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Hi Reader,

This past weekend I did something completely spontaneous: I played pool. This wasn’t part of the plan. I was at a live music event, and during the break between bands we spotted a pool table just sitting there empty. So of course, we decided to play.

I hadn’t played in years, but I learned the game as a teenager from some Italian relatives, so I knew the knowledge was somewhere in my muscle memory.

Plus, about ten years ago, I beat a professional pool-playing colleague at a work Christmas party and walked away with the prize.

So I accepted the challenge with full confidence.

Big mistake.

Seven white balls

For those who may not know the basics of billiards, the goal is simple: sink your team’s balls into the pockets without sinking the white cue ball or the black 8-ball.

If the white ball goes into a hole, your turn ends. And if you sink the black ball too early, the entire game ends.

Here’s the punchline: I sank five white cue balls in one game, and two more in the next. In that second game, I even managed, in a single turn, to sink the black 8-ball followed immediately by the white cue ball. Game over.

So in total, I sank a total of seven white balls in just under an hour.

I mean… who does that?

Me.

Positive laughter

The upside is that my friends and I had a great laugh about it, and we even met a few new people who joined in on the fun.

Pool players are known for being perfectionists, something we project managers can definitely relate to. Like chess players, they’re always thinking several moves ahead of the one they’re taking.

Fortunately, I don’t have a competitive bone in my body, so none of it bothered me.

I’ve always noticed that pressure usually makes me perform worse anyway, so somewhere around sinking cue ball three or four, I stopped stressing about it. Enjoying the process is where the real wins happen.

But what was the real win here? The reality is we lost, not just once but twice, and in a pretty embarrassing way.

Was it really a failure? For many people, especially perfectionists, sinking seven cue balls would look like one.

But this “failure” turned into shared laughter and a genuinely fun moment with the people around me. Plus, I don’t plan on becoming a professional billiard player anytime soon, which is pretty obvious.

Find the unexpected wins

So…what does failure really mean?

Yes, some of my project initiatives have had unexpected bumps that could easily be seen as failures.

But when you step back and look at the situation, you often find something interesting that comes out of it. In tech projects, it might be a new way to use a tool or even the discovery of a new business opportunity that could shift the strategic direction of the company.

In my case, sinking seven cue balls gave me not only a great night out but also a memorable story, which inspired me to write this article and share it with all of you.

Here’s to many more accidentally sunk white balls in the future.

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