I was recently discussing the possibility of writing up some success stories, about enterprise architecture initiatives in particular, with a young colleague who then asked me: "And do you have any anti-success stories to tell?" Leaving aside his interesting choice of words, perhaps unconsciously aimed at avoiding the dreaded word "failure," this made be think of several cases where my clients snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory, so to speak, and what lessons we (or our clients) can derive from them.