MISTAKE #32: You are scared to admit your mistakes...or ignorance
Let’s be clear. You will make mistakes. More than you’ll ever want to admit. But those that identify, acknowledge, fix and learn from their mistakes will actually benefit.
If you haven’t figured it out yet, life is largely a series of problems to be solved. And almost all of those problems can be traced to mistakes that were previously made.
I can’t retire when I want to because I didn’t save the money I needed for retirement.
I didn’t get the promotion I expected because I didn’t play the political game as well as someone else.
No one is buying my new product because no one has heard about it. After all, I cut the marketing support to save money.
In general, the sooner a mistake is recognized, the faster and easier it will be to fix and the less permanent damage it will have caused. However, some mistakes are just more painful to fix, but that probably means they are even more important to fix.
I’M NOT SO PERFECT MYSELF
I once fielded a complex online survey that included extensive skip patterns. Despite our existing quality checks, the programming was wrong and a block of questions ended up not being displayed. I had to field new research (at my expense) and ask the client to extend the project timeline. It was one of my more expensive mistakes. But discovering the error caused us to build a new quality control process and we have not repeated the mistake since.
When doing custom quantitative research, we typically produce millions of data points that need to be processed and analyzed without error. This process creates dozens of points where mistakes could be introduced. So we've spent a lot of time trying to predict just about every one of them.
Fortunately, I’m happy to make mistakes…the first time. I’m then obsessed with never making the same mistake again. And that obsession has been the cornerstone of building my business.
Unfortunately, that business also involves working with lots of clients that tend to relearn similar mistakes in their respective businesses. Experience tends to be the only teacher many people will listen to.
HOW TO VALUE MISTAKES
What do you think is the value of finding and fixing the top ten mistakes your organization is currently making? Do you think they represent little more than rounding errors or could those mistakes represent significant money to your bottom line or substantial lost productivity that could translate to even greater value over time?
Maybe you’ve got the wrong person in the wrong position. You know they lack the skills or their personality or style the organization needs. But replacing them will take effort you don’t want to make.
Maybe you’ve realized key assumptions about your business were wrong and you need to significantly adjust your timeline or your budgets or forecasts.
I hope this article encourages you to take a closer look for opportunities to identify, acknowledge, fix and learn from mistakes being made sooner rather than later.
If it hasn’t, consider some of the consequences of prolonging and perpetuating mistakes by doing nothing.
It sends a message to the organization: How you tolerate letting others make mistakes or reward acknowledging and getting mistakes fixed may be one of the biggest impacts you can have on your company’s culture.
Mistakes produce greater collateral damage as the issue cascades into impacting other areas: This is most obvious when you see how a single poor-performing employee can spread issues throughout an organization.
Mistakes drain resources: Never forget that some mistakes take a lot of time and money just to be made.
Mistakes rob the organization of new knowledge: Every time you do not learn from a mistake is a missed opportunity for the organization to become smarter.
You already know it sucks to make mistakes. Convince yourself that not learning from mistakes sucks even more.