Celebrating Mistakes

Originally published March 16, 2008

Springtime around the Timmerman household gets more exciting each year. My son is now old enough to play in the kids-pitch baseball league. Just like every other kid on the team, he wants to pitch.

So we go outside for a practice session and I squat with my back to the garage door. I have a funny feeling that we're going to need a backstop.

He does pretty well. Eventually, however, he gets a little too excited and tries to throw too hard. The ball sails past me and slams into the garage door with a loud bang.

Here I have a tough situation to handle. My natural inclination is to get angry about the wild pitches and damage to the door. But I also hear the wisdom of Bob Sutton ringing in my head.

Bob Sutton is a professor at Stanford and one of my favorite business gurus. According to Sutton, the best single question for testing an organization's character is: What happens when people make mistakes?

In some organizations, leaders forgive and forget mistakes. This approach makes everyone feel better, but it also means that the same mistakes are likely to occur again and again.

In other organizations, leaders search for someone to blame and humiliate. This approach teaches everyone not to make mistakes. And the best way to avoid mistakes is to try absolutely nothing new or innovative.

This approach also teaches people to cover up their mistakes. Several years ago, Harvard professor Amy Edmondson conducted a study on the relationship between leadership in nursing units and medical errors. She expected to find that teams with better leadership would have fewer errors. Common sense, right?

Instead, she found just the opposite.

Teams with better leadership reported 10 times more errors. When she examined the issue further, she found that teams with poor leadership were more likely to hide errors out of fear. Teams with good leadership, on the other hand, recognized that errors needed to be reported and studied so that they could be prevented in the future.

In rare organizations, leaders forgive and remember mistakes. They recognize that most errors are not committed with the intent to harm the organization. Instead, mistakes represent an opportunity to learn and improve future performance.

Mistakes are especially critical for creativity and innovation to occur. The most innovative companies in the world like 3M and Intuit celebrate mistakes that ultimately lead to better ideas.

One of the most famous mistakes in history was committed by 3M scientist Spencer Silver. He discovered an adhesive that wasn’t very sticky. Instead of hiding this embarrassing mistake, the culture at 3M encouraged him to share his failure with other employees. Another 3M employee wanted a bookmark that wouldn’t fall out of his hymn book and the Post-it Note was born.

There’s an old story that is often attributed to auto maker Henry Ford. One of his vice presidents made an error that cost the company over one million dollars. Assuming that he would be fired, the vice president handed Mr. Ford his resignation letter.

According to the legend, Mr. Ford responded: “I’ve just invested one million dollars in your education. Now get back to work.”

I guess if my son ever thinks he should give up pitching, I’ll tell him: “I’ve invested a garage door in your pitching career. Now grab your glove and let’s play.”