Submitted by Realiseyourdreams on Fri, 2006-10-27 12:41.Small Business

Tom Peters

It was a revelation to me when someone suggested that mistakes were really valuable. I was one of those people who would beat myself up mentally every time I made a mistake. What happens in so many organisations is that someone makes a mistake and they are berated for it – even disciplined. The result is that if people make mistakes they cover them up, and that can lead to quite serious consequences for those organisations. The recently reported major fire on a Northumberland Chemical site was due to a mistake that had been covered up. The sort of culture that causes people to hide their mistakes can cost those organisations thousands of pounds (and in this latter reported case millions).
The classic well quoted mistakes (one could also call them failures) are those by Thomas Edison who made over 1,000 different tests (some reports say 2,000) to find the right filament for the light bulb he was inventing. He is reputed to have been asked why he didn’t give up and he responded with the explanation that he now had well over a thousand ways in which he should not attempt to do what he was trying to do.
It has been pointed out that if you don’t have failures it means you aren’t doing anything, and if you aren’t doing anything how can you have any successes? Mistakes and failure are fundamental to learning. Does a baby give up when it is learning to walk? It falls on its bottom, gets up and tries again – and again – and again.
If you can’t make mistakes you can’t make anything
Indeed making mistakes is the quickest way to learn. If you want to get technical, what happens in our brains is that every time we have any new experience the brain sets up ‘learning connections’. The unconscious mind registers all the ways ‘not’ to do things and adds them to its armoury of knowledge. This armoury of experiences and successes and failures grows until we die.
So what is the lesson for small and large businesses? For a start you cannot show someone a new activity and expect him or her to remember what to do without practice, or to be able to perform a skill without repetition.
Try this experiment. Move the rubbish bin you have near to your desk to a different position. Notice just how many times you have to think about it in order to throw your rubbish into the newly placed bin. The mind needs practice to assimilate new information and skills.
If you want your business to grow, trust your people. Encourage your people to be creative. Recognise that they will make mistakes and help them to acknowledge them and learn from them. And recognise too that your organisation will benefit enormously when you allow the use of initiative. Your people will come up with valuable ideas. They will feel fulfilled and your organisation will gain. It is a win win situation.

Realise your dreams with Penny Vingoe
For more information look at the website: www.learntolearn.co.uk