The Power of Making Mistakes

I’ve long believed there should be a mandatory class for all middle schoolers called Making Mistakes.

When we were in school, most of us received the opposite education. We’ve been taught to avoid mistakes at all costs, so we tiptoe through our careers like the floor is covered in Legos. In reality, mistakes are often the drivers of progress and innovation. They’re how we grow and learn, so the optimal number of mistakes in business and life is not zero.

To keep the next generation from inheriting our perpetual fear of screwing up, here’s a sample of the curriculum I’d propose. And good news, it can easily be adapted for the adult world.

Lesson 1: The difference between a productive mistake and a careless mistake.

The class starts with the egg drop challenge. Every kid gets a raw egg and a week to build something around it that will keep it from breaking when it’s dropped from the top of the bleachers. On drop day, most of the eggs break. One kid might use a cardboard box with no padding, and maybe somebody’s parachute fails to open. Every kid learns something, building better and better contraptions until the egg lands unbroken. The teacher can demonstrate the “careless mistake,” making wild and untested changes to their own contraption, ensuring that the egg breaks every time (the kids will love it).

At work, productive mistakes often come from running intentional experiments, like a pricing change that was supposed to lift sales but instead fell flat. It didn’t work, but now you know, and the next version is better because of it. A careless mistake comes from skipping the thinking, like sending the client a proposal with last year’s pricing in it. Productive mistakes are how we get better, and we should be making more of them. Careless mistakes are just sloppy, and for those, zero is the right target.

Lesson 2: How to calculate risk when testing something uncertain.

Every student writes down the worst thing that could possibly happen if they try out for the school play. They’ll forget every line, trip on stage, and get laughed at until graduation. Then the teacher has them write down the worst thing that will PROBABLY happen. Maybe a student gets a small part, flubs a line or two, or drops her pizza at the cast party.

In business, we usually stop at the first list. Our imagination becomes a merciless screenwriter and reaches straight for the disaster movie. Launch the new product line and the worst possible outcome is bankruptcy and a career-ending write-up in the trade press. That’s technically true, and about as likely as getting struck by lightning twice in the parking lot. Judging every risk that way pushes us toward doing nothing. Run the same decision through the worst probable outcome and the realistic downside is that it lands with a thud, we lose 5% of the budget, and we learn something about what customers actually want. That’s a bet most of us would take.

Lesson 3: The difference between responsible risk and irresponsible risk.

Each student writes down something they want to try that scares them a little. Try out for the basketball team. Start a band with a couple of friends. Ask someone to the dance. Then, underneath, they write down how to make that risk a responsible one. Shoot free throws every day for three weeks before tryouts. Learn one song before signing up for the talent show. Ask at the end of the day instead of in the middle of the cafeteria with the whole seventh grade watching. The scary thing is still scary, but the odds are a lot better and the downside is a lot smaller.

Responsible risk in business works the same way. Decide what you’re willing to lose before you start, then keep the test small enough that you can survive it going wrong. That might mean a pilot in one region, a feature for one customer segment, a two-week beta with ten clients, or a campaign with a capped budget. Irresponsible risk skips that step and bets everything on a hunch. Risk the lunch money and leave the house out of it.

Lesson 4: How to extract maximum learning from each mistake.

Students bring in a graded test from another class, go through every wrong answer, and write down why they got it wrong. Usually it’s a careless misread, not knowing the material, or running out of time. It takes twenty minutes, and the next test goes better.

Most leaders and organizations don’t do this. The mistake costs real money, and then everyone moves on without learning anything. Think of every mistake as paid curriculum instead of wasted resources. You already paid for the lesson, so you might as well snag it.

Ongoing Policy: First-time mistakes and repeat offenders get treated differently.

The teacher should praise students out loud for raising a hand with a guess or trying an approach nobody else tried, whether or not it works. They should also keep quiet track of who keeps making the same mistake, and when it happens a third time, pull that student aside to figure out what’s getting in the way.

The office should run on the same rules. Praise the new mistakes out loud. Handle the repeat ones privately, directly, and constructively.

Nobody actually teaches this class (yet), so most of us have had to pick it up on the job. Luckily, the key assignment in the working world is essentially the same as it would be in middle school: build the contraption, drop the egg, and see what breaks.