Parden My Misteaks?

“All men make mistakes, but only wise men learn from their mistakes.”  Winston Churchill

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTITIONER

Title: Learn from the Worst

Competency: leadership, self-development, managing self

Who benefits: anyone

Consultant Usage: great stories for coaches and trainers

What’s it about? Mistakes, who needs them?  Actually we all do.  Nothing worth doing goes in a straight line from A to Z.  There are zigs and zags … minor errors and big goofs. 

I spend a fair amount of time writing.  I wish I could write in a straight line.  One time through and done.  Doesn’t work that way.  I think my middle name is “Redo”.  But I would like to think that as I reread words that were absolutely brilliant when they came out of my head and are absolute nonsense on paper … well, I would like to think I am learning.  Throwing out wasted words isn’t a waste if I grow from the experience.

A mild digression if I may.  I love mystery and thriller books.  I was reading one the other day.  The bad guy had just set off a deadly explosion.  He was speeding away and was worried about what direction the deadly gas would travel.  The author has him put his finger out the window to test for wind direction.  Car travelling at high speed!  What was the author thinking?  Who is his editor?  Even a dog with his head out the window knows the only direction the wind can come from.

Popular crime fiction author.  Bad writing mistake.  Hope he learns from it.  But no real harm done. 

There was another story floating around many years ago.  In all honesty it was probably one of those myths that gets started and won’t die.  Still, it is a great story.  Employee at IBM made a 6 million dollar mistake.  Gets called into the Chairman’s office.  Stands in front of the Chairman in the classic hat-in-hand pose looking down. 

Chairman says “Son, you know what you have done?”  Employee says “Yes sir, I have cost the company $6,000,000.  I suppose I am here so you can fire me.”

Chairman says “Fire you?  Son we have just invested $6,000,000 in your development.  I called you in to say that with that kind of investment, we are expecting big things from you.”

Ah were we all to be treated so kindly. 

Bob Sellers has written an enthralling book about mistakes.  Not just any mistakes, but big time goofs made by big time Goofs (okay, they really aren’t Goofs, but that line was too good to pass up).  The short title of the book is Forbes Best Business Mistakes.  It is, simply, about how senior business leaders made mistakes, learned from them and turned them into Success with a capital “S”. 

It is a story book.  If you like success stories … well in this case failure stories leading to future successes, then this book is for you.  BS writes without a lot of bs.  His stories are entertaining as well as enlightening. 

The author also takes pains to stress that some mistakes just aren’t acceptable.  He cites his time living near Venice Beach, California.  One holiday he was on the beach observing the (in)famous juggler who was juggling running chain saws.  The author reckons the juggler is allowed one mistake and then he performs with a handicap.  Two mistakes and he is out of business.

Who would think to put that in a book?

Catch you later.
[tags] leadership, self-development, managing self, mistakes, learning from mistakes, envisia, envisia learning, bill bradley, william bradley, bradley[/tags]

Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley (mostly) retired after 35 years in organizational consulting, training and management development. During those years he worked internally with seven organizations and trained and consulted externally with more than 90 large and small businesses, government agencies, hospitals and schools.