Win Wisdom From Finding Fumbles

My son’s toys taught me about learning.

As my son started to cry, I raced over to his playpen.

“Hey, what’s wrong, champ?” I asked.

My son attempted to throw another wooden block out of the playpen, but it was too heavy. The crying grew louder.

“Hey, hey - I know it feels frustrating when reality doesn’t behave as we expect.”

I handed him a lighter toy to throw. Chuckles erupted as it sailed smoothly out of the playpen, and into my wife’s face.

Something in my head clicked.

In organisations, reality often doesn’t behave as we expect either. We might set sales targets, only to cause our sales team to sell unnecessary products to customers. Or we might kick off more work to keep staff busy, only to cause traffic jams and multitasking - slowing everything down.

Mistakes are inevitable because reality is more complex than we can comprehend. As Lao Tzu reminded us, “Existence is infinite, not to be defined”.

Unfortunately, the longer the delay between our actions and their visible results, the harder it is to learn from our mistakes.

Many organisations attempt to shorten this delay to make mistakes easier to see. In manufacturing, we may use an Andon Cord. In software development, continuous integration. In cooking, tasting as you go.

Suggests Ackoff: “As everyone knows, we learn from our mistakes. But we have to know that we have made one before we can learn from it. Unfortunately, in the gap between making a decision and becoming aware of its results we often fail to recognise a mistake because our memory plays tricks on us.”

However, in many cases we can’t make the mistakes easier to see, and we must instead look harder.

Suggests Drucker: “Whenever you do something of significance, whenever you are making an important decision, and especially whenever you are making a decision about people (that is your most important decision), you write down what you expect the results will be. Then, nine months later or a year later, you look at it. And then you will see very, very soon what you are good at. You will see very, very soon what you need to learn, where you need to improve. And you can also see very, very soon where you are simply not gifted.”

The takeaway? Mistakes are guaranteed, but learning isn’t. Maximise learning by making mistakes easier to see, or by looking harder - whilst keeping an eye out for flying toys.

Note: This article was inspired by Drucker’s The Drucker Lectures, Ackoff’s Management in Small Doses, and Crichton’s Travels.