Learning From Your Mistakes

Learning From Your Mistakes

Making Mistakes

We all make mistakes every day. A very astute mentor of mine once said to me “If I get 51% of my decisions right today then I will have done outstandingly well”. So if even the best of us are getting so many things wrong how come some people seem to soar when it comes to achievement? How come there are those people out there that seem to go from success to success?

The difference between most people who make mistakes and a compound improver is the ability to take what they learned from that mistake and put it to good use.
What people usually do when making a mistake

When most people make a big mistake they tend to do one of these things: -

1. Come up with a hundred excuses as to why things didn’t work out and never take responsibility for their own mistakes. Excuses like it wasn’t my fault my business went down the tubes it was my customers not paying me, or the tax man taking too big a bite, or I had a great product but the banks wouldn’t finance it.

2. Tell people they tried that once and it was rubbish. You know the type, they are the people who tried to set up a network marketing company once, but at the end of the month they didn’t achieve all that was promised so they gave up. There are thousands opportunities to start a network marketing company – and these people tried one, once, for a month then came to the decision they were ALL scams because their stab at things didn’t quite work.

3. Look back on a mistake with a sense of relief and vow never to do that again! When really all they had to turn failure into success is make a small adjustment to how they were doing things before. And quiet often that is all it takes, but the biggest travesty is that they will never attempt it again!

Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison is famous for saying the following quote when accused of being mad by a close colleague when the colleague was narrowly killed on the 700th attempt to make a light bulb. The college said to Edison “Why can’t you see! It’s impossible to create a light bulb; you have tried 700 times now and failed every single time. To which Edison replied: -

“I have not failed 700 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”

What a compound improver does when making a mistake

Whilst a compound improver will take the chance to look at the mistake and reflect on what went wrong and – more importantly what can they do in future that not only avoids the problems the last mistake caused but how going forward they can make the best of their experience.
Tips on turning a mistake into good experience

So when you next find your self in a difficult position due to a mistake you made recently ask yourself these questions: -

1. Take responsibility for the mistake. Before you ask any of these questions, take responsibility. This is your mistake and you need to put things right, no one is going to do that for you – so take action to put things right yourself.

2. What went wrong? What exactly went wrong? Who, what, why and how. Don’t dwell on this too long but it helps to have a clear picture of how the mistake came about.

3. Was what went wrong in my control? Could I have done anything myself to prevent this occurring. If I could what was it. If not move on.

4. What could I have done to fix things? In this specific situation how could I have gotten things to work instead of things ending in failure?

5. What will I do differently next time? This should really be the summary of the previous questions. Work out what you could have done differently and apply it next time you find yourself faced with a similar situation.

Reflect on the answers and you will quickly find yourself turning mistakes into real opportunities to learn and grow

And remember: Good judgement is usually the result of experience; experience is usually the result of bad judgement.

Living by a code of conduct

Living by a code of conduct.

The other day I was at the office when a call got put through to my desk. It was a call from one of our suppliers – a girl who had been chasing me for a couple of weeks about a new feature in their software. Frankly I had no interest in the new feature and was ready to make another excuse not to take the call.

But then I thought to myself “Hang on, you make sales calls for a living. How would it make you feel if this happened to you?” And then I remembered something from the past about a code of conduct I created for myself. One of the primary points was: -

· Make someone’s day, don’t break someone’s day

If I didn’t take this call would I be living by my code of conduct? No is the answer – so I took the call.

Another point on the code of conduct was: -

· Inject humour into my day at every opportunity

So I have here a girl chasing me about a feature of the software I wasn’t really interested in. “How can I make her laugh so hard it makes her whole afternoon?” I won’t go into the details but lets just say that my willingness to be playful and ability to slip ‘double entendres’ into almost any sentence – made her day! Even though she didn’t come away with the result she wanted she thanked me for the enjoyable conversation. And it brightened up my day too, I had fun, I felt alive! And I went back to the task I was doing with renewed vigour.

But it got me thinking about my code of conduct again. For me the code of conduct defines you as a person. It sets how you will act or your default behaviour for situations and can help you enormously when making decisions. I also find it useful to focus on when you in difficult or tiresome situations.

My code of conduct is as follows: -

· Inject humour into my day at every opportunity

· Always ask the questions; Where can I add value? And How can I add value

· Smile at anyone who makes eye contact with you

· Make someone’s day, don’t break someone’s day

· Never waste a moment

· Never be afraid to ask a question

· Question everything

· Try to think out of the box

· Make every day a school day

It’s a simple task that should take less than an hour, but here’s the kicker – EVERONE HAS ALREADY DONE THIS AT A SUBCONSCIOUS LEVEL.

By taking the time to look at your code that you have and consciously focusing on whether the code is helping you or hindering you, you can take out the points that don’t work for you and install new points that will help you.

From now on I will be looking at my code of conduct every morning before I start the day. And living by it.

So, take the time out to create your own code of conduct and if you live by yours I can promise you, you will feel alive too.