Making the Most of Mistakes

When was the last time you celebrated a mistake? If you're like me, you probably never have. The funny thing is I'm starting to realize that just as important as celebrating success, mistakes ought to be celebrated as well. This is specially true in the corporate world. People in organizations need to start developing a fascination with what doesn't or didn't work.

It's really a matter of perspective. A forward-thinking company will view and celebrate mistakes as opportunities for learning. This doesn't mean that they are enjoying the mistakes they made, but merely realizing that they have something to learn from it. Once that learning is discovered then it's time to celebrate the mistake.

Just to nail down the point: there's a story about IBM's Tom Watson being asked if he was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost IBM $600,000. To this he replied, " No! I just spent $600,000 training the guy. Why on earth would I want someone else to benefit from his training and experience?" This is where the learning starts.

The nugget I get from this is that while most leaders/managers are tempted to take the easy way out and let a member of his/her team go after making a mistake or a failure-we should not. Unless the mistake was immoral, or completely against what the company stands for then we would do well to look at it from another angle and consider it an investment that will inevitably pay off in the future. Most likely in the form of no mistakes of the same nature being made.