The Sweet Spot Between a Pat on the Back and a Slap on the Wrist

Most of the time, we want to avoid mistakes, but are there times when mistakes are actually good? When I speak to my team members, I tell them my leadership philosophy is to “optimize mistakes.” They usually give me a confused look because nobody talks like that—until I explain what I mean. This approach was triggered by a memorable experience I had with my leader.

There was a time when my team and I had achieved over 90% on a key performance indicator. We presented the results to our senior leader, and I was expecting our hard work to be commended and even celebrated. Instead, my leader gave me a surprising comment: "Eugene, I don’t know whether to give you a pat on the back or a slap on the wrist."

At first, I was caught off guard. Immediately, my mind was swirling with different possibilities. Firstly, I thought, maybe 90% was still not good enough. If that were the case, I was working for an exceptionally tough leader with incredibly high standards. Or maybe the indicator itself was wrong, and if that were the case, we had a bigger problem on our hands. Were we tracking success based on a flawed metric? If so, we’d need to revisit how we evaluated performance altogether.

These two options weighed on my mind: Was it an issue of not meeting exceedingly high standards, or were we looking at success through the wrong lens? This dilemma left me questioning what our next step should be.

This reminded me of Tim Harford’s TED Talk, Trial, Error, and the God Complex. Harford argued that leaders often fall prey to what he called the "God complex"—the belief that they have the answers in situations that are far more complex than they realize. He explained that the world is full of intricate and unpredictable problems that can’t be solved with sheer confidence or conventional wisdom. Instead, Harford suggested that real progress comes from embracing trial and error.

He emphasized that through trial and error, leaders confront the reality that failure is not only inevitable but essential for learning. Rather than pursuing a “perfect” solution from the start, the most effective leaders allow themselves and their teams to make small, manageable mistakes. These mistakes provide the insights needed to adapt and innovate over time. Harford’s message was clear: success doesn’t come from believing you’re always right, but from staying flexible, experimenting with different approaches, and learning from what didn’t work. He cited examples from science and business, showing that many breakthroughs only happened because leaders were willing to admit they didn’t have all the answers.

Harford’s argument resonated with me, particularly how that encounter with my leader has shaped my leadership philosophy. When I tell my team, "Optimize mistakes; don't minimize them," people listening to this for the first time often look at me in disbelief, until I explain that there are two types of mistakes: careless and avoidable errors, and mistakes made through experimentation. Minimize the former, but embrace the latter, because if there are no errors, it means the team is not trying to innovate.

Back to my story, I realized that my leader’s comment wasn’t just about hitting the number—it was about making sure we didn’t fall into the trap of playing it safe. Because the KPI was related to the cases we prosecuted people for offenses, his point was that, while it looked like we were doing a great job, we could have achieved such a high KPI because we were playing it safe—only taking on cases we were confident we could win. This cautious approach could have meant we were avoiding taking people to task when we should have, just to maintain high success numbers. He then challenged us to adjust the KPI to a range of 80-90%, which would encourage us to take more risks, knowing we wouldn’t always win, but ensuring we didn’t play it too safe.

As leaders, we should actively encourage our teams to experiment, stretch their boundaries, and take calculated risks. Leadership is about finding that balance, just like using a bow in archery—pull too hard, and the string will snap; don’t pull enough, and the arrow won’t fly far. By fostering a culture where experimentation and learning from mistakes are encouraged, we will unlock our team’s potential and achieve truly meaningful outcomes.