How To Make Mistakes And Still Be A Winner

Making mistakes is not a lot of fun. However, since it’s only human to make mistakes, why not try to make this human feature work for you?

But first, let’s look at some of the mistakes that people fear most. Why? Because the fear of failure is a great power that often limits great ideas, plans and intentions. Know thy enemy!

Caïn by Henri Vidal. More familiarly for the youth
today: Facepalm from 1896

What is an epic fail?

Epic fails are the worst mistakes to turn positive. An epic fail, in my opinion, is a mistake made by a person or people who either encounter a lot of bad luck while trying to perform an action, or – most likely - they failed to plan properly and to make sure they cover as many foreseeable scenarios in their planning as humanly possible. Sometimes the failure is also easy to see from the outside before it happens, because the failure prospect is so obvious.

How to avoid epic failures?

If planning is adequate, the risk of having an epic fail on one's hands is mitigated. It may just turn out to be a minor failure or not a great success. Or simply a success. Plan, check, imagine, check, plan. Don’t be afraid to crowdsource. If you are in charge of something that you fear might turn into a huge and humiliating failure, make sure you get fresh, competent eyes to see the plans, find the flaws and loopholes, to draw up worst case scenarios and overall see whether your plans are water tight and feasible. If others think that your plan is ludicrous and bound to fail, you might want to return to the drawing board. 

The biggest mistakes I’ve seen people do is not ask for help. The idea that one has to do everything by themselves from start to finish, is a human weakness. Get over it! You’re not necessarily the best person to proof read your work or plans. Let someone else evaluate your work and listen to what they say.

If you have trouble letting people evaluate (and possibly criticize) your work, you are bound to fail. No way around it.

Feedback is the breakfast of champions.

- Ken Blanchard

What is a damage maximizing mistake?

Well… several examples come to mind. Maybe one would be that there has already been a failure and – as human – one tries to downplay the failure by doing one of the big no-no’s (that definitely don’t work in a corporate environment), consider these as damage maximizers :

• Blame someone else 
• Blame the circumstances 
• Pretend you had nothing to with it 
• Insist that you knew it would never work, but the others didn’t listen (most likely because you never said so, and it never occurred to you) 
• Try to fix it in a way that you know won’t work 
• Try to pretend it never happened   

Image credit: BristleKRS on Flickr

(By the way, looking for that "no problem flow chart", I stumbled upon another in a blog by Rob McNelly, follow the link to his blog about mistakes).

If you were involved with whatever failed, you are doomed if you used the previous escapes. Better update your resume and find someone else to recommend you than your current boss. 

What if nobody found out yet?

Well, let’s presume there is a mistake looming in the background and you are just hoping for nobody to ever find out. You might be thinking of great ways to hide it forever… maybe a tank truck full of concrete? 

Yeah, right! The worst thing to do in an attempt to mitigate risks would be to hide your mistakes. Make sure the person or people who need to know, will know. A good employee can admit in making (even a big) mistake and take the consequences, fix it and learn from it. An employee who is found out later to have made and hid a huge mistake will probably not work there for much longer. Go back to previous step of updating your resume, STAT.

Well, how to benefit from a mistake?

There are always valuable lessons in mistakes. If it’s yours, share it when it’s fixed and let others learn from the investigation and remedial actions that need to made not to repeat it. If it’s someone else’s, ask it to be shared but avoid hindsight commentary.

Only a mistake shared is unlikely to be repeated. If it’s left untold, it’s likely that someone else right next to you might just do the same mistake next week.
Suck it up and be a hero; share your mistakes!

Errare humanum est, sed in errare perseverare diabolicum

-Seneca the Younger

"To make mistakes is human, but to repeat them is diabolical"

Remember to give credit where credit is due, if someone else helped you fix the mistake either beforehand or after it all hit the fan. Nothing is better to make sure you will get help in the future, too.

For those that just can't sit still to endure reading all the way through, here's the recap:

1. Don’t do everything all by yourself, let someone check
2. Plan well, and check (crowdsource when applicable)
3. Be honest (most of all to yourself!)
4. Appreciate feedback
5. Give credit where credit is due
6. Work as hard as you can to do it right the first time, every time.  If you still fail with all the precautions listed here, you can fail with belief that it just wasn’t written in the stars.
7. (Also consider reading actual newspaper articles, if you find blogs too long)

Thanks for reading.  

You can share your thoughts in the comments section (well, not really, you still have to type them in). If it’s enabled. I reserve the right to change my mind about wanting your opinions, so keep it clean.