! Re-imagining has you get out of the grief a LOT faster!