Why Post-Mortems Fuel Future Success. It’s human nature to gloss over our mistakes and shortcomings, eager to move on to the next thing. But taking time to methodically unpack why businesses or initiatives failed is one of the most beneficial (and overlooked) learning tools entrepreneurs have. Conducting unflinching “post-mortem” analyses of flops, rather than burying them, can unlock invaluable lessons to boost your future success. Here’s why and how to make business failure your secret weapon:
Studying failures may seem counterintuitive. But consider surgeons – they diligently analyze complications from operations to strengthen future medical practices and prevent recurrence. Aviation industries obsess over plane crashes to figure out how to avoid repeats.
In the startup world, we often move rapidly from one project to the next without the same rigorous examination of things that went wrong. But reflecting systematically on business failures has many advantages:
Reveals Root Causes: Look past surface symptoms to understand the systemic drivers behind demise – overlooked market conditions, deficient skills, incentive issues, faulty assumptions, etc.
Sparks Ideas for Improvement: Identify specific, actionable changes to strategies, tactics, workflows, and decisions based on learnings.
Fuels Innovation: Mining failures urge you to re-question existing ways of operating and unearth breakthrough solutions.
Builds Team Morale: Analyzing failures demystifies them, easing shame or stigma. Teams feel empowered, not discouraged.
Enhances Decision-Making: Learn which metrics, evidence, and inputs to weigh when evaluating future risk, plans, and resource allocation.
Saves Costly Repeats: Don’t relive avoidable mistakes. Nip chronic issues before they resurface.
Post-mortems transform failure from something to hide into data-driven fuel for growth.
Here are steps to methodically perform a business failure autopsy while emotions are still fresh:
1. Gather Data
Pull together quantitative data like sales figures, customer feedback, email open rates, product roadmap changes, staff turnover stats, and other metrics that capture performance over the lifespan.
Qualitative info is just as crucial – what were pivotal moments, inflection points or bad gut calls? When did momentum shift? What warning signs were ignored? Resist finger-pointing. Simply chronicle what transpired factually.
2. Reconstruct the Sequence
Map out a timeline of major events, product iterations, team composition changes, and market condition shifts – all key developments. Visualize the progression to identify cause-effect relationships. When did things pivot or decline?
Avoid claiming singular causes; failures are usually an orchestration of multiple factors over time.
3. Spot Patterns
Analyze your data timeline to detect repeat issues. Did certain triggers precede major drops consistently? Were some weaknesses recurring or not addressed?
Don’t speculate on hunches. Stick to specific trends in the data. Use graphs or charts to make insights plain.
4. Root Cause Analysis
Get to the crux of “why did this happen” by asking deeper questions:
Keep asking “why” until you reach root systemic causes rather than symptoms.
5. Draw Conclusions
Synthesize findings into key takeaways on what worked well, what underperformed expectations, where the plan erred, and which assumptions were flawed.
Catalog every lesson learned, big and small. Have team members review for blind spots.
6. Define Action Items
Finally, translate conclusions into changes to implement going forward. What will you start/stop/improve specifically based on this failed autopsy?
Set deadlines and owners for each action to ensure they launch. Track progress.
Beyond methodical analyses, certain team exercises can enrich failure reflections:
Analyzing failures may never feel fun. But leaving insights buried almost guarantees repeats. Studies show reflections boost learning retention by over 200%. Help your team see failure autopsies as opportunities to grow, not dwell. The more you deliberately mine lessons from the past, the brighter your future will shine.
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