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There is no doubt that every one of us in this industry has made mistakes and had some failures. To claim otherwise would simply brand you as a liar - or as somebody who hasn't done anything - because mistakes and failures happen to everyone.

If we're lucky those mistakes and failures aren't going to cost us a heap of money but, sooner or later, you will run the risk of making a blunder that is going to cost you big time. How you handle those mistakes and failures and what you learn from them will be important for you in the future so how do you handle your mistakes and do you ever learn from them?

I guess the easiest thing to do when you make a mistake or fail at something is simply to push on with your business as if nothing had happened. Coupled to that approach is the one where you don't admit to yourself that you actually made a mistake in the first place and if that's the approach you take then you're venturing into very dangerous territory.

Sure never admitting, even to yourself, that you've made a mistake can be rather comfortable. If you're not making mistakes then you've got no problems and everything goes on looking rather rosy but then, with that approach, you'll go right on making mistakes till your business fails.

While it may be uncomfortable to admit that you've made a mistake, an error of judgment, or failed at something it's important that you do. You see, once you've made that admission ... even to yourself ... you can go back and look at what you did wrong so that you don't make the same mistake in the future.

Sometimes you can do that in your own mind but sometimes it can best be done by making a physical list that you can keep and refer to. If you're working with one or two others ... or as part of a bigger team ... and the group or team project goes wrong then let the whole team in on the discussion.

Make sure that everyone understands that this is not the time for recriminations or bitching but it's a time for identifying where things went wrong. Start a list of the problem areas as you see it and then invite the others who worked with you to add to it.

Today Steve and I found that a small project that we have been working with a client on for over a week has gone pear-shaped. In fact it went pear-shaped yesterday but the client didn't bother telling us and probably wouldn't have told us but for the fact that we called on him early this morning to check some details.

After we left the client we did the usual thing of letting off steam and grumping about the situation but now we're over that and we don't want it to ever happen again so we're looking at where we went wrong. Steve's working from home today while I'm down at the office and we're exchanging emails and building a list of all the areas where we could have done better and ensured that we got the job done right.

It's interesting to watch the list grow because we've each identified areas in this job where problems were almost inevitably going to arise. These were areas that Steve might have known about ... or I might have known about ... but we never told each other.

If we had jointly known all the information that we individually knew the project might have been finished and paid for instead of being lost to a competitor. In fact if we had jointly known all the important facts we might never have taken this project on in the first place.

Instead we did tackle the project and put some time and effort into it only to see it crash and burn. So it's time to list the mistakes we made so that we have something we can refer to when we're offered a project like this next time. I think that as we go on compiling lists like this it will be interesting to review them in the future so that we can see whether we really are learning from our mistakes.

We can already see from that list that we can't always be all things to all clients but we can be that for some clients. It all depends on their needs and expectations.

We're also seeing something else that's rather interesting as we build our little list. Normally a set-back like this would get us both down and we'd be rather quiet ... and perhaps a little withdrawn ... for the rest of the day. But this time we're a little excited because we already know how we can do better next time.

So don't be afraid to admit to yourself that you do make mistakes and that you do have failures from time to time. Be prepared to learn from those mistakes and failures and to put what you learn into practice so that you don't go on making the same mistakes in the future.