If you don't make mistakes, you don't make anything

[Armya Inc]

Last week I was invited as a guest speaker on iMinds’ Fail Conference in Ghent, Belgium. Have a look: http://failconference.creativemediadays.be.

Unlike its name, I find the fact that we are having a conference on failure a huge success. In our country, failure is a taboo. Especially in business. Going out of business is the worst thing that can happen to you. The stamp of failure will ruin your professional career almost for sure and possibly also your private relationships. It is very difficult to get a second chance, to get rid of all your debts, let alone get a new business loan. In Belgium, people take black lists very seriously and the rumour circuit is an important information channel. Entrepreneurs are easily burnt. So, I must admit I felt at least a little unease when iMinds invited me as a guestspeaker. Guess they must think I’m an expert in failing. But I liked the concept and I gave it my best. Really enjoyed the event, on and off stage.

Actually I hate the word ‘failure’, just as much as I hate the words guilty, fault or blame in the workplace. I was taught that if you don’t make mistakes, you don’t make anything.

And I do 'make' a lot of things... So, if you make a mistake don’t go all “Oh, I’m so sorry” on me. I’d rather hear you say what you’ve learned.

Personally, I ‘fail’ all the time. But I’m sure I’ve given it the best I can. I don’t blame myself, nor someone else, and I move on. Return to start. Try again and remember your lessons learned. Or as Thomas Edison put it more eloquently: “Many of life's failures are men who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

Did you 'learn' much recently from your mistakes? I sure did. It only took me one blog post last week to boost my learning curve.

 

[Armya Inc]

Good Employees Make Mistakes. Great Leaders Allow Them To.



As a business leader, I found that one of the scariest things to do was to give your people the freedom to make mistakes. While mistakes allow individuals to learn and grow, they can also be very costly to any company. Scared as I was, I knew that truly great leaders found ways to allow their people to take these risks, and I genuinely wanted to be a great leader. I wanted to help my employees to grow. So I set out to discover how to accomplish this without placing my company in jeopardy.

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.” - Meg Cabot

I quickly discovered that the first step was to determine the areas of the business where a mistake could take place without causing too much damage. I took careful attention to make sure that any areas where we would damage our clients and the trust they had placed in us were off limits for significant risk without serious executive involvement and oversight. I identified other areas where I could feel more comfortable allowing people the freedom to experiment on new and better ways of doing things.

The second step was to communicate to the employees that we were setting an official company policy: Making any mistake once was OK, so long as it was an honest mistake made while attempting to do what they felt was the right thing. Making any mistake once was OK, but repeating that same mistake a second time was NOT OK. The hard, fast rule was that if you made any mistake for the first time the entire team would have your back in fixing that mistake if anything went wrong. However, if you ever repeated the mistake a second time, then you were 100 percent on your own to face the consequences. This rule applied for every first-time occurrence of each new mistake you made.



We all make mistakes. Every one of us. If we aren’t making mistakes, then we likely aren’t trying enough new things outside our comfort zone, and that itself is a mistake. That process is the best way to learn and grow as a person. As John Wooden once said, “If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not doing anything.” Mistakes are the pathway to great ideas and innovation. Mistakes are the stepping stones to moving outside the comfort zone to the growing zone where new discoveries are made and great lessons are learned. Mistakes are not failures, they are simply the process of eliminating ways that won’t work in order to come closer to the ways that will.

Great leaders allow their people the freedom to make mistakes. But good employees are those who when mistakes are made 1. Learn from them, 2. Own them, 3. Fix them, and 4. Put safeguards in place to ensure the same mistake will never be repeated again.

1. Learn from them: Good employees recognize that they have, in fact, made an honest mistake. They do not get defensive about it, rather they are willing to look objectively at their mistake, recognize what they did wrong, and understand why their choice or actions were the wrong thing to do.

2. Own them: Good employees take accountability for their mistakes. They admit them readily. They don’t make excuses for their mistake, rather they acknowledge that yes, they made a mistake and they express openly what lesson they have learned from that mistake. They go on to express steps 3 and 4 below.

3. Fix them: Good employees do what it takes to rectify their wrongs. They are willing to do whatever they can to fix the problem and make it right. Certainly there are times when the damage is done and recompense cannot be made, but good employees do their very best to repair whatever damage has been done to the best of their ability. They always establish a timeline with follow up for when the problem will be fixed and make sure that progress is communicated throughout the process so everyone feels the urgency and care with which they are correcting the problem.

4. Put safeguards in place to ensure the same mistake will never be repeated again: This is the most critical step in the learning process. When a mistake has clearly been made, the most important thing anyone can do is figure out what safety nets and roadblocks can be carefully established to ensure that this same mistake will never take place again. Document this step so the lessons learned and the safeguards setup can always go beyond you. Do everything in your power to help others learn from your mistake so they don’t have to experience them on their own to gain the lesson you’ve learned.

The steps to correcting mistakes apply to any area of life. Whether it’s business life or home life or personal life, the principles of apologizing remain the same. Good employees make a lot of mistakes, and truly great employees are those have mastered the art of apologizing for those mistakes:

Great People Practice The Six A’s of a Proper Apology:

Admit - I made a mistake.
Apologize - I am sorry for making the mistake.
Acknowledge - I recognize where I went wrong that caused my mistake to occur.
Attest - I plan to do the following to fix the mistake on this specific timeline.
Assure - I will put the following protections in place to ensure that I do not make the same mistake again.
Abstain – Never repeat that same mistake twice.

People who implement the Six A’s will find that the level of trust and respect others have for them will grow tenfold. People who implement the Six A’s will find that others will be quicker to forgive them and more likely to extend a second chance. It’s not the making of a mistake that is generally the problem; it’s what you do with it afterward that really counts.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/amyande...es-make-mistakes-great-leaders-allow-them-to/

 

[Schnitzel]

That was a great post. Concise and well put.

You remind me of a previous working place - the CEO was very hard on the employees when it came to mistakes (even first ones). There was lots of anger, sometimes shouting and even humiliation. As a consequence, the machine operators were actually afraid to make decisions such as approving colors before print runs and quality of finishing. Every little step in the manufacturing process had to involve the approval of everyone else, including production managers. The operators were constantly trying to justify their mistakes, and in light of the atmosphere in that working place, I don't blame them for doing so.

The sad thing about this was that the CEO could not see that his behavior was actually lowering the productivity of the entire print shop. He thought that if the employees were afraid of making mistakes, they will constantly be on guard, and therefore make less mistakes.

 

[gordo]

From a print production business perspective it's always helpful to learn the cause when mistakes happen since it can reveal what needs to be improved in the production process.

The three most common ways people make mistakes are:

Perception-based.
These occur when there is incomplete or ambiguous information. For example: “We need a quote on a four-page folder” could mean many different things. Perception-based errors can be avoided by providing clear and distinctive instructions, standardizing instructions, and avoiding assumptions intended to fill in missing information.

Decision-based.
These occur because of stress, pre-existing biases, assumptions, and over-confidence. This type of error can be avoided by using checklists, decision trees, and go-no-go flow charts.

Knowledge-based.
These occur due to a lack of knowledge, information, and/or poor communication. These can be avoided by standardizing terms and operational conventions as well as through formal training.

Determining and documenting the source of mistakes helps clarify whether issues are random, intermittent, systemic, or trending in some way. This clarification informs your decisions. The goal being, not to make the same mistake twice.

Best gordo

 

[Deleted member 16349]

Knowledge-based.
These occur due to a lack of knowledge, information, and/or poor communication. These can be avoided by standardizing terms and operational conventions as well as through formal training.


Best gordo

Mistakes are made every day but they are not seen as mistakes. They are seen as inherent process variation. There is an amazing level of acceptance of errors or in other words variation within the process only because people think there are no options available. If one thinks there are no options, they then don't bother to look for them.

If there is not 100% control and predictability in a process, that means there are some errors within the process and possibly some opportunities. Working to gain the knowledge that describes those errors is critical to finding a solution.

I remember very clearly when I was in a group for a two week training course at GATF in 1984, on the first day one of the instructors told us that the offset process was so complicated that no one would be able to understand it. I thought what a stupid thing to say.

All processes have reasons for what happens and it takes some effort to find out what those reasons or rules are. It seems to me that GATF and now PIA still are as much in the dark as they were almost 30 years ago. They may know a lot of things but they still can't describe or fix the process. Only measure it and adjust and that is a mistake.

 

[gordo]

I remember very clearly when I was in a group for a two week training course at GATF in 1984, on the first day one of the instructors told us that the offset process was so complicated that no one would be able to understand it. I thought what a stupid thing to say.

Just because one studies a subject, and publishes on the subject, or even teaches it does not mean that one understands it. Learned that very quickly when dealing with GATF (and even RIT).

Here's an example of an expert showing that he may not actually know what he's talking about - in this case photography and human vision:

Scott Fraser: Why eyewitnesses get it wrong | Video on TED.com

His "expertise" probably resulted in a murderer going free.
(The comments to his talk are also interesting)

best, gordo

 

[Deleted member 16349]

Just because one studies a subject, and publishes on the subject, or even teaches it does not mean that one understands it. Learned that very quickly when dealing with GATF (and even RIT).

Here's an example of an expert showing that he may not actually know what he's talking about - in this case photography and human vision:

Scott Fraser: Why eyewitnesses get it wrong | Video on TED.com

His "expertise" probably resulted in a murderer going free.
(The comments to his talk are also interesting)

best, gordo

This was very interesting. So called "science" can be a two edged sword. Sometimes it is right and sometimes it is wrong. It is hard to know for sure what is really true. Thanks for the video.

 

[Alois Senefelder]

Knowledge

Knowledge

Hello Erik


"Some drink deeply from the river of knowledge. Others only gargle" - Woody Allen


Still waiting for your Treatise on Lithography


Regards, Alois

 

[Deleted member 16349]

Hello Erik


"Some drink deeply from the river of knowledge. Others only gargle" - Woody Allen


Still waiting for your Treatise on Lithography


Regards, Alois

If I accomplish anything, hopefully someone will write a PDF so that in twenty years, you can pull it out and use it.

 

[Al Ferrari]

....

His "expertise" probably resulted in a murderer going free.
(The comments to his talk are also interesting)

best, gordo

I watched the video and read the comments as far back as 9/23/12, including yours Gordon, and disagree strongly with your conclusion. Fraser simply reintroduced reasonable doubt into the original conviction. Isn't that central to the justice system?

Al Ferrari

 

[gordo]

I watched the video and read the comments as far back as 9/23/12, including yours Gordon, and disagree strongly with your conclusion. Fraser simply reintroduced reasonable doubt into the original conviction. Isn't that central to the justice system?

Al Ferrari

If the basis for introducing doubt is faulty then it is not a basis for reasonable doubt.

Back in the steam-powered days of film photography the studio that I worked with was often contracted by attourneys to take accident scene photos. We would give them prints at various levels of lightness and contrast so that they could choose the one best suited to their needs. More often than not the photographs would be thrown out simply because cameras are not very good anologs of human vision. But attourneys are ever optimistic.
Some of the key points that this expert makes - like the inability to focus the eye on the face because of the shallow depth of field resulting from the pupil being wide open under low light conditions - are based on the premise that human vision operates the same way as camera optics. That's just wrong and thus is not a reasonable basis for introducing doubt. He makes other similar points based on faulty knowledge/understanding.

One of the commenters summed it up wel:

"His statement about depth of field is completely wrong - depth of field is the distance between the closest and furthest points that can simultaneously be in focus, not the furthest point which can be focused on.

His photographs do not accurately illustrate what a person would see because the dynamic range of the human eye is much greater than that of a camera. Humans can see details in areas that are either completely black or completely white in a photograph. There is a whole field called HDR - High Dynamic Range - photography devoted to capturing images similar to what the eye actually sees"

Gordo

 

[Al Ferrari]

Your points are well taken.

Al

 

[Al Ferrari]

Thinking this further:

The judge decided to grant the appeal not based on the video of the reconstruction that we saw at that link, but based on what he saw at the reconstructed/re-enacted scene with his own eyes, not a camera, if we believe the report. We may question if the reconstructed/re-enacted scene was like the original, but the eye/camera non correspondence is moot. If so, then reasonable doubt was reintroduced by the re-enaction.

Al

 

[gordo]

Thinking this further:

The judge decided to grant the appeal not based on the video of the reconstruction that we saw at that link, but based on what he saw at the reconstructed/re-enacted scene with his own eyes, not a camera, if we believe the report. We may question if the reconstructed/re-enacted scene was like the original, but the eye/camera non correspondence is moot. If so, then reasonable doubt was reintroduced by the re-enaction.

Al

The reason an expert is consulted is because they can provide credible, objective, information which can then be included in the jury's deliberations.

The point of me including the video link was to show an example of a credible expert providing incorrect information. If the audience didn't know the actual facts then they may come to the wrong conclusions in their deliberations. Which I think was my original point that just because one studies a subject, and publishes on the subject, or even teaches it does not mean that one understands it.

To bring it back to printing (and mistakes) acquiring credible, objective, information is one of the main reasons that printers consult the experts at organizations such as the PIA/GATF and RIT. However, if the information provided by those sources is in fact incorrect then the conclusions those printers make as a result of their deliberations will likely be mistaken.

best, gordo

"A smart man makes a mistake, learns from it, and never makes that mistake again. But a wise man finds a smart man and learns from him how to avoid the mistake altogether."

Roy H. Williams

 

[gailkeys]

Adorable Post.I would like to say "When you find your path, you must not be afraid. You need to have sufficient courage to make mistakes. Disappointment, defeat, and despair are the tools God uses to show us the way.”

 

[fiatlux]

Adorable Post.I would like to say "When you find your path, you must not be afraid. You need to have sufficient courage to make mistakes. Disappointment, defeat, and despair are the tools God uses to show us the way.”

And how is your post related to anything in this thread?

FL

 

[Deleted member 16349]

I read the whole post and I liked it so much because by doing mistakes we can learn many things. Those who are done more mistakes in life are more successful. We always learn from our mistakes.

If one makes a lot of mistakes but one does not take the effort to understand why they were mistakes, then not so much is learned. Mistakes are helpful only when you know why.

Someone who makes a lot of mistakes might just be very unsuccessful.