There’s a great Albus Dumbledore quote on mistakes – “I make mistakes like the next man. In fact, being–forgive me–rather cleverer than most men, my mistakes tend to be correspondingly huger.”
I’ve thought of this quote many many times over the years. Putting aside the subtle humor from the great (fictional) wizard, there’s a powerful truth in there. The size of mistakes grows with the amount of responsibility in our lives.
When I was a child, I made many mistakes. Most of those had no consequence beyond some short term pain.
As we grow older, we become risk averse as we attempt to reduce the number of mistakes we made. It is logical to do that because our mistakes cost us a lot more as adults.
Recovery from an injury takes longer. Things we lose tend to be more expensive. Opportunities we forego are often more consequential.
The same happens when we progress in our careers. As an individual contributor, getting the plan wrong can mess up a project. But a manager’s mistakes on strategy can led an entire team astray. So, when companies get senior hires wrong, the damage is significant and often long lasting.
This is one of those simple sounding ideas with many implications. I’ve reflected on two of these more than others –
(1) I make more expensive mistakes now relative to ten years ago. These mistakes hurt when they happen. For example, I lost a great pair of glasses recently. I used them every single day for four years and loved them. There’s no cheap replacement. It is an expensive mistake – as simple as that.
We made a mistake on a small piece of furniture we bought for our home recently too. Again, an expensive mistake relative to a decade ago when I owned no furniture.
Any mistake made that involves our family or the team I work with is more consequential than it was too. That’s part of life. It comes with more responsibility and accountability – generally good things.
(2) As painful as they are, it is important to keep some mental allowance for mistakes. When – and not if – they happen, it is helpful to spend time to understand how we could have avoided it. The best reflections involve fixes to our systems. They ensure we are more organized, build in buffers/redundancies, and be more in the present.
But outside of that, there’s no point beating ourselves up too much.
There’s no point fearing or over reacting to mistakes – they come with the territory.
Just be kind to ourselves and focus on a creative, constructive, and corrective response.
