Learn from what you got it right

and repeat it.

The common adage is “learn from your mistakes”. But sometimes we don’t realize that what we are doing is right until someone points out. Here is one such incident that enabled me to learn a valuable lesson- Learn from what you got it right, and repeat it.

This happened during an interview where I was one of the two finalists contending for Business Analyst position. I was later selected. The situation is: a presentation is to be made summarizing the requirements given in a Request for Proposal (RFP).

My contender presented first and it was an excellent presentation. My presentation too covered almost all the points that my contender had, but in addition to that, I went a bit further to elaborate on certain aspects that should be considered, should the proposal be taken up for responding, such as—prioritization of pain points, resources expertise / skills requirement, a suggestion to use a third party tool that could reduce cost and timeline, and a high level project viability analysis (cost and time) based on the limited information available.

Later when I joined the company, the person who interviewed me said that he had noted many questions and the very first was “Is this project viable?”

What he then said was something that keeps ringing in my head every time I prepare an output.

“You are here because you went that extra mile and put yourself in my shoes and made my job easy. At my level, the first thing I would want to know is whether the project is viable or not. I presume your contender did not think of it as the task was to only summarize the RFP. You really went that extra mile. Opportunity comes to those who are willing to go that extra mile and make your customer’s life easy. I was your customer to consume your output. Keep this in your mind for every output”.

While he was saying this, I realized that I was indeed thinking from my customer (boss) perspective, though it wasn’t a conscious effort. The thought process I had was in correct direction and it fetched good result. Since I already seen the benefit, I was only more enthused to follow it more religiously and make it as a habit. So, from then on I started to act as if I am my own customer!

Learn not only from mistakes but also from what you got it right

and

repeat it!