The Positive Power of Mistakes
[this post is a concept buried in a storyline: the concept is that welcoming mistakes will net more innovation and greater output as opposed to a fearful culture where innovation is starved]
Once upon a time, in a kitchen far, far away...
Once upon a time, in a kitchen far, far (really, not that far) away, I was a grill cook in a noteworthy but slightly shameful-to-work-at restaurant. This establishment was known to be a hole in the wall, kind of (no, it was) a dive and a hidden hangout spot for the rich and famous on Monday nights. I cooked for Arnold and Maria Schwarzenneger there and got to know the inside stories on many of the world’s most “privileged” people.
One of my most memorable experiences at this place in particular was when the owner demoted me from $14/hour to $13/hour. I am still amazed that I could live on either of those wages...but that is neither here nor there.
The moral of this story is that cultures which feed the idea that mistakes are the food for continuous improvements and establishing better processes will create better employees, higher morale and generate increased intelligent output.
So, the story is short and goes like this:
Imagine with me if you will, a busy, dark restaurant with a long, (hot as hell) open kitchen and the grill as the focal point.
Insert as the main character a female; a tenacious, and skilled cook (me). The pace was fast, the place was packed. My role on the line was as grill cook, basically, flipping burgers and turning steaks to feed the stream of hungry humans from 5-11pm nightly.
On this night, it may have even been a holiday, I was about to plate a sizzling, greasy, dripping burger onto its plated bun with accoutrement. When I turned around from the fiery grill to the plate, oily spatula and burger in hand, which lived at a 180° from my cooking stance, the burger took a life of its own and slid off the 4″ wide slippery spatula onto the floor.
As I looked up from my kitchen tool and the burger, I saw the owner, a man who had owned an industrial company worth “a billion dollars,” or something with the B word in it, glaring at me with eyes that looked like I may be headed to the guillotine.
The rest of that night, I felt shaky, uneasy and my confidence was really unsure of herself. The next morning, he called me in for a meeting and said he was going to take $1/hour off my pay, from $14/hour to $13/hour.
I told a mutual friend of ours, another successful business man who said to me, “you never take away money, you either let the employee go or work on ways to make things better.”
In any event, there’s a point here and it’s about making mistakes and how the treatment of them determines the culture of a business, of friendships and the breadth of the creative process in general.
The example of “The Slippery Burger,” and its fierce consequences taught me, in that culture, that I was not “free” to try new things, to be talented and to make a mistake here and there (if a slippery burger as a “one off” run away is even a mistake). It taught me to be afraid to err, meaning that instead of being a good employee, I spent more time being afraid, staying within the lines of imposed boundaries to avoid repercussions. And, btw, to make great food (or great anything, really), you NEED to be able to let the boundaries go, so these lessons were conundrums.
It continues to blow my mind how many cultures and leaders haven’t gotten the memo that:
1. We don’t treat people poorly in 2015 forward. It’s not cool (nor was it ever), it’s not popular and it won’t be tolerated.
2. That people perform better when given the signals that they are trusted and shown demonstrably that the team has confidence in their abilities.
Mistakes are powerful catalysts for positive change.
I am wary of people and cultures who promote perfection or blame and I speculate that people who have the trust of their community, employers and team members make less mistakes. What do you think? Do you have stories to share about mistakes and their value?
p.s. oh, btw, the value of The Slippery Burger “mistake,” is that i learned I wanted to get out of the kitchen and back into Business. Shortly thereafter, I went back to school.
