Let's Talk About Mistakes

Teaching my daughter the wrong sequence of notes for guitar lessons. Mistake. Recycling the envelope with my credit card payment. Mistake. Ordering dessert and just about missing the beginning of The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: A Veggie Tales Movie? Mistake. Ok maybe a little bit of design but 1 hour and 31 minutes of talking vegetables, can you blame me? Putting a wool sweater in the dryer. Mistake.

Everybody makes mistakes. What can you do when you make a mistake at work? Ask a Manager takes this question on and lays out a 4-step formula for proactively and professionally addressing mistakes at work: tell your boss what happened - immediately; take responsibility for the mistake; explain how it happened, and most importantly, explain how you plan to ensure it doesn't happen again. 

As a manager, what can you do when employees come to you with a mistake? You can listen. You can assess. If the mistake was the result of a gap in knowledge or of an outdated or poorly planned process, you can provide the knowledge or revise the process. You can read Dan's advice at Great Leadership's about Turning Mistakes into Development. 

Now, consider this. You train, you improve processes, you develop SOPs. You meet to discuss issues. You use mistakes as an opportunity to learn. Yet, in the presence this and of knowledge and experience, mistakes continue to occur. The mistakes you are seeing are not process mistakes. They are mistakes that reflect poor or incomplete thinking. 

Thinking mistakes, for me, are the most difficult to get a firm grasp on. But getting a firm grasp on thinking mistakes is something I must do because with each mistake, I watch our hard earned credibility slip away.

Comments

[Wally Bock]

There are different kinds of "mistakes." The first distinction for me is between true mistakes and experiments. If you make an error of judgment in the course of normal operations, you have made a mistake. If you try something new, it should be an experiment.

The big difference is that whatever you learn from an experiment is a good outcome. If what you try works, great. If not, that's also great. You have, like Edison in the probably-apocryphal story, identified one more thing that doesn't work.

If you're not dealing with an experiment, there are three kinds of mistakes to consider. There are execution mistakes. The person knows what should have been done. It didn't get done. One occurrence should not be an issue. Two should be an invitation for a training conversation. Three or more should be an issue.

There are also judgment mistakes. The person thought they could do X, but they were wrong. See above.

Good people with good intentions will make both of those kinds of mistakes. Mistakes of values, mistakes of the heart are something very different.

We need to be evaluating people on their results, but also on their methods. When we have bosses who make their numbers but exploit their people we have a values problem. In my experience, nasty, exploitive people do not learn that what they're doing is wrong until their life is in shambles. Which means you may have to try to get them to change, but ultimately subject them to Involuntary Career Redirection.

[Lisa]

Great distinctions. For me, I see good people, good intentions, superfast execution, missing details. Your one - two - three occurence statement is helpful. I have been wondering to myself if a manager could be too tolerant of mistakes and the answer is crystal clear to me right now - yes she can.

[Dan]

Lisa –

Thanks for referencing my post. It’s usually very eye-opening for our managers when we coach them how to turn mistakes, and even questions, into development opportunities for their employees. It takes a little more of their time, but it’s so easy to do, doesn’t cost them anything, and the ROI is usually well worth it.

Dan