Mistakes
My brother recently sent me a documentary about the UK band Depeche Mode. It was a great trip down memory lane (which is always nice to take) and one statement really struck a chord with me.
When asked about their creative process, former band member Alan Wilder said, ‘we don’t try to eliminate mistakes’, with the inference being that a) nothing will ever be perfect anyway; b) it’s only through mistakes that we learn and c) sometimes your mistakes can actually enhance the work that you’re doing.
This is great advice. In my experience so much time is wasted trying to generate the perfect document, process or else to find technical ways to mitigate every risk. However, the reality is - as humans - we’re prone to mistakes.
A good example would be cybersecurity. A recent study found that human error is the major contributing cause in 95% of all security breaches. Yet everyone of the organisations who were attacked will have had processes in place for keeping its information secure.
We’re human, we make mistakes and organisations should focus less on perfection and more on creating an environment where people not only understand that it’s ok to make a mistake every now and then but also that they’ll help them to learn from it.
This safety is often lacking in cultures everywhere, leading to endless emails copying in a cast of thousands or meetings to check every box and when we’re under stress, we’re more likely to make mistakes.
That’s not to say that we should permit people to make repeated mistakes without recourse, however, nobody sets out to make mistakes, so empathy should always be the starting point for helping people to learn.
Our greatest sources of learning are still the mistakes that we make and the experiences we have, so instead of trying to eliminate them, we should embrace them instead. People are people and will always make mistakes.
