OK, so you tried something new and you flopped right on your face with a resounding splat. Or maybe you completely botched something you “should” have been able to pull off based on your skills, expertise, and familiarity with the matter at hand.
We all do it. We all make mistakes. We all fail. And that’s not going to go away.
Given that, we can either bang our heads against reality, or we can say, “Heeeeyyy…maybe there’s something to learn here” and milk our mistakes for all the insight they’re worth.
One great way to squeeze mine your flubs for insight is to regularly ask questions. Here are four to get you started.
What can I learn from this?
An obvious question and a great place to start. Another way of thinking of this one is, “What insight is staring me smack in the face now that I’m looking at this mistake or failure in the rearview mirror?”
What led up to this result?
Often, there isn’t one specific factor you can point to that flipped the switch to a negative result. There are both multiple causes and multiple steps. Tracing the path that led up to the result can help you understand what really happened so you can learn from it.
What was the root cause?
Another way of approaching this is to ask, “What was the root cause of this failure or mistake?” Ask, “Why did this happen?” For each reason you come up with, ask, “And what was behind that?” It’s a reverse-engineering process.
You can use the questions words (who, what, when, where, why and how) to help think it through.
What could I have done differently?
This question takes the insights gained in the last couple questions and turns them on their head. “OK, if this was a factor that led to failure, what could I have done differently? What approach/steps/etc. would have pointed me in the direction of success?”
How does this make me better prepared to succeed next time?
Knowing how you could have done things differently in the past is one thing. But the real power in this process comes from understanding how you will do things differently in the future. This question takes the learning out of the past-based abstract and ties it to moving forward and building on what you’ve learned.
The benefits of mining your mistakes
One obvious benefit of mining your mistakes for those gems of insight is that it gives you the opportunity to tap into the natural learning process – you try something, evaluate the results, learn from the results, and apply the learning. (I wrote a blog post on this recently.) http://mapmaker.curtrosengren.com/2009/09/use-mistakes-to-propel-yourself-to-success.html
Another benefit is the way it changes your relationship with mistakes and failure. If you do this consciously, consistently, you start to see the productivity in mistakes. You start to see how the very mistakes you previously wanted to ignore are in fact the stepping stones to where you want to go.
A common sales concept is that every no gets you that much closer to yes. When you consciously mine your mistakes for insight – and then apply that insight – every mistake can get you that much closer to success.
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