08/29/2019
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Everyone makes mistakes. The main diļ¬erence is that successful people learn from them and unsuccessful people donāt. By creating an environment in which it is okay to safely make mistakes so that people can learn from them, youāll see rapid progress and fewer signiļ¬cant mistakes. This is especially true in organizations where creativity and independent thinking are important, as success will inevitably require the acceptance of failure as a part of the process. As Thomas Edison once said, āI have not failed. Iāve just found ten thousand ways that do not work.ā
Mistakes will cause you pain, but you shouldnāt try to shield your-self or others from it. Pain is a message that something is wrong and itās an eļ¬ective teacher that one shouldnāt do that wrong thing again. To deal with your own and othersā weaknesses well you must acknowledge them frankly and openly and work to ļ¬nd ways of pre-venting them from hurting you in the future. Itās at this point that many people say, āNo thanks, this isnāt for meāIād rather not have to deal with these things.ā But this is against your and your organizationās best interestsāand will keep you from achieving your goals. It seems to me that if you look back on yourself a year ago and arenāt shocked by how stupid you were, you havenāt learned much. Still, few people go out of their way to embrace their mistakes. It doesnāt have to be that way.
In the early 1990s, Ross, then our head of trading, forgot to put in a trade for a client?. The money just sat there in cash and by the time the mistake was discovered it had cost the client (actually Bridgewater, because we had to make good on it) a lot of money. It was terrible and I could easily have ļ¬red Ross to make the point that nothing less than perfection will be accepted. But that would have been counterproductive. I would have lost a good man and it would have only encouraged other employees to hide their mistakes, creating a culture that would not only be dishonest but crippled in its ability to learn and grow. If Ross hadnāt experienced that pain, he and Bridgewater would have been the worse for it.
You can access this and all of my other principles, plus much more, in the free iOS app, Principles In Action: https://principles.app.link/WP3FB