Problems are Good: How the worst mistakes present the best opportunities
Written by Joel Levitt
“I err, therefore I am.”
This statement demonstrates that the capacity to get things wrong is not only part of life but might even be proof of it.
How
well does your firm learn from mistakes? Are they discussed and
studied? Or are they swept under the rug? This is a critical question
in a competitive environment. It is critical because the right answer
is not always popular, easy or even obvious. We have been raised in an
increasingly blame-oriented culture, and as a consequence, society does
not support learning from mistakes. Yet when we can learn from them,
they can be rocket fuel for improvements.
In society, error is associated with shame, stupidity, ignorance,
laziness — and even in some cases with psychopathology and moral
degeneracy (from a great book by Katherine Schultz called Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error).
No wonder few people and fewer companies can tolerate mistakes! This
approach views mistakes as toxic waste to be hidden and buried.
Does no one ever want mistakes around them? Not quite. If you are like
me, you want your doctor to have grey hair: you want him or her to have
experience. That means they have seen enough that they won’t be shaken
by anything I present. Where did they get that experience? Did they, as
formative physicians, ever make mistakes? What impact did those
mistakes have — and do they inform the way they practice medicine today?
Mistakes and development
The memory of a mistake is essential in the process of making a great
doctor, a great mechanic — a great anything. When a doctor misses
something important, especially early in their career, it changes them
forever. Until that happens, the relationship between cause and effect
is theory, not reality.
Once a serious mistake is made and processed, the importance of
following protocol, doing all the steps, keeping one’s mind open and
paying attention even when tired or unwell becomes clear. This is true
in fields like medicine and aviation, which study its mistakes
intensively. The essential step is that the person who made the mistake
be allowed to process the mistake and learn the lessons.
But is this true in business and, more specifically, in maintenance?
It is clear that in any company hell-bent on having no mistakes,
employees will hide their mistakes. If you “allow” mistakes (and make a
point of not firing people for honest mistakes), is that the same as
encouraging them? While you don’t want to encourage errors, there is a
space for people to make them and stick around long enough to learn
from them. More importantly, there is a difference between an honest
mistake (like a doctor missing a symptom) and a mistake that is a
consequence of intentional behaviour (such as a doctor missing a
symptom while intoxicated on the job).
Assignment
Talk with your team about what they think about mistakes. Ask them what
they believe the company thinks about mistakes. Just about whatever
someone says about mistakes is actually part of the culture. After you
gather people’s comments, ask the question, “Is this item consistent
with an organization wanting to learn from mistakes and excel at their
business?” Is your firm where mistakes are like rocket fuel or are
mistakes more like toxic waste?
Are mistakes related to success?
One leading consultant, Landmark Education’s Helen Gilhooly, says if
you want to increase your success rate, increase your failure rate. In
other words, success comes from trying things, seeing what happens and
learning. Doing more things means you’ll make more mistakes, but you’ll
be learning more. Can you imagine how crazy you would sound if you went
about solving a problem by making mistakes as your major strategy?
Where does this leave us? We need to build a process where mistakes are
the rocket fuel of innovation. This clearly sounds strange.
3M is a company known for its high level of innovation, and one popular
product — the Post-it Note — was based on a complete failure. A chemist
was trying to formulate an adhesive, but the adhesive he came up with
failed the use he had in mind because it was too weak. It also had the
unusual property of sticking weakly to things and then was able to
re-stick several times after it was removed. Of course, when he
realized what it could be used for and managed to sell it to his
management, it was a home run.
This company has an environment where mistakes are appreciated for what
they are: stepping-stones to home runs. But the whole culture is built
on the acceptance that, to make home runs, you must also strike out.
These are the rocket-fuel mistakes.
Then there is the toxic waste. A popular book in safety circles, Trevor Klentz’s Why Accidents Happen and Why Companies Don’t Learn From Them,
makes a persuasive argument that companies can have horrible
catastrophes and promise to clean up their acts — but when visited a
few years later, they are still making the same mistakes.
The million-dollar question
Ignoring safety rules, assuming a gauge is broken, being drunk, tired
or otherwise compromised on the job, and not knowing what to do are all
part of a toxic mistakes culture.
When we investigate mistakes for the purpose of learning from them, we
have to decide if there was honest intent to not make a mistake. Once
we have taken a position, we can ferret out the lessons learned.
What are some of the reasons people make “honest” mistakes? Here is a
list (which is not exhaustive) of most of the reasons I can identify:
Of this list, which ones can we detect or manage? A bunch can be
managed by planning the job; verifying skills, aptitude and training
catches others; and supervisors noticing someone is not fit to work due
to a mental or physical condition. The rest are truly one-off events.
In those cases, we would want to design the underlying system to be
more robust to be able to tolerate mistakes.
Finally, there is a cultural shift that is needed. Start a discussion
of uncovering attitudes toward mistakes. Find out what is already in
your culture about mistakes.
How
well does your firm learn from mistakes? Are they discussed and
studied? Or are they swept under the rug? This is a critical question
in a competitive environment. It is critical because the right answer
is not always popular, easy or even obvious. We have been raised in an
increasingly blame-oriented culture, and as a consequence, society does
not support learning from mistakes. Yet when we can learn from them,
they can be rocket fuel for improvements.
