Our company rewards people for making mistakes

At the end of each month in our townhall meeting of Amitoje India, attended by more than 40 of our senior people, we run a contest which we call “Error of the month”. People volunteer and come to the front of the room, and talk about any mistake or error they made in the last month. It could be as small as creating a wrong invoice, or as big as I missed that detail and cost the company 1 lac rupees, or I lied to my manager about that - really anything they care to share. We usually see around 20-25% people come up every meeting. Nobody prompts anyone else about their mistake, so it’s completely voluntary. And you are only allowed to nominate yourself, and talk about your mistakes - not anyone else’s. Many times the errors that are reported, are things we would never have known had they not told us. This is one of my happiest moments in the company.

After hearing the errors committed, the entire team votes for the “best” error and the person gets a cash prize and genuine applause for having the courage to speak up. The picture of the team member goes up on the board for the rest of the month, along with “team player of the month” and “initiative of the month” - similar competitions we hold during the meeting.

One could imagine this would be terribly damaging for the person’s self-respect, and like a back handed slap - but the effect is quite the opposite. The person is generally more respected for owning up to a mistake (even by their boss), and sharing what they have learned. They never commit the same mistake again and learn a valuable lesson - it’s okay to be wrong. 

This is just one of our practices to help us live by our values - and one of our core values in the team is constant self-development and growth. Tell me how do we grow without making mistakes? If we are not making mistakes, we are staying safe (or lying about them) maybe by following best practices. However, our company is centered around innovation, and in that process, mistakes are natural. 

“To err is human” they say. So we can either encourage mistakes to be made and hidden, or to be shared and learned from and respected. We choose the latter.

We have chosen to work hard to create a great culture and make Amitoje India a great place to work. A lot of you might have seen some amazing products our team has created in the past couple of years. Almost every video I upload grows viral on linkedin without any effort. Some of them have 300 likes and some have 7000+, and comments and appreciation from every part of the world. Every time we demo our products to clients during meetings, they love us for making their lives easy. Our culture encourages innovation and free-thinking, and ofcourse we have some fantastic people who believe in our cause - as a result innovation flows naturally. Many people have asked me how we constantly keep on producing something new and unique every few days. I guess now they will have the answer.

About us: Amitoje India is the most innovative POS display company based in New Delhi, India and offices across the country. We design and manufacture retail display stands and work with the best of the brands (Coca Cola, Pepsico, ITC, Parle, Amul, Mars and many more) in and out of India.

To err is human, to forgive divine,

So you own up to your mistakes

And let me tell you mine.

Tell me how important do you think culture is to have a good working environment ? Would love to hear your thoughts on the above.