Failure is always an option

I had some fun this April Fool's day and sent several emails that said that we failed some surveys CAP. I know I am evil, but sometimes you have to have some fun! The responses were interesting in that everyone else with failure. Show me someone who has never managed and I'll show you someone who does not know how to react as soon as they do. It is inevitable. We try to never experience it but we will and it's how you respond that sets people apart.

I am proud and speak of my failures regularly because it gives people power to know that they are not alone. In my career I have been involved in a disturbance of the total hospital and had to work my way back up the ladder. It is through these failures that we learn the most about ourselves and about situations. When I just got out of school I used to think that experience was not that important. I thought, "I have learned what I need to know at school, I have a supervisor now!" I'm in the second half of the first ten years of my career and have learned that every situation that knowledge is experience. That knowledge will I take in the second and third decades of my career. Both the successes and failures will help me as I move forward.

Experience is gained by these situations and it is up to the people involved with them or about forgetting and vulnerable to repeat. As leaders, we are sometimes under pressure to work or move forward with options that our choices should not, but we need our employees to buy and run. These guidelines usually given by a few pay grades above should be followed, so that if you fail you can show that you followed their guidelines. You do not want to be seen as someone who is resistance against change or someone who will be an obstacle. This you only get more headache and possibly affect your progress in the future. This being said always state your concerns, as well as the current ideas that a better option. You don't want to stop when the most important.

I've always learned more from my failures than I have of my successes. During an interview a CEO once told me, "you want to make your big mistakes in the beginning of your career because the higher you are the less forgiving people of the big ones." We make our mistakes during a constant quest to be the so-called "polished professional." When we go to the higher ranks of the reward should a failure we can see coming a mile away and can safely get out of the way. Successes come with great planning and a dump truck full of experiences. Remember, failure is always an option.

-Matthew Herasuta, MBA, MLS (ASCP) CM is a medical laboratory scientist who works as a generalist and serves as the blood bank and General supervisor for the regional hospital of Euclid in Cleveland, OH.

View the original article here