In the last chapter, we covered what is known about ways you can benefit from the past mistakes of others. The topic of this chapter concerns what is known about ways you can benefit from your own past mistakes.
Lifespan researchers have concluded that a history of setbacks, losses, or hardships—if they are handled constructively—gives people not downbeat, damaged, tentative personalities but upbeat, healthy, confident ones. But does the same apply to your professional development, too? Put another way, could a shift in context so that your business takes steps to actively manage—rather than banish—mistakes and setbacks lead to big differences in its overall success and profitability?
Emerging evidence from something called Error Management Training (EMT) suggests that it well might. Of course the critical component of the process lies in the “if handled constructively” stipulation for success. When previous missteps are handled constructively, two major payoffs emerge. Not only will they act as good guides for future improvement, but they can even provide good opportunities for your future influence attempts, too.
Traditional training approaches are typically designed to guide trainees through a learning environment that is based on examples of success and where the elimination of slipups is emphasized and desirable. These conventional methods seem reasonable because errors can disrupt workflow, be time-consuming to fix, and frustrate the trainee as well as their trainer. They might even erode the confidence of both in that trainee’s abilities. However when organizational scientists Nina Keith and Michael Frese examined the results of 24 separate studies, they found the Error Management model, despite running wholly counter to the traditional error-avoidance approach to training, to be far superior.
There are two necessary components to EMT. The first involves urging trainees to actively undertake “to be learned” tasks in order to encounter mistakes and therefore recognize where and how they occur. The second component involves instruction in how best to react, psychologically, once an error is made. One especially important instruction concerns how the trainer provides feedback to trainees. Small changes in the way feedback is delivered—for example, by using phrases such as “Errors are a natural part of the learning process”; “The more errors you make, the more you learn”; and “Errors teach you what you are still able to learn”—are crucial and can make a big difference, because without them mistakes are more likely to be experienced as defeats rather than as guideposts to success. Given the importance of this orientation to successful corporate cultures, it’s no wonder that IDEO, one of the world’s most innovative companies, has a motto of “Fail often in order to succeed sooner.”
But what happens when the goal ceases to be about training optimally for job responsibilities and instead becomes how to execute those responsibilities optimally on the job? Under those circumstances, the first component of Error Management Training—to look for chances to fumble the ball—is far from a winning game plan when dealing with real customers, coworkers, and superiors. However, the second component—thinking of and responding to missteps as learning opportunities—still provides a professional advantage. The advice here is, rather than playing the role of being an error hunter, position yourself in the role of an error opportunist. The error opportunist looks to cash in on any unintended stumble by learning from it in the recognition that both the individual and the organization can profit in the long run—profits that can, according to statistics cited by Professor Frese, turn out to be pretty handsome indeed. Compared to companies with a weak error management culture, those with a strong error management culture are four times more likely to be among the most profitable companies in their industry.
It turns out that managers who take the necessary steps to foster a working environment of error opportunism rather than error hunting can benefit in other ways, too. A while ago a colleague of ours, Brian Ahern, sent us an article from a sales magazine describing the shock that the COO of a global hotel chain got after reviewing the results of the very costly “Seamless Customer Experience” program his company had put into place. It wasn’t the guests who had a seamless stay who reported the highest satisfaction ratings and future loyalty—rather, it was those who experienced a service stumble that was immediately put right by the hotel staff. There are several ways to understand why this occurs. For example, it may be that, after guests know that the organization can efficiently fix mistakes, they become more confident that the same will be true in any future dealings, leaving them with more favorable feelings toward the organization overall. We don’t doubt this possibility, but we have a hunch that another factor is at work too. The remedy may well be perceived by guests as “special assistance,” as something the hotel has gone out of its way to provide. By virtue of the rule for reciprocation, the hotel then becomes deserving of something special in return in the form of superior ratings and loyalty.
At a business conference, one of us overheard support for this reciprocity-based explanation when the general manager of the conference resort hotel related an incident that had occurred that very day. A guest had wanted to play tennis with her two young children, but the two child-size racquets the resort maintained were already in use. So, the general manager had a staffer drive immediately to a local sporting goods store, purchase another pair, and deliver them to his guest within 20 minutes of her request. Afterward, the mother stopped by the general manager’s office and said, “I’ve just booked our entire extended family into this resort for the Fourth of July weekend because of what you did for me.”
Isn’t it interesting that had the resort stocked those additional two children’s racquets from the outset—in order to ensure its guests a “seamless experience”—their availability would not have been viewed as a notable gift or service that warranted special gratitude and subsequent loyalty in return? In fact, the racquets may have hardly registered as a blip on Mom’s resort-experience screen.
What’s the implication for you? Is it a good idea to manufacture thin spots in the ice for clients or coworkers to fall through so you can be there to extricate them? Not at all. That would ultimately lead to the perception that dealing with you often requires some form of rescue. Much preferred is the simple recognition that people’s expectations are perhaps too high and modern business is too complex to be rendered error-free; honest mistakes will occur. The key is to recognize that directing resources (attention, training systems, staff, budgets) toward the utopian goal of preventing all such glitches is likely to be less effective (and much more expensive) than directing resources to the goal of resolving our mistakes and problems quickly and to high levels of satisfaction.
By no means does all this imply that quality control is unimportant. But it’s a fool’s errand to chase performance perfection, because—besides the reality that everyone’s fallibly human after all—“perfection” means so many different things to different people that it can’t feasibly be arranged for ahead of time. Error correction, on the other hand, can be customized to the aggrieved person’s view of what will constitute a satisfactory, and satisfying, outcome.
It seems that it is the unique customizability of the reaction to an error that provides it with the potential to be experienced as a personalized gift or service, placing the giver in a heightened position of influence, paradoxically, due to their gaffe.
In short, problem-free may not be as good in business as problem-freed.