By Amy Shoenthal | Harvard Business Review
Nearly everyone in the workforce has experienced a setback at some point. Many are familiar with concepts like learning from mistakes, post-traumatic growth, and failing up. But a setback is not always a mistake, trauma, or failure. A setback is defined as a reversal or “a checking of progress.” It’s when the path forward disappears — an unexpected bump backwards, a return to a starting line, a forced need to reroute.
Project managers (PMs) know this experience well. Maybe a client or stakeholder decides they’re unsatisfied with a project outcome and an entire team needs to be re-briefed. A product testing reveals unexpected issues and years of work force a team back to the drawing board. Or someone resigns at a critical point prior to a project’s completion. The goal post moves yet again.
Setbacks are not enjoyable. Yet quite often, they become the catalyst for growth, change, and innovation.
Many of the business leaders I’ve interviewed over the past decade cite a major career setback as the very thing that led to their most brilliant ideas and their most successful ventures. My book, The Setback Cycle, shares those stories, along with an evidence-based framework that guides individuals and teams on how to work through them.
Here are four main takeaways from the framework that can enable PMs to work through the setbacks that inevitably occur while bringing a project to the finish line.
