Make no mistake! Learn from them
`Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.'
- George Santayana.
Mistakes are things everyone is afraid to commit and dare not accept or commit. However despite all efforts, they have a strange way of seeping into our lives, messing up our work and leaving us guilty. Sometimes we laugh at them, sometimes we ignore them, sometimes we ponder over them and at times even disown them. Whatever we might do, they are there to stay. They remain hidden in some recess of our minds, resurfacing occasionally to give us that prick of "Oh! I shouldn't have done that!" "Not again!"
What if there were a way out? What if we can learn from the mistakes committed by others or our own and never repeat them? What if we can make use of the knowledge other than ours? It is these thoughts that must have shaped the necessity to document and organise the knowledge inherent to organisations.
Several organisations irrespective of their size and domain of work are resorting to the codification of management practices, application of corporate policies facilitating the dissemination of the employees' functional repertoire.
To be able to learn from others' mistakes, we need to unlearn all those conventional notions of faultless work; perfect track record etc, being faultless equals working stagnantly. If one has to learn something new and grow in a profession then one is bound to commit mistakes. Unless one commits a mistake and learns from it, his knowledge will be limited as he cannot be equipped enough to deal with the oddities of work. It's as bad as knowing how to drive a car perfectly but not knowing how to fix a flat tyre.
Grow Attentively: Mistakes will make you learn; and help you grow. Whichever type they might be, trivial or serious or fatal, they will have their own way of teaching you the facts and acquainting you with the harsh reality. When you see others commit mistakes, you become aware of what and how to avoid committing them.
Tell yourself that its ok to commit mistakes as long as you are ready to learn from them.
But how do you learn from others' mistakes? The corporate world offers numerous such opportunities, it can be a company learning from the faults of another company or a workplace scenario wherein one employee learns from those mistakes committed by his co-workers now or in the past.
Learning from others' mistakes, prevents subjective guilt. Moreover, it costs nothing, except some time and observation. Here are the few tips to learn from the workplace errors of others:
If you were working on a project, remember several projects would have been done in the same fashion earlier. So, refer to all documented information available pertaining to it.
See what was documented and make a note of the kind of errors that were committed during the procedure.
Compare your project with the previous one and try to assess the differences.
Given the fact that no two projects can be entirely identical, try to understand the factors that differ.
Now try to apply the information of dos and don'ts that you have gathered to your own project and attempt a perfect job.
Do not blindly apply all the tips elicited from your study. Talk to the team members who have done the previous projects and gain from their insight and advice.
Keeping in mind the inevitability of mistakes in one's work, try learning from them and enrich your knowledge. The next time you see somebody who has committed a mistake, don't laugh at him, try learning from his experience. Let others' mistakes teach you, as they say, `a foolish man learns from his mistakes while a wise one from others'.
SANDHYA. U
faqs@cnkonline.com
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