Learning from Mistakes

Back in October 1995, Abby Yanow posted a question on the relationship between encouraging creativity and tolerating mistakes. I made a short answer and subsequently made another post on organizations that are famous for giving employees who make a mistake (including theft!) a second chance.

Years later, I would like to extend that discussion to the issue of how organizations actually learn from employees’ mistakes. We could probably all give personal examples of learning from out mistakes, but examples of organizations doing that presumably are harder to think of.

In that connection, I would cite two additional references available in our Library: David Dotlich and Peter Cairo’s Why CEO’s Fail and John Maxwell’s Falling Forward. But while both of these have some suggestive material, neither addresses organizational learning.

Jim Murphy