In July, we had our semi-annual TAB (The Alternative Board) Convention in Denver. One session involved the top franchisees and them telling their biggest mistakes. What a great way to learn and grow your business.
I first read about supporting fast failures in Tom Peter’s book “Thriving on Chaos”. He quotes Soichiro Honda, the founder of Honda Motor as saying. “Many people dream of success. To me success can only be achieved through repeated failure and introspection. In fact, success represents the 1 percent of your work which results only from the 99 percent that is called failure.”
Encouraging mistakes and risks is not an easy matter. Nothing demoralizes an employee more than knowing that the slightest failure could jeopardize their entire career. To be an effective leader of a company, one must encourage risk, and invite dissent. Your people are not giving you their best or learning if they are afraid to speak up.
Learning from the mistakes and not repeating them is the critical factor. So how can a business owner encourage the risk and invite dissent?
- Have meetings in which everyone comes in with the biggest error of the month.
- You must first announce your biggest error and what you learned from it.
- Actively and publicly reward people for their errors and the correction of those errors.
- Encourage your people to play the “Devils Advocate” with present policies.
One final thought, inaction is the critical enemy of an organization. This is caused by the fear of making a mistake. Please do not hesitate to respond to this blog, or drop me a personal e-mail, if you would like to discuss this further.
God knows that all of us makes mistakes so it is a good advise to learn from the mistakes and if nothing else avoid repeating them. Looking forwards for your future advise.
Posted by: Avi kagan | August 08, 2008 at 07:11 AM