A talk on why hiding mistakes costs teams money and how to build a culture where errors become learning. The speaker argues that public logs of failures help everyone avoid repeating them, and that leaders must go first.
Get used to making what you are doing and what has happened public. Our goal is to create a shared area where we keep a log of all of the things we've learned in the business. And in this case, learning is referring to mistakes because the fact is the best way humans learn is by messing things up and correcting them. But here's where it gets good. You might feel like you're babysitting adults at work, but the fact is you are working with adults, meaning they are capable of learning from other people's experiences rather than just their own. So let me just compare that here. Let's say there's a stove, it is hot and there's a toddler there and you say, hey, don't touch the stove, it's hot. What are the odds that that toddler is going to need to touch that stove to prove for themselves that yes, it's really hot. If they can somehow reach it, that's probably going to happen because toddlers need to have that first hand experience to believe something to be true. Adults, we've been there, we've touched the stove, we've touched the electrical outlet. We know the value of listening to other people's experiences because it can save us pain and suffering. So when it comes to a team environment, by creating this public error area, that's a mouthful. We're basically telling people, hey, don't do this. Touching the stove hurts. Forgetting to update this plugin breaks things. Skipping this detail when invoicing stinks. We are giving this public record of all of the ouchies to avoid. And unlike toddlers, adults will want to know that information to avoid the headache of having to fix those issues for themselves. Does this mean there will never be mistakes? No. But will we be able to prevent silly mistakes because people will be able to learn from others experiences? Yes. And I should say this specific tip is inspired by subscriber Matthew who left the question how do we change our culture to be more process driven? This is the tip that I would say makes the biggest shift and it all starts with one area in your account. While I wouldn't suggest starting off by bringing this up in a group setting because it can sound like you're pointing fingers if you were in a one on one environment. A good question to ask to kind of start discussing this topic is something like hey, I understand we had an issue with this thing. Can you help me understand what exactly happened to cause this issue? I'm not looking to blame or or point fingers. I just want to understand what led to this so we can start moving forward. If you're concerned about this coming off as punitive or punishing for your team, the best way to dismiss that is to start leading by example. So as a CEO, as a manager, as a leader, put your mistakes in there and don't sugarcoat them. Don't put like the oh, I was too perfectionistic. No, this isn't a job interview. We need to actually be honest. Put actual mistakes that you are making big problems as you are solving them into this area so that you can model that it is okay. The majority of the mistakes during this initial period should be from leadership, and over time you'll see that transition to a more equal percentage.
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