win some, lose some

We received word that my company lost a major design bid today, which just goes to show that in this industry, nothing is certain. As usual, we went all out and killed ourselves with a beautiful set of compres but in the end, client decided to go ultra-conservative (which was not in the brief) and went with the most plain-jane supplier.

This is part and parcel of my business, the constant competition with rivals and the necessity of upping the ante and defending design as an integral part of communications. It sucks to lose, especially since it ends our unbelievable winning streak of the past several months. In times of failure, the post-mortem analysis becomes even more crucial (you also need to analyze why you won when you did win), looking at elements that contributed to the loss and thinking of ways to minimize them in the future.

It's a learning process that hurts a bit, but there is always pain associated with improvement.

You need to accept that you cannot win all the time - but that shouldn't stop you from trying to win all the battles you do choose to fight.

And keep on improving, win or lose.