The Law of Mistakes

You will get it wrong before you get it right.

Any system that does not allow for failure is doomed to fail.

The real importance of this law is that eliminating mistakes can only be done at the price of eliminating ingenuity. This law applies to more than just engineering, but to all aspects of social interaction.

There is a reason that most engineers in most disciplines will build a prototype to throw away. Do software engineers ever make a prototype to throw away? Just a stray thought—by a software engineer.

There is a tendency is this country to give a person only one chance to move into a leadership position. If they fail, or get moved out for any reason, they rarely get another chance. Since all people have failures, the people who survive are those best at avoiding the results of failure. This can be done by taking responsibility and fixing the mistakes before they are noticed or by hiding mistakes and successfully blaming others. Let your own experience help you decide which of the two paths is more often followed.

When combined with the Law of Rewards and Punishments, this law produces the fear of failure and the reliance on procedures in the place of creative thought. Avoidance of failure becomes primary focus and using the Law of Resources, more energy is spent avoiding responsibility rather than creating new ideas. Even marketing and advertising groups will do what is known and safe rather than risk failure.

Listen to managers talking about their people and their successes. Some will tell you that the succeeded because their team did the work. Some will tell you that it was their dynamic leadership that overcame the limitations of others in the project. As a leader I learned to listen to the patterns and replaced my “dynamic” managers with those that would not take credit for the work of others.