The Post Mortem–Creating Life From Death

Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be. - John Wooden

It's fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure. - Bill Gates

Now that the municipal elections are over in Calgary, there is still an important task remaining for those committed to continuing their political career.

It is the uncomfortable and often overlooked task of conducting a post mortem to understand why they won (or lost) and to understand what can be done to at least maintain the result in the future (for those who won) or to improve their result, for those who lost or those who won but face tougher competition moving forward.

There is one difficulty in participating in a useful post mortem.

While it takes courage, perseverance, confidence and audacity (in addition to sharp data, strategy and tactics) to win an election (or any competition for that matter), it takes an additional skill to analyze where things went wrong.

It is a skill that is not as common as it used to be and is often much harder to develop.

It is the skill of humility.

When I look at campaigns that went wrong, such as Calgary Ward 12 candidate Stephanie Kusie, it becomes clear what happened.  Obvious hints exist in my posts Is Calgary’s Crime Rate Out of Control? and The Vatican Effect–Attracting the Undesirable.

The challenge with post mortems is that while it is easy as the objective observer to point out where things went wrong, it is a pointless exercise if the dialog is one-way.  The lessons don’t “stick” unless the person who needs to learn them accepts the observations, learns from them as well as from their own self-analysis and invites a personal transformation to take place as a result.

People who believe that they can overcome anything with positive affirmations while ignoring the lessons of Life merely end up learning …….

When post mortem questions are asked that sting or hurt, such questions are inviting the “seeker” to explore the subject deeper.  The pain tells the seeker “There is a valuable lesson contained within – keep moving towards the source of the pain”.  To move towards the source of the pain and to embrace it allows powerful lessons to be burned indelibly upon one’s Soul.

Those who do so later point to past stumbles as powerful, transformational moments on the road to success.

Those who believe they can brazen through Life while ignoring the lessons offered often find that they keep repeating their mistakes, burning the lives of others as well as their own.

Do you have the humility to examine the difficult moments in your Life, to identify corrective actions and to be able to answer the questions “why?” and “how do I know?” in regards to how well those corrective actions will produce better results in the future?

Are you sure?

How do you know?

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Addendum

I became very critical of Ms. Kusie’s campaign during the Calgary election.  My requests for clarity, for a candidate to answer the questions of “why” and “how do you know” when it comes to explaining election intentions were responded to with emotion, lack of data and attempts at intimidation by some members of her campaign team.  Some of those people felt that it was better to create antagonists amongst the electorate instead of alliances. 

If you’re going to choose enemies over friends, at least know who you are provoking before proceeding.

Who knows – maybe some day, Ms. Kusie will sweep an election at the municipal, provincial or federal level if she takes the opportunity to learn from this campaign.  It takes courage to step out into the public space and for that, I applaud Ms. Kusie.  Few people have such courage.

And besides, most of us can look back on our lives, look at mistakes that we’ve made and shake our head, reliving memories that are so bizarre that we feel like we are looking upon the Life of someone else and not at our own mistakes.

Few of us were perfect then.

Few of us are perfect now.

Whether we choose to learn from our mistakes is what determines if we are moving closer to perfection or further away from it.

The Vatican Effect–Attracting the Undesirable

The Vatican Effect (aka the Streisand Effect):

The more noise someone makes trying to hide or refute something, the more Life they give it, requiring a closer investigation as a result.

As a student of the human experience, I am always fascinated by the ways we strive for success as well as the ways we strive to create complexity (or even failure) in our lives.

The name of the Vatican Effect originates from the process by which Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code” went from obscurity to sensation practically overnight.  It would probably have  died in obscurity had the Vatican not set up a committee to investigate and stymie the potential popularity of the book.  Of course many people wanted to see why the Vatican would do such a thing and the rest is history regarding Dan Brown’s success.

In striving to create success or to avoid creating failure, we need to be careful that we don’t inadvertently create our own version of the Vatican Effect.

Some fun examples from this week.

Yesterday, I wrote a blog post, The Power of the Four-Poster Interview, where I mused about a Minister in the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador and potential conflict of interest allegations with an alleged lover of hers.

Naturally a blog post with such controversial subject matter will attract a lot of attention.  However, in observing how the blog post was being shared, there were as many people who were upset by it as there were who supported it.

Of course in sharing it, their anger was amplified as readership of the blog post grew very quickly, making it instantly one of my top blog posts of the week.

So while some people complained about how quickly the blog post was gaining popularity, they were in fact equally responsible for its rapid distribution.

No rain drop believes it is responsible for the flood

A couple of weeks ago, in making what I thought were benign musings about a local election campaign in Calgary, Alberta, I wrote Is Calgary’s Crime Rate Out of Control?, discussing one candidate’s use of negative emotion and hype (without data to back up her assertions) in order to “scare” voters.

The blog post had its surge in readership as new posts do and then faded into what I refer to as “idling mode”, not scoring higher or lower than other blog posts that were being read.

Earlier this week, a person self-described as her marketing and social media lead thought it would be a good idea to instigate a little argument with me on Twitter, sending readership of this blog post through the roof and drawing much condemnation of this person and the candidate she represented.

And then things went quiet again with this blog post until today when the same person surfaced with this tweet:

For those not familiar with this expression, it is a literal translation of a Polish phrase which, depending on what part of Poland you are from, the context of the situation and how the expression is used, can be interpreted to mean:

Not my problem.

F___ this shit.

F___ off.

I was amused by this since I knew what such a spontaneous tweet without any instigation on anyone’s part would do and so shortly after this tweet appeared, I checked my blog stats.

Sure enough, people were back to reading the blog that had created some damage to the candidate’s campaign and which had died down again (for the second time) earlier this week.

Third time’s a charm, I guess.

Insatiable curiosity can be an interesting and devastating weapon when used correctly (or misused accidentally).

It can be fatal from a career perspective when such a message is delivered to a potential voter on behalf of someone seeking my vote.

The wisdom of the ancients

There is a reason that our vernacular is filled with old adages such as “let sleeping dogs lie” or “beware of self-fulfilling prophecies”.

I think it is because they originate from the sum of many truths in the collective human experience.

What do you think?

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Addendum

Curious as to whether the person in my second story still represents the candidate I referred to, I took a look at her LinkedIn profile.

Yup.

Addendum 2

Shortly after this blog was published, the LinkedIn profile was revised:

Whether the change reflects an actual change in duties or is meant as a deflection technique is irrelevant.  We always have to be cognizant of who represents us and whether anything we say or do alleges to represent someone else.

There is a final irony in that she has asked people to stop bullying her as noted in her final tweet.

The use of social media does not change a basic concept of human interaction:

Respect earned is respect given.

When one instigates a conversation as noted earlier in this blog, one has to expect a strong reaction and cannot subsequently claim to be a victim.  One cannot travel through Life looking for trouble and then complain when trouble arrives.