Tell me about a time when you failed badly and what you learned from it?

I founded my startup in XXXX, spent the next 3 months interviewing potential customers and users and mapped out user journeys. We got a lot of positive response and most people were keen to see us build the product and eventually use it. So we spent the next 9 months building the product. At the end we weren't able to sell the product for what we hoped for. The mistake we made was to assume that if people want a product, they would be willing to pay for it. Turns out, the problem we were addressing was not urgent enough or important enough. Our learning was that we needed to test for user propensity to pay first before launching a product or service and not getting carried away by good feedback.

An important mistake I made very early in my experience in product management was my first leadership opportunity with my Consulting Club invention Corps I was leading a team of three and it was fully remote this was very early in the pandemic one of the big failures I made was not asking for help I was a little confused about how I should schedule my project when I should start you know what the core what the template for scheduling was and as a result I took a little bit extra time and I ended up starting our project one week later than we should have this was a huge issue you know I should have reached out to my supervisors or I should have reached out to my project members and ask them what they think as a result we ended up facing a little bit of crunch time towards the middle and end of the project it forced unfortunately my team members and I had to pull a few all-nighters to make sure we hit our deadlines and so it taught me two things one plan plan I now for all my projects that I've had since I have a very detailed notion board full with a kanban board project updates and a more systematic approach to meetings and the second is to just ask for help I know that that's sometimes a little bit scary and it was very scary for me but I've learned that it is so important and honestly isn’t that daunting once you ask. People want to help you and they want you to succeed, especially in yoru own community. 

When I was first promoted to a supervisor, I had a responsibility to meet Survey, Productivity and call handling time. I monitored calls and coached the call I observed rather then looking for trends and behaviors.  I also failed to identify if it was a skill or will.  From that failure it led me to review reports at the beginning of my shift, look for trends and behaviors and to focus on coaching measurable action plans. This strategy has helped me to achieve top quartile results each year.

I was working with a pharma startup to build a datalake. We had only 8 weeks to both collect requirements and then build the same and my team consisted of me an infrastructure engineer, and a data architect. We did not have direct access to the end users of the datalake, who were the scientists, but had to get requirements through a client manager. This client manager was also not easily accessible as he was travelling a lot. I spent a week with the client manager gathering requirements and working with my team to build the datalake. The data pipelines and datalake structure was completed fast but the infrastructure build was getting delayed. I made a plan of replacing the data architect with an infrastructure architect to boost the infrastructure work and keep everything within budget. I worked this plan with the infrastructure manager, but I was not able to get a go ahead with the client manager who was travelling at that time. When the client manager came in I presented the plan. This was already in action as the data architect was released from the project and the infrastructure architect had started working. The client manager did not approve the plan as he had more data work to do - which was not informed to us. I scheduled a two hour meeting with the client manager to talk about the remaining work, estimate it and plan on how to do this. In this meeting I figured that we had 6-8 days of work remaining. We were already at week five of 8 weeks, so with careful planning, we could get this one done without a cost overrun. I talked with the infrastructure engineer and made sure that he could complete his tasks in one week, which gave me 2 weeks of budget left. I worked with the engagement manager to bring in a data engineer, who was able to scale up in one week. The project completed on time with no schedule or budget over runs. After this project I made sure that risks like access to stakeholders were handled earlier - I ensured that every project after this that there is dedicated communication channel with the stakeholder specifically mentioned in the SoW. I also carved out time in short projets like these in building a rapport quickly not only with the stakeholders, but folks adjacent to the project whom I can contact in exigencies.

Certainly, here's an example:

"In my freshman year, I participated in a science fair project with high hopes of winning a prize. Despite investing significant time and effort into my project, it failed to meet the judges' expectations, and I didn't receive any recognition. Initially, I felt disappointed and frustrated by the outcome. However, I chose to view this experience as a learning opportunity rather than dwelling on the failure. I sought feedback from the judges to understand where I went wrong and what I could improve upon in the future. I also reflected on my approach to the project and identified areas where I could have been more thorough or innovative. While it was disheartening not to achieve my desired outcome, the experience taught me valuable lessons in resilience, humility, and the importance of perseverance in the face of failure. It also motivated me to work harder and approach future projects with a more strategic mindset."

During my internship at a local company, I was responsible for managing the company's social media accounts. After my first month, my supervisor provided feedback that my posts were not engaging enough and lacked the brand's voice, resulting in low interaction rates.

Instead of getting discouraged, I took this as a valuable learning opportunity. I asked for a meeting with my supervisor to get more specific feedback and understand what aspects needed improvement. She suggested studying the company's previous successful posts and getting a better grasp of the brand's tone and target audience.

I took her advice and spent time analyzing the company's social media analytics to identify patterns in high-performing posts. I also researched best practices for social media engagement and attended a webinar on effective social media strategies.

With this new knowledge, I revised my content strategy to include more engaging visuals, compelling captions, and interactive elements like polls and questions. Over the next few weeks, I monitored the engagement metrics closely and adjusted my approach as needed.

Gradually, I noticed a significant improvement in likes, comments, and shares on our posts. My supervisor also acknowledged the positive change, and the experience taught me the importance of being receptive to feedback and continuously striving to improve my skills.

At CenterCard, when I was a Director Of Technology, I was managing an Infrastructure for my company. When we set up a K8s infrastruce, we need to install ElasticSearch  - with cost optimization in mind, I had my team install ELK on K8s. What I did not take in mind is my teams ablitiy to support ElasticSerach, when we initially released to Prodcution,we had a outage. Our team took longer than expected time causing bad customer experience.

I had to make a painful choice to switch to managed ELK. I did a retrospective and realized that I failed to access my team strengths. 

It was when I presented one information to management team and I was asked one question that I did not expect and I do not have information on hand. The meeting was ended with no conclusion due to decision cannot made.

what I learnt from this situation is I must well prepare. For example in the next meeting, I had prepared all related information and tried to think in different dimensions. that meeting went well and conclusion can be made.

I recall a time when we were assigned a complex task with tight deadline and we were unable to complete the taak within the time range due to lack of proper time management and understanding the severity of the issue.At that time I realized that it is important to manage time and understanding the urgency of the task is very imprtant before working on it

I remember having failed from badly understand a business requirement. The misunderstanding was discovered only on Preproduction so we lost time re-develop the functionality and redeploy the new release. To rectify the situation, I utilized systematic feedback from the business and incorporate them soon in the development.