No one wants to make mistakes but if there is something I know to be true, we all do. The way we react to them however is far less universal.

Full disclosure – I’m a reforming perfectionist. In the past, I viewed mistakes wholly as proof of my failure as a human being. They were egocentric catastrophes. I was quick to crawl into a dark hole of reproach and self-loathing, and fashion my blunders into permanent brands of shame.

It is not without irony that I recently realised the fear of being defined by my ‘mistakes’ was defining me, albeit in a way I hadn’t predicted. I took the power of my influence on circumstances way too seriously and allowed wounded self-worth to severely limit my response to mistakes, substantiated or otherwise.

And so, let me add this to the list of what I know to be true – mistakes themselves do not compromise my personal excellence, but how I respond to them can.

Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so…

There is a refreshing freedom in realising that control lies not in what happens to you but how you respond.

I am not suggesting you throw caution to the wind and renege on personal responsibility. Think through outcomes of actions, make time to plan for identified risks, but it is unrealistic to believe, like I did, that you can manage in advance all the parameters of a situation to ensure absolutely nothing goes wrong.

Because something will go wrong. And it might be your fault, or it might have been out of your control. But either way, know that it is within your power to be courageous, be humble and ready yourself to respond with intent.

I’m no expert at mistake recovery. But if you’re like me and similarly struggle when missteps threaten your ego, I want to share some pointers I have found helpful and frankly, liberating when it comes to mistake course correction :

1. My biggest recommendation is (not rocket science) – own it. If a mistake has been made, accept it. This will allow you to make better decisions on how to move forward. Self-justification or flagellation will distort the reality of the situation and make it more difficult for you to make pragmatic, responsive choices.

2. Engage some perspective. Things could be worse, right? To be unashamedly hyperbolic, at least you aren’t dead. Hopefully. If that’s the case, sorry buddy, nothing I say here is going to make a difference. If you’re in the land of the living, remember you’ve made mistakes in the past and you’re still here.

3. Size doesn’t matter. If you acknowledge the little mistakes and look to provide solutions promptly, it will likely stop them from growing into a big, ugly, out of control mess.

4. Be honest about your mistakes. Don’t wait for someone else to discover or reveal the bunny isn’t in the hat. This will generate respect and trust. Everyone appreciates honesty, especially if it comes from a place of vulnerability, and I suspect you will find it strengthens your relationship with the people involved. If you find people using your mistakes against you, it might be time to rethink the nature of your relationship with them. It might also give you good insight into how they relate to their own mistakes.

5. Treat mistakes as opportunities for learning. I guarantee you were a pro at this when you were a child. How else did you learn to crawl, walk, speak and eat? Approach your mistake as an opportunity to learn and I’d be surprised if you don’t experience some form of personal development. With that in mind, don’t keep making the same mistakes and expecting different results. This will only lead to people being less tolerant and forgiving of your behaviour. A repeated mistake is a decision.

6. Provide solutions. This seems obvious I know, but maybe not for those of us whose mistakes mean quickly falling into deep panic and despair. Take steps to inform the affected people that you recognise a mistake has been made and that you care about resolving it. Then engage some genius thinking. The solutions you provide are dependent on the mistake and people involved, but a mistake artfully rectified is an empowering experience. And for true masters it is the solution provided people remember, not the mistake that instigated it.

7. If you need help, ask for it. Sometimes the mistake is out of your power to rectify. It is better to seek help and encouragement from people who have the experience to solve the problem with you than to flounder in angst or potentially compound the mistake to create more problems.

8. Be kind to yourself. My mistakes often meant the appearance of a nasty voice inside my head, similar to Gunnery Sergeant Hartman from Full Metal Jacket (yip, I’m a masochist). Needless to say, this sort of negative internal diatribe isn’t very conducive to mistake recovery. If your significant other or friend came to you looking for support and advice on a perceived failure, would you cut them down further? Or would you attempt to put them back on the horse, and provide encouragement and assistance? And why would you treat yourself any differently?

I’m still not at ease with mistakes. But consciously using the points above to define my relationship to them when they occur, means they look more and more like crossroads than road blocks. I’m more confident in my abilities to navigate challenges. The anxiety of failure is becoming less of a Himalayan peak in the obstacle course of self-leadership. I’m getting better at embracing the idea that mistakes can enrich my experiences. And, shock horror, sometimes even unearth better solutions.

We are always trying to achieve something. Whether it’s a work goal, getting the promotion we’ve been hoping for or improving our fitness – there’s always something for which to strive.

My question to you is: how much focus should we put on reaching that goal versus the process [1] by which we achieve it?

Let’s start with results. There are a number of benefits to focusing your attention primarily on your goal. It gives you a better chance of achieving what you want, without deviation or compromise. If that is where all your attention is focused perhaps it means you will progress along the most direct trajectory to your desired result. It could also be argued that if you don’t stay focused on the outcome, you may not achieve it. You might even settle for an alternative that’s not quite as good for you.

Consider consequentialist philosophy for a moment, which claims that the end justifies the means. If the outcome you are striving for is considered to be ‘good’ or important, then the way in which you get the outcome is acceptable. Process is almost irrelevant; anything goes. However, I can’t imagine that this philosophy in every scenario would stand you in good stead with your relationships.

Focusing always on the results could lead you into an incessant rat race. There’s always something bigger, something better for you to obtain. If you long to earn $100,000, you will probably find the boundaries change as soon as you get close. You start thinking that $100,000 isn’t a lot of money after all and that real success will only come when you earn $200,000. At best, you enjoy your success for a short amount of time. But very soon, you start to focus on the next thing and the next thing. You forget to stop and truly enjoy how far you’ve come and appreciate what you’ve achieved.

Instead of only focusing on the result, what if we were to also focus on the process; on how you do things? I’m learning more about this approach and am realising that if you decide to take actions that are in alignment with your values, no matter what, then it may not necessarily get you to your original goal. But I would argue that you will inevitably be happy wherever you end up because everything you did to get there was in alignment with what you believe.

I’m not saying that results aren’t important but if you can increase the amount of focus you have on how you do things, as well as your desired results, it can only be a good thing. Focusing on how you do things and trying to do them in the best way, makes you learn and grow. And if you focus on doing things that you think are right or good according to your values, you will enjoy the journey. Both of which I believe are essential for personal fulfilment.

My many years in sales roles encouraged me to focus on results. I felt as though all my activities should lead to commitment to do business, increased revenue or at the very least, some form of marketing or brand improvement. I believed that if I didn’t stay focused on my results, quarter by quarter, I wouldn’t survive in sales very long. Recently I’ve been embracing the philosophy of doing the right thing more and more. I’m doing the things that I enjoy and that I’m good at. I’m enjoying the meetings and conversations I’m having, and the progress I’m making. I’m enjoying learning about the people I’m talking to and discovering what they are passionate about. I still bring my attention to my goals regularly. But even if my activities don’t lead to increased revenue in the short term, I feel certain they will lead to better relationships with people, which is a more rewarding result than money.

Maybe one day, I’ll apply this principle to my personal life and enjoy exercising for the sake of it…. maybe!

[1] It’s worth being clear on the definition of my terms. When I use the word ‘process’ here I mean the principles you’d use to get something done (how you do something), as opposed to referring to a procedure (what you do).

“The time has come,” the Walrus said,

“To talk of many things:

Of shoes–and ships–and sealing-wax–

Of cabbages–and kings–

And why the sea is boiling hot–

And whether pigs have wings.”

– Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871)

Self-restraint is a key behaviour to cultivate in technology consulting work. This may be a natural strength for some but for me it definitely isn’t and is something I try to work on.

Rush to judgment

The temptation to offer an undercooked point of view (hot-take) is ever-present and highly seductive.

The argument for judiciousness is self-evident but worth setting out. Simply put, if professional advice is what I’m selling, that is what I need to provide. Professional advice. And however we want to define or characterise professional, it is surely the antithesis of my off-the-cuff ‘reckon’.

Telling tales

Restraining oneself from offering firm opinions and advice too early is essential and obvious. However, there is a stronger and more complex species of restraint required.

The quote above is from a poem called The Walrus and the Carpenter. In the poem the Walrus and Carpenter entreat young Oysters to follow them with the promise of a “pleasant walk and pleasant talk”. The end-game however, unfortunately for the Oysters, is lunch. It’s a little ambiguous though whether eating the oysters was the conscious intention of the storytellers at the time of the invitation.

The stronger restraint I’m after is the ability to resist a similar storytelling impulse. It is insidiously tempting to prematurely begin to tell stories that frame the issue or solutions, to seduce and beguile like the Walrus. This can even happen unconsciously in my experience. And if allowed to proceed unconsciously, the stories you tell will be influenced by those same undercooked preliminary conclusions that we wanted to protect the client from.

Just as for the Walrus, it’s likely that such stories turn out to be self-interested or biased. If not quite as blatantly self-serving they can be influenced by biases towards or away from particular technologies. Such biases aren’t bad per se, they likely represent solid heuristics informed by experience. But even so those biases must be acknowledged and challenged in practice.

For me this story-telling temptation is motivated by a desire to please, or to sound clever and quick. This is obviously toxic and unhelpful. The behavioural circuit that I want to cultivate instead is one that suppresses the fear of saying “I don’t know [yet]”. In fact to take professional pride in it. This has become one of the traits I most admire in consultants I work with. The best can always (and in any company) fearlessly make a confession of ignorance or indeterminacy and firmly stick a full-stop at the end of it.

The Experience trap

This can actually get harder with experience. It can make reliably finding the right level of restraint even more challenging.

With competence and fluency in a topic you feel comfortable, you ask great questions and cut to the heart of issues quickly. It’s a fantastic feeling and we definitely want to provide our clients all the benefits of our experience, including potentially the benefit of a conclusion more quickly.

The problem is overconfidence, re-enforced by confirmation bias. The tendency is to over-emphasise aspects of the problem or situation that are familiar, matching prior experiences and expectations. Have we spent enough time searching out and weighing unfamiliar features of the situation, the things that make it unique.

A System Solution

For me the confidence to be appropriately judicious is best built on top of checks baked into the process or system I apply to a piece of work. That process/system should evoke confidence that it will produce the best answers possible with the resources available and other limitations (including my ability). A good process should produce answers that are as free from bias as possible, and which speak directly to the client’s needs.

The process design will of course vary based on circumstances and type of work but the common feature that will reliably promote the right type of restraint is a system of review or audit.

The approach I favour and am experimenting with is to identify up-front for each piece of work, a balance of independent, self, and peer review that is appropriate to the work and is practical given the resources available.

Conclusion

As a professional giver of advice the integrity and quality of that advice is essential. Achieving this must mean amongst other things, taking the time to get it right. It can be difficult, but it’s a battle worth waging.

Just ask those Oysters.