My first job interview after qualifying as an accountant, almost thirty years ago, was with Kel Thompson, at that time Managing Director of Cayman Airways. Among many lessons that stay with me from that first interaction was him telling me he expected me to make mistakes, but not to make the same mistake twice. He also cautioned me that it was only through trying things that we could make mistakes, and that the biggest mistake is not to try. With that guidance, I went out and proposed new ideas to try. Some worked, some didn’t, we learned from both (and looked never to repeat a failure!).
This week Fred Wilson blogged “Learning from your mistakes”, noting: “You can’t really learn from your successes. You can try to replicate the wins and sometimes you can and sometimes you can’t. But mistakes – those are powerful learning moments.”, then closing with “There will always be new mistakes to make. It is best not to repeat the ones you’ve already made.”
Earlier this week the latest guest on WhatComesNextLive was Pat Kramer of BDO Canada. Do watch/listen to this, thirty minutes full of exemplary leadership attributes applied in practice under pressure in the pandemic. One repeated theme in what Pat talked about was how much he and the business had learned in the last year, particularly from mistakes they made as well as the successes.
This then reminded me of an earlier WhatComesNext show, where Chris van der Kuyl spoke powerfully of a simple idea to transform education, which included this powerful nugget of wisdom on organisational learning.
If it wasn’t successful, share it with everybody and say why it wasn’t successful. If it was successful share it with everybody and say why you think it was
Chris van der Kuyl, talking about risk, boundaries and entrepreneurialism on WhatComesNextLive, this snippet from his thoughts from 19:25 in.
successful and then do either more of that if it’s been a successful site or, if it’s a bit less successful, your next innovation should take that into account
An old adage is: “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got”. The pandemic has been a massive opportunity, forged from uncertainty and crisis, to try new things, to see what would work, as well as to see what doesn’t work, then to learn from both.
As a leader, there is great power in trying thing and learning from them, whether or not they are successful. Please ask yourself if your people are trying as many new things as they could and then learning from them and sharing what has been learned. If they could do more of this, ask yourself why they are not.
Oh, and be honest about it. Bluntly, often the reason people don’t try is that they are punished for trying something that doesn’t work. The only failure here is not to try, so create space for people to try things and then to learn from them and share what they’ve learned. That way you can take some success from anything as you move on.
I leave you with this thought from the brilliant artistic polymath, Neil Gaiman:
I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something.
So that’s my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.
Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, Do it.
Neil Gaiman