“If Practice makes Perfect and Nobody’s Perfect, then why Practice?”.... interesting thought, is'n it? :-)
Mistakes!!! We are so scared of them. We dont want to make them and feel embarassed, humiliated and sometimes even "small" but WHY? Why are we so paranoid of making mistakes? Why is a boss so reluctant to accept his subordinates mistakes ? Why is a parent not tolerant to mistakes made by their child? Why do we forget time and again that " Mistakes are the Portals of discovery".
Don't we know that Coca Cola, Cheese, Tea bags, Aspirin, Penicillin, X rays, Frisbee Disc, Piggy Bank, Glass, Paper Towels, Post IT notes, Scotch Guard, Velcro, Levi Jeans, Hook to loop fasteners, Ice Cream cones, Yo Yo’s, Ice Cream soda, Microwave ovens have a common critical factor linking them together? They are all discoveries arising out of Mistakes!!!! Why are all great discoveries made by mistake? Did we ever think that a mistake might turn out to be the one thing necessary to a worthwhile achievement?
If you are in the surgery business you may not want to make any mistakes. But for the rest of us - especially if you are in a technology business - doing things wrong is prerequisite to doing things right. As the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein said, "If people did not sometimes do silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done." Not all failures are glorious of course. 65 out 100 business startups vanish without a trace within five years and 90% are gone within ten years. But we need these failures - without them there would be no companies to survive.
IBM's rumored motto about mistakes is legendary: Fail Faster. Since the road to success is paved with failures, the faster we move through them, the faster we might find a way that works. Don't prolong the agony, get it over with quickly, learn the most you can, and move on. Wouldn't the greatest mistake we could make in life be to continually fear that we would make one?
Are you afraid of Mistakes??? Don’t be because to err is only human - Every body makes mistakes!!! Indeed, it would be a colossal blunder to attempt doing things right the first time, every time. You might complete a task successfully but would you have learnt anything? Isn’t growing about learning and isn’t learning about what is wrong and what is right. If you got it right the first time, then how will you experience wrong? Niels Bohr, the architect to design the first Atom Bomb once said, "An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a very narrow field”.
The only people not making mistakes are ones playing their game without risk and without novelty - and I might add - without progress. If your company cannot accommodate failures - in the long run, you cannot succeed. Think about it… If at first you don't succeed, should you destroy all evidence that you tried? Isn’t mistake evidence that at least someone tried? If you thought you were wrong once, could you be mistaken? Aren't you making progress if each mistake you make is a new one?
Mistakes are very valuable in learning, especially why things have gone wrong- factual errors or conceptual errors. Mistakes are how we learn - just think about experiments and discoveries. Mistakes are good because they tell us what not to do, what does not work so they are crucial to learning.
Try and fail but Fail Faster....
- Encourage Mistakes. Don't cast blame. Try and understand why it failed rather than blame who failed.
- Use “Creative trial and error” Methodology. This technical-sounding phrase simply means doing things quickly without trying to get them into final form, making mistakes and swiftly fixing them. Get something up and running - anything that resembles your desired solution. Then fix what isn't working. And fix, and fix, and fix.
- Create a company of learners with information sharing policy. Without one, learning from mistakes is just one more accident. Debrief everything - good, bad or indifferent. Use the four fundamentals of a learning organization: What worked? What didn't? What was missing? What next?
- Forget about total quality and zero defects. You can't afford it, especially in this day and age. Think of the 80/20 rule or if you are a perfectionist extend it to 90/10. There is a level of quality beyond which "mistakes" are the only viable economic alternative. Unless the outcome of your product or service impacts life or death, the cost of perfection cannot be justified. Use the errors you generate as opportunities to improve your production process and practice great customer service.
Remember " Every Move Counts..... When the aim is to Win"
