Most often, failures become the validation that one isn’t good enough. Everyone worked hard and was well prepared, and yet, the project ended up being a failure.

The next step can be to blame circumstances, to blame oneself, or to blame others. If the market wasn’t as bad as it is. If I had paid attention to those details telling us how this new product is coming up. If our supplier had been faster. All these blames can be brought back to oneself and how performance could have been so much better, thus confirming that one isn’t good enough.

While all of these points might have been valid, looking back at them is focusing on things that were beyond one’s control. They didn’t happen, and the simple reason is that things have been assessed and decided differently. It has been done in good faith, otherwise, things would have stopped or been done differently.

How do you assess if one is good enough, then?

By the choice you make when responding to the situation. Do you give up? Do you choose to end the project and accept sunk costs? Do you review the project and think about ways to solve the situation?

Giving up leads to assuming that one isn’t good enough and can’t do anything about it.

Accepting sunk costs may be a way to accept that one wasn’t good enough, moving away from the project too. However, none of these choices imply that one will not improve in the future. They are a choice to investigate where and how one may be good enough.

Reviewing the project and seeking ways to solve or change the situation may also be a way to notice when and how one hasn’t been good enough. But here again, the action shows the path to learning and the assumption that things can change.