mistakes

This is from the autobiography of Four Seasons founder Isadore Sharp, "Four Seasons: The Story of a Business Philosophy." Four Seasons has an unparalleled reputation for customer service. 

When Toronto’s Globe and Mail newspaper ran a story on drug-addled porn actor cannibal murderer Luke Magnotta a few weeks ago, it used a photo of the guy holding a bottle of Labatt beer. The company objected, issuing a statement that the image was “highly denigrating to our brand” and threatening legal action if it wasn’t swapped for a non-branded shot. A torrent of snarky Tweets ensued and then Labatt retracted its threat.

It’s happened to all of us. We think we’re logged into one account, when actually we’re logged into another. We think we’re sending a Direct Message, when actually we’re sending a a message to the world. Or maybe we just don’t think and regret saying something. Whether you’re an individual or a brand, Tweeting something you shouldn’t have can be a cause of concern, panic and, often, inertia. What should you do? Ignore it? Apologise? Do you risk making things worse?

It has been a spectacular year for books about mistakes and learning from them. Here’s the list of must-haves:

1. Brilliant Mistakes, Paul Schoemaker. Five years after publishing a terrific HBR article on the subject, Schoemaker celebrates mistakes as, in Joyce’s words, “portals of discovery,” a way of navigating through a largely unpredictable world.

David Sherwin, a Senior Interaction Designer at Frog Design, has complied a list of the top 10 mistakes design businesses make. This presentation is a must read for anyone who runs or owns a design business of any kind, as well as those thinking of starting out on their own entrepreneurship venture.

It’s always refreshing to hear mistake stories from companies whose successes have given them mythical status. Consider Google. There have been so many stories written about their engineering prowess (here & here), their unique culture (here & here), etc., that it’s easy to view them as mistakes (Though it’s fair to say their public image has taken a bit of a beating recently.)

Walk into a Barnes and Noble you can find dozen of books on innovation. There are books from teaching the ‘how to” to creative thinking”. Not many good ones simply because the subject is a moving target with rules being broken and created everyday, existing tools are getting obsolete, and best practices are often worst practices. Much that is held as common wisdom regarding how purposeful or successful innovation happened is wrong. This is not to say that all organizations are not innovative; obviously many are not thanks to our management systems and education.

In Managing by Mistakes, I wrote about the power of learning from mistakes. Some of the most successful individuals in different fields credit relentless focus on even small mistakes with their high achievement. Researchers at Columbia University divided student subjects into two groups, “grade hungry” and “knowledge hungry” based on a short survey, reports Newsweek’s NurtureShock column, and then tested them with general knowledge questions.

Management gurus have often suggested that failure should be rewarded (if the individual was trying something new), or at least not punished. We all know the problems that develop when employees become fearful and conservative – creativity is stifled, and performance suffers.