5 Ways to Make the Most of Your Mistakes

Management teams, expansion stage CEOs and operational support people all make mistakes. The successful people make mistakes but learn from them. So, how do I make the most of my mistakes?!

First, figure out what type of mistake you made. According to Scott Berkun‘s How to learn from your mistakes, there are 4 types of mistakes.

• Stupid: Absurdly dumb things that just happen. Stubbing your toe, dropping your pizza on your neighbor’s fat cat or poking yourself in the eye with a banana.
• Simple: Mistakes that are avoidable but your sequence of decisions made inevitable. Having the power go out in the middle of your party because you forgot to pay the rent, or running out of beer at said party because you didn’t anticipate the number of guests.
• Involved: Mistakes that are understood but require effort to prevent. Regularly arriving late to work/friends, eating fast food for lunch every day, or going bankrupt at your start-up company because of your complete ignorance of basic accounting.
• Complex: Mistakes that have complicated causes and no obvious way to avoid next time. Examples include making tough decisions that have bad results, relationships that fail, or other unpleasant or unsatisfying outcomes to important things.

Stupid and simple mistakes are boring. We will all do stupid things like stub our toes or make poor decisions that turn out to be mistakes. There is not much to learn from these types of mistakes. To make the most of these mistakes, learn from them quickly and do not dwell on the mishap/mistake.

Involved mistakes take effort to amend or change the behaviors that led to the mistake. To make the most of these types of mistakes, you need to first admit that there is something you need to change in order to not make that mistake again. We tend to make involved mistakes over and over again because we don’t like to admit failure nor make the effort to change habits. Sometimes, you will need to ask for outside help. The main lesson with involved mistakes is to learn your behaviors and work with yourself on changing the habits or decisions that led to the mistake.

Complex mistakes are ones that you could not necessarily predict. There are not always clear reasons why the mistake occurred. Scott uses a great example of a floating oil rig dormitory (read his article for full information). The rig flipped over and killed 100 people. They finally figured out what the initial mistake was after a long investigation. The more complex a mistake, the more likely it can be broken down into stupid and simple mistakes leading up to the complex mistake.

“No amount of analysis can replace your confidence in yourself,” Scott writes. “When you’ve made a mistake, especially a visible one that impacts other people, it’s natural to question your ability to perform next time. But you must get past your doubts. The best you can do is study the past, practice for the situations you expect, and get back in the game.”