Text version scenario

A team spent many hours putting together a project proposal. They collected lots of data, thought carefully about customer needs and submitted the proposal. They were confident to win the bid. However, it was awarded to a competitor. The team leader suggested that they’d set off time to discuss learnings from the lost bid. She believes in learning, also from failures. But the team was embarrassed and would rather move on and not spend time on their lack of success.

Discussion question

• Have you spent time analyzing what went wrong when you have failed?
• How did you approach it?
• What did you learn from it?

Things to consider

We can learn from these situations to help us truly live our values. While there are no clear-cut solutions, we can consider the following actions:

• Discuss ways in which learning from ALL situations is a better way to improve performance and promote One Skanska teams.
• Discuss ways to document successes and failures and to use that learning/knowledge on on-going projects.
• Discuss and create relationships of mutual respect with all employees such that they feel empowered to speak up even in troubling situations.