"Errors" and Non-linear thinking LO12313

Beyond Learning (blt@eden.com)
Fri, 31 Jan 1997 23:32:40 -0600

Daisy Patel said

>To be a perfectionist all the time is not possible. But the URGE to LEARN
>from the errors that happen in LIFE (ours & that of others) is really more
>important.

I really enjoy such wisdom. In our office, We wanted to be a learning
organization so we made a group decision last year that we wouldn't place
any stress around mistakes. In fact, we decided to make any errors a part
of the process of constant improvement and our own company wide learning.
We came up with a set of guidelines for dealing with mistakes that
everyone agreed to.

Some of those guidelines included:
- acknowledging mistakes as quickly as possible,
- engaging others in the process of solving any problems so we all
learned from them,
- encouraging people to keep trying when they have made a mistake
- and what we called non-linear thinking (using mistakes as feedback to
edit and create more success).

We were stunned at the results. People stopped blaming each other and it
dramatically increased our teamwork and creativity. But it didn't happen
in one incident. It was a gradual process where people's behavior changed
as events occured.

I believe the primary source of our success came from our "non-linear
thinking."

Andrew Wong wrote:

>Maybe Linear Thinking is only applicable in the Stone-Age era, whereby the
>process is simple and has little cause & effect relationship, provided the
>Time stands stills, i.e. forever Stone-Age era.

Our primary problem had been the linear thinking (right/wrong, A before B,
there is only one way, etc.). Because of it, there seemed to be severe
consequences for any mistake, both business and social consequences.

A non-linear system is like a word processing program. A linear system is
like a typewriter. With a typewriter, there is no "cut and paste".
Mistakes mean you have to retype the entire document. But on a non-linear
system, you can create things completely out of sequence, make mistakes,
edit and re-edit your work until it is perfect. You can hand your
document to someone else for their imput and then change it before
presenting it to the executive committee. Also, you could write it,
return to it a week later for changes, and do it over three weeks later
and the committee sees only the perfect copy. Wouldn't it be nice to live
life that way?

So, what happened?

With the belief that everything can be edited and any mistake provides
feedback that is valuable, we were free from fear. Mistakes started to
seem almost meaningless because so many of them had assisted us to create
more success. And once people stopped worrying about mistakes, our
projects started being completed much faster, there was new excitement in
the office and our environment is healthy.

A great writer once told me that "Great writing comes from great editing"
and I believe that the truly perfect people are just great editors.

Happy editing,

Hal Croasmun

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