RISK LOOKING STUPID

If success is influenced by learning to laugh at your mistakes, then sometimes, I would be absolutely hilarious. In my entrepreneurial career, I’ve made many mistakes. In fact, I’ll admit that some of them were world-class doozies. 

But one of the most valuable lessons about personal and professional success I ever learned was this simple thought: A mistake is only a mistake if you don’t learn from it. So, at the risk of looking stupid, I did the unthinkable; instead of feeling sorry for myself, I tried to figure out what was done wrong. Then I could create a plan to prevent these things from happening again. I forced myself to admit that I made the mistake (gasp). I then begrudgingly admitted that I wasn’t sure what to do about it. And then the unspeakable, I asked others for guidance. 

Look, I know that there are people in the world who wake up every morning with the intention of criticizing, berating, and just being a jerk in order to make their day. And really, they can kiss my backside. As far as I care, these dolts can go pound sand. But, knowing that they’re out there, I learned to play their little game and risk looking stupid by being rabidly committed to learning and improvement. While others were looking for someone to blame, or pouting, or making excuses, or so busy blaming themselves, pulling hair and gnashing teeth, I learned to stop, brush myself off, and ask myself, ok, big boy, what did you learn from that screw up? And who do I know that might help me make better decisions in the future? What can I learn from this? 

The fact is, billions of dollars are squandered every year because mistakes are mishandled. Old-school executives react by halting progress; they form a committee to find out who made the mistake, so they can single out, point fingers, and find a convenient scapegoat. 

This tired practice achieves nothing other than slowing business, eliminating existing and ongoing entrepreneurial endeavors, wasting valuable person-hours in their pursuit, and, ultimately, yielding no lessons. I quickly learned that successful entrepreneurial organizations and individuals openly accepted the perceived risk of looking foolish when a mistake was made. They reviewed, learned, and moved on, never letting the situation happen again. When I discovered the power of this, I made a blood oath to accept mistakes as steppingstones to success and to welcome the opportunity to learn and move forward, thereby accelerating my personal and professional development. 

 I learned to use a four-step process that, over the last 40 years, I’ve taught around the world. When you use this process, we replace blame with the need to learn and prevent the problem from recurring. Here’s how it works. We have three questions, followed by a final step.

Question 1: What Happened? Be very clear and concise in understanding what actually happened.

Question 2: Why Did It Happen? What mistakes were made that caused the situation? Again, we need to know this, not to point fingers and chastise, but to understand what we need to change or tweak clearly.

Question 3: What Needs To Happen So This Situation Never Happens Again? Basically, what is the solution? We problem-solve now, and once we understand the solution, that new knowledge is woven into the manuals. It is now taught in onboarding sessions, and everyone is aware of the new rules. 

STEP 4: Proclaim that the situation is DONE! We now have new knowledge that will allow us to refocus on our goal, and hopefully, we will never make that mistake again. 

All mistakes, failures, and flubs are opportunities to learn and improve yourself or your business. And your ability to rise above playing the blame game is a powerful differentiation from a traditional business mentality. When we learn from mistakes, we can focus on achieving our total goal, becoming a high-growth entrepreneurial endeavor that is constantly evolving.

Remember that a person is great, not because they haven’t failed.

A person is great because failure hasn’t stopped them. 

Forget about how bad or good your day was today. What did you learn that will make you smarter and stronger tomorrow? 

I’ll be waiting for an answer.