I Err therefore I learn

Learning from our mistakes is a key component of personal and professional growth. By reflecting on and embracing our mistakes, we can develop resilience, adaptability, and a growth mindset that will serve us well throughout our lives.

However, in our society, mistakes are not always accepted easily and are often over-penalized. In schools, assessments focus more on failures than on learning, which can paralyze children with the fear of making a mistake and cause them to avoid participation in class. Despite phrases such as “We learn from mistakes” and “fall twice, get up three times,” we find it difficult to learn from mistakes in everyday life. There is no culture of reviewing errors and extracting learnings from that experience.

It is imperative to value unintentional mistakes we make and instead of cribbing or admonishing ourselves, we should derive lessons learned from each such experience to reduce frustration and inculcate positivity. The measure of perfection in learning is fiction.

Lately, psychological safety has become a buzzword in most workplaces. Although people might understand its significance, they often misunderstand exactly what it is and how to create it. To me, psychological safety is not a matter of relaxing standards, making people comfortable, being nice and agreeable, or showering unconditional praise. Rather, it's about fostering a climate of respect, trust, and openness in which people can raise concerns and suggestions without fear of reprisal. It is the foundation of the learning culture.

In performance cultures, the emphasis on results often undermines psychological safety. When people are punished for failures and mistakes, they become worried about proving their competence and protecting their careers. They learn to engage in self-limiting behavior, biting their tongues rather than voicing questions and concerns – sometimes due to power distance as they are afraid of challenging the big boss. In performance cultures, they also censor themselves in the presence of experts who seem to know all the answers, especially if they lack confidence in their expertise.

Asking "How do you know?" is a question we need to ask more often, both of ourselves and others. The power lies in its frankness. It’s nonjudgmental – a straightforward expression of doubt and curiosity that does not put people on the defensive. While it is important to learn from mistakes, we must also polish our skills to reframe mistakes as an opportunity for growth, including the importance of focusing on the process rather than the outcome.

To build a culture of innovation, organizations must have a clear policy on how to deal with mistakes. It is not about rules and regulations, but an explicit approach to encourage people to take more risks. In most organizations, mistakes equaled incompetency and the normal message passed on to employees is “if you commit a mistake, you will be fired.” However, progressive organizations now realize that mistakes are crucial components of learning and development.

To succeed in a fast-changing world, adaptability to the uncertain and experimentation is critical. Teams that can learn and adapt fast to what the real world throws at them thrive, and this requires making mistakes. When one accepts imperfection as natural, one is better prepared to deal with mistakes

Perfectionism is the worst enemy of innovation. The same happens with the “rightness mindset.”

In elementary schools, we are taught that failing is associated with being dumb. As we grow up, we reinforce the notion that people who make mistakes are failures. That is why everyone focuses their energy on NOT making errors, resulting in innovation and experimentation flying out the window.

Some basic rules on mistakes:

·????????The more afraid people feel about making errors, the more they will make – as per Murphy’s law “if something could go wrong, it will go wrong.”

·????????Fear of being punished encourages people to hide mistakes.

·????????Our double standards about mistakes erode trust.

·????????We must accept mistakes

In the end, I am sharing an excerpt from Barak Obama’s speech:

Some of the most successful people are the ones who have had the most failures, J K Rowlings wrote Harry Potter, her first book was rejected 12 times before it was finally published. Michal Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career but he once said “I have failed over and over again in my life and that’s why I succeeded. These people succeeded because they understood that you can’t let your failures define you, you have to let your failures teach you, you have to let them show you what to do differently next time”