Learning from mistakes

"The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing."

- John Powell

The articles so far were talking about experiences that posed a change, challenge, a positive stroke. But the truth is we all learn not just by what went right but also by what went wrong. If we meet someone who has not committed any mistake, then he is a liar or he is a lifeless stone that is lying on the curb doing nothing. When we try and do something is when we commit mistakes.

First of all, I want to differentiate among mistakes, errors and mishaps. All of these 'harm' a person directly or indirectly. Learning is about analysing what led to the harm and how to minimize it.

In physical sciences, error is due to limitations of the measuring instrument, or computational accuracy, something that can not be avoided in the given circumstances. You can only try to minimize it. The tennis player gets a fraction of second to decide how he wants to return the ball. Based on the situation she commits an unforced error. Sometimes, the shrewd opponent creates circumstances that lead to a forced error.

In the organizational context, different types of challenges such as green field project, movement to new place and so on, are error prone situations. No matter how much you prepare for a new situation, you have limitations in terms of knowledge and skill. The key in such a situation is to analyse the error and correct yourselves to minimize such an error in the future. The error analysis will tell you the cause of the error and help you correct the situation.  Spending a few years working in quality assurance, I learnt a lot about the techniques to analyse and reduce errors. In fact, we devised some very interesting solutions to reduce errors in software, though I don’t intend to elaborate it here. But let me share some common observations about errors.

Fist off, errors are often assumed to be normal and, hence, are ignored. Software errors lead to defects – errors in coding, designing and eve testing. In one of our projects, I wanted to know if the testing we were doing was enough. So I said to myself, assuming that each one of us is injecting just one error every day, with 5 people working for 4 months, we must have injected 5x4x20 i.e. 400 errors. The testers tested as per the test plan and found only 60 odd defects.  But I persisted and asked them to find more defects. Eventually we did reach the magic number of 400. What I learnt was that we should look for errors (or actually defects that present the effects of errors) because we all err.

Second, we do not consider the true cause of error and course-correct at that level. The defect/harm is a symptom that indicates the presence of an erroneous situation. If we correct the situation, defect is cleared. But the reason behind such a situation needs to be corrected too. Our attitude matters in this analysis. Later in this article, I will touch upon this attitude.

Thirdly, there are many elegant ways to minimize errors. Good designers always create designs that are 'idiot proof' (can you ever connect a USB in the wrong way?) The key is to acknowledge that there will be errors, and then to minimize them.

In some sense, errors will occur because of limitations of the person, system or situation. But mistakes happen more often because of arrogance, ignorance, overconfidence – all human shortcomings.  Since they indicate avoidable shortcomings, one is ashamed to admit it, leading to further mistakes. But if the person agrees to oneself that there was a mistake, a deeper and long lasting correction takes place.

The organization culture plays a major role in owning up to mistakes. If the culture is such that mistakes are severely punished, the tendency will be to avoid reporting it, discussing it and improving on the way. There is a universal tendency to get into the blame game. The analysis of mistakes should lead to finding faults in the system and correcting them. Instead, a scapegoat is identified and punished. Such a culture also punishes employees who are open to admit their mistakes. I have personal experiences where, in a meeting, a person accepting a mistake was humiliated by all those who had actually not tried anything.

Admit it in public or don’t, but if you admit to yourselves that you have committed a mistake, then a range of lessons are learnt by analysis of the mistake. In our leadership research, I found that mistakes lead to lessons related to relationship management. This may be a relationship in formal settings such as boss or workers, and also in informal settings such as family.

What one can learn from their mistake will also depend on that person’s approach and attitude. The superlative ego will always prompt one to disown the mistake.

Another negative impact of not treating mistakes positively is the development of a 'risk-averse' approach. Mistakes lead to failure. The fear of failure helps you avoid mistakes but also tells you to avoid such a situation in the future. What is really required is to put up a corrective action so that mistake does not recur. Instead, one often takes the route of avoidance and not correction.

And then there are mishaps. Mishaps are unplanned events that cause harm. One can only assess the possibility of a mishap and minimize its impact. But reason I am considering it in this article is because in my research, when people narrated their mistakes, they presented it as a ‘mishap’. For example, “I was going somewhere but then there was an accident, and I missed the first half of the meeting.” Is this a mishap or mistake? Even if you are not involved in the accident, not providing yourself a time buffer is a mistake. And yet, it is treated as a mishap or someone else’s mistake by saying, “These drivers! They get drunk and start speeding on the highway.”

In conclusion, one can and does learn from mistakes if one wants to. The idea is to learn as soon as you can, so that it is not too late to correct the situation. And of course, one does not need to commit the mistake. We can always learn from other people's mistakes. We are so good at finding other people's mistakes but we land up committing the same mistakes ourselves.

Do you have any stories about mistakes and your learning? Do share with me! It may lead to some useful research.