Mistakes are often mistaken
What are mistakes? Can small mistakes be ignored? Are bigger mistakes real mistakes? What is a tolerable limit for mistakes? These are questions you deal while mentoring/monitoring/evaluating people. Here are some of my experiences with (real) mistakes.
Before proceeding further, lets try to define mistake. Wordweb says, “A wrong action attributable to bad judgment or ignorance or inattention is a mistake“. Wow, what a perfect but still wrong definition to mistake from practical perspective. With the complete post it will become clearer why I agreed to disagree with the above definition of mistake. IMO, mistake is :-
- Repeating the action even after recognizing it as a wrong action.
- Wrong action committed with self permission for self gain. (All shortcuts to fame and name can come under it)
- Being ignorant or inattentive with self permission resulting in a wrong action.
- not accepting/not recognizing the right cause of wrong action.
- unwillingness to learn the bigger lesson taught by previous similar actions resulting in another related wrong action.
Guide for Mentors/Project Managers/Leaders/Management/..
I have seen people creating list of mistakes by their juniors, staffs, team members for evaluation, mentoring etc. Sometimes we list/count mistakes that are not mistakes from practical perspective. Before I start putting more words under this title, here are few thoughts that I strongly believe in:-
- No Sincere person (who is committed for work and aims at the same mission if not vision) likes to commit mistakes but mistakes are inevitable for independent people. “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.†says Albert Einstein.
- Mistakes often carries different dimensions to it, one dimension can make it look very ugly while other dimension can define beauty. Our junior programmer deleting the whole code while trying different commands is an example, he just wanted to learn and never wanted to delete.
- Often the gaps (knowledge gap, vision gap, power gap, communication gap) are responsible for mistakes. May be we call it mistakes due to system.
- Every senior is responsible for mistakes done by the junior/colleague. The learning/correction has to be recursive (deeper in system).
So as a mentor it is very important to understand the reason behind the mistake. Also such mistakes can help us in designing a better system (We shifted to SVN when we encountered code deletion by a dedicated junior programmer). Discouraging mistakes can discourage attempts and thus the chances of success too. I often make stupid mistakes but never regret for being stupid as I learn wiser things from my own stupidity. If I am often defeated by myself than I am surely on the right path of success.
Right course of action for Wrongs
I promised my parents and myself to give atleast 6 hrs of sleep everyday, so I will conclude my post here. There is no stone-written rule that can help us define the right course for mistakes. Following thoughts can help us take a better course of action:-
- Take a course of action aiming at a result. (For repeated mistakes by a team member: When you know you can’t fire that person define your course of action accordingly. When you know that anyway you will be needing a new person then define your course of action accordingly.)
- There will be bad apples everywhere but don’t leave your ethics/character for them.
- Tolerate mistakes but never tolerate bad attitude. Bad attitude is like a rotten root, you can’t expect a fruitful tree out of a rotten root.
- Communicate as often and as quick. 90% mistakes happens due to communication gaps, so communicate to transfer knowledge, to transfer vision.
- If a person is committed and is with the same vision then he/she can be molded rightly.
Good night, I still some have 7 posts under draft so keep watching.
I really liked the section on “Guide for Mentors/Project Managers /Leaders /Management/..â€.It is empowering if taken in the true spirit. I would like to add something to what you have already written. It makes an interesting read.
Mistakes are the wrong takes that one takes in life. Mistakes are small, mistakes are big. Can small mistakes be forgiven? It really depends on your perception. What influences perception?
What defines mistake? What defines small? I am still wondering about it. All parties in any relationship can define the parameters of mistake both acceptable and unacceptable. What constitutes a mistake, the repercussions of a mistake, etc.
On a lighter note I would like to share this with you as well.
(Don’t take it otherwise.:))I have not come across mistakes in your previous posts, however this one was different. It has a few errors and quite coincidently you were writing on mistakes. I don’t know if it compounds your mistake.
“No Sincere person (who is committed for work and aims at the same mission if not vision) like to commit mistakes but mistakes are inevitable for independent people.â€
Should be written like
a)
“No Sincere person (who is committed for work and aims at the same mission if not vision) will like to commit mistakes but mistakes are inevitable for independent people.â€
b) or
“No Sincere person (who is committed for work and aims at the same mission if not vision) likes to commit mistakes but mistakes are inevitable for independent people.â€
“Good night, I still some 7 posts under draft so keep watching.â€
Should be written as
“Good night, I still have some 7 posts under draft so keep watching.â€
Thanks for such a long and valuable comment. And I have corrected my mistakes.
>> I have not come across mistakes in your previous posts
Thats an indication that you have not gone through my other posts :), I don’t recheck the posts and all my posts contains major grammatical mistakes. May be some day I will go through each and every post.
>> Mistakes are small, mistakes are big. Can small mistakes be forgiven? It really depends on your perception. What influences perception?
Good mentors/managers/leaders spend a lot of time in understanding the situation and avoiding the territories of perception, still it can play some role in the decision.
>> What defines mistake? What defines small? I am still wondering about it.
That can be another post :). Mistakes are generally perceptions, some socially accepted perceptions and some legally accepted perceptions. Consuming drug is a mistake but drinking coffee is not and thats based on social perception which is very well accepted and used for defining mistakes. While dealing with people we need to help others understand our move/action. Communication equals the equations, the more you communicate, the more common will be your perception with the other parties involved. With common perceptions mistakes can be better addressed.
Calling it a day, thanks again for the comment.
I came across this article by Alexander Kjerulf and felt it might be relevant to the topic under discussion.The author feels that the whole “failure is not an option” thing is just misguided. One needs to honour failure. Peter Drucker had once commented, “If you’re not failing occasionally, you’re not doing anything interesting.”
1: When you celebrate mistakes, you learn more from the mistakes you make
In one company, the CEO was told by a trembling employee, that the company website was down. This was a big deal – this company made most of its sales online, and downtime cost them thousands of dollars an hour.
The CEO asked what had happened, and was told that John in IT had bungled a system backup, and caused the problem. “Well, then,” says the CEO “Let’s go see John!”
When the CEO walked into the IT department everyone went quiet. They had a pretty good idea what wass coming, and were sure it wouldn’t be pretty.
The CEO walks up to John’s desk and asks “You John?”
“Yes” he says meekly.
“John, ” says the CEO, “I want to thank you for finding this weakness in our system. Thanks to your actions, we can now learn from this, and fix the system, so something like this can’t happen in the future. Good work!”
Then he left a visibly baffled John and an astounded IT department. That particular mistake never happened again.
When we can openly admit to screwing up without fear of reprisals, we’re more likely to fess up and learn from our mistakes.
2: You don’ have to waste time on CYA (Cover Your Ass)
Huge amounts of time and energy can be wasted in organizations on explaining why the mistakes that do happen are not my fault. This is pointless.
3: When mistakes are celebrated, you strengthen creativity and innovation
Randy Pausch, was a college professor who became famous after giving his “last lecture” when he’d been diagnosed with terminal cancer.
In his classes, Pausch would give out an award called The First Penguin to the team that took the greatest risk – and failed. The award is inspired by that one penguin out of a whole flock up on dry land who is the first to jump in the water, knowing full well that there may be predators just below the surface. That penguin runs a risk but if no one jumps in first, the whole flock will starve on land.
4: Failure often opens new doors
Also, failure is often the path to new, exciting opportunities that wouldn’t have appeared otherwise. Closing your eyes to failure means closing your eyes to these opportunities.
Just to give you one example: Walt Disney was fired from a newspaper job because he didn\’t generate ideas!
5: When you celebrate mistakes, you make fewer mistakes
Putting pressure on people to always succeed makes mistakes more likely because:
• People who work under pressure are less effective
• People resist reporting bad news
• People close their eyes to signs of trouble
I came across this article by Alexander Kjerulf and felt it might be relevant to the topic under discussion.The author feels that the whole “failure is not an option” thing is just misguided. One needs to honour failure. Peter Drucker had once commented, “If you’re not failing occasionally, you’re not doing anything interesting.”
1: When you celebrate mistakes, you learn more from the mistakes you make
In one company, the CEO was told by a trembling employee, that the company website was down. This was a big deal – this company made most of its sales online, and downtime cost them thousands of dollars an hour.
The CEO asked what had happened, and was told that John in IT had bungled a system backup, and caused the problem. “Well, then,” says the CEO “Let’s go see John!”
When the CEO walked into the IT department everyone went quiet. They had a pretty good idea what wass coming, and were sure it wouldn’t be pretty.
The CEO walks up to John’s desk and asks “You John?”
“Yes” he says meekly.
“John, ” says the CEO, “I want to thank you for finding this weakness in our system. Thanks to your actions, we can now learn from this, and fix the system, so something like this can’t happen in the future. Good work!”
Then he left a visibly baffled John and an astounded IT department. That particular mistake never happened again.
When we can openly admit to screwing up without fear of reprisals, we’re more likely to fess up and learn from our mistakes.
2: You don’ have to waste time on CYA (Cover Your Ass)
Huge amounts of time and energy can be wasted in organizations on explaining why the mistakes that do happen are not my fault. This is pointless.
3: When mistakes are celebrated, you strengthen creativity and innovation
Randy Pausch, was a college professor who became famous after giving his “last lecture” when he’d been diagnosed with terminal cancer.
In his classes, Pausch would give out an award called The First Penguin to the team that took the greatest risk – and failed. The award is inspired by that one penguin out of a whole flock up on dry land who is the first to jump in the water, knowing full well that there may be predators just below the surface. That penguin runs a risk but if no one jumps in first, the whole flock will starve on land.
4: Failure often opens new doors
Also, failure is often the path to new, exciting opportunities that wouldn’t have appeared otherwise. Closing your eyes to failure means closing your eyes to these opportunities.
Just to give you one example: Walt Disney was fired from a newspaper job because he didn\’t generate ideas!
5: When you celebrate mistakes, you make fewer mistakes
Putting pressure on people to always succeed makes mistakes more likely because:
• People who work under pressure are less effective
• People resist reporting bad news
• People close their eyes to signs of trouble