Success in the affairs of life often serves to hide one's abilities, whereas adversity frequently gives one an opportunity to discover them. - Horace
A few years ago, I had the opportunity to work with Girl Scouts USA on an evaluation of the Uniquely ME! program. Designed to help girls build self-esteem and positive body image, the program targeted girls in communities without a strong Girl Scout presence, often in urban or low-income communities. One of our evaluation methods was “success case studies”; in other words, we identified Girl Scout Councils achieving great results, and did in-depth studies of how their programs worked, what resources they used, and any lessons they could share with other councils.
Over the last few months, there has been an on-going discussion on an evaluation listserv* about learning from failure, and it’s made me think back on those success case studies. Did the struggling Councils have just as much to teach as those that were succeeding?
I’m convinced that failure has a lot to teach, including:
- What circumstances make it harder to be successful, and therefore what we should try to temper before we get started
- What to avoid in the future, or what just doesn’t work
- What we could do differently next time around