What is a culture of mistakes

1. Culture of mistakes - what it is and what principles it is based on
2. The importance of a culture of mistakes for companies
3. How to implement a culture of mistakes in the company
4. Conclusion

If the organization is dominated by the tendency to find the guilty, who are responsible for the deterioration of the situation and problems arising in the work, employees try not to take risks and avoid responsibility for mistakes made - because of fear of criticism or punishment from management. This prevents testing and innovation, does not allow to create a comfortable working environment for employees and hinders the development of the company.

An important element of modern corporate culture is the so-called "No-blame culture" ("non-accusative culture"), which proclaims tolerance for mistakes in the company, provided that employees learn from these mistakes.This approach makes the organization much more flexible and allows it to remain resistant to external changes and various unstable situations.

In this material, we will understand what it is based on, how and why the culture of mistakes in the company is formed.

Culture of mistakes - what it is and what principles it is based on

The culture of mistakes does not imply a lack of responsibility. The essence of this approach can be described as follows: "it is better to act and make mistakes than to do nothing." Employees can honestly and openly declare the obstacles they have encountered in the course of work. In companies that have implemented a culture of mistakes, the rights and opportunities of employees are expanded, mistakes are made and team members are responsible for making their decisions, but failures are seen as a way of growth, an opportunity to improve something. The main idea is to turn a mistake into a valuable experience.

The use of this management principle allows the company to reduce risks, establish and improve production processes. Failures in the company are perceived as steps towards development and improvement.

The culture of mistakes began to form at the turn of the 20th-21st centuries. It was one of the first to be introduced by the Mercedes Benz automotive corporation. Realizing that conservatism and fears of employees losing their jobs if they make a mistake only hinder the innovation and development of the company, the management of Mercedes Benz has made the culture of mistakes in their enterprises the norm.

Nowadays, many well-known companies such as Google, Amazon, Netflix, have also successfully integrated a culture of errors into their corporate environment.

A mistake in business is, first of all, experience. It's not scary if at some point the company came to the wrong place, but the employees received knowledge and development that allow them to avoid the same mistake next time.

The culture of mistakes is based on five basic principles:The culture of mistakes is based on five basic principles:

• firstly, it is the high emotional intelligence of both company employees and managers;
• Secondly, this element of corporate culture includes working mechanisms in which an employee's mistake is considered a stage of work, but not a disaster;
• the third principle is a systematic approach to eliminating mistakes made and analyzing them;
• this series can also include the clarification of the root causes of errors and their correction;
• In addition, continuous monitoring of processes and their improvement is important for the culture of errors.

The importance of a culture of mistakes for companies

Fear of own mistakes from specialists, as well as intolerance of the mistakes of others, leads to the fact that failures in work are trying to be hidden, thereby distorting information about the work process.This leads to the inability to respond in a timely manner to the problem and, as a result, to the loss of money or damage to the company's reputation. And this limits both the development of the company itself and the personal growth of employees.

Companies that have built a culture of mistakes into their corporate philosophy, conduct a thorough analysis of the causes of failures, correct them, and then introduce an updated product to the market, which, if it is expected to succeed, will more than pay off the money spent on the error.

Such flexibility is primarily characteristic of technology giants - Google, Microsoft and others, since in the field of technology you constantly have to deal with innovations, and failures in working with them are inevitable.

This approach makes it possible to test the most daring hypotheses and develop more versatile and unique products thanks to the accumulated knowledge base and the company's ability to take risks. As the experience of many well-known firms shows, several successful launches can pay for dozens of failed experiments.

Business processes in the organization should initially be designed taking into account possible errors and develop mechanisms for their analysis and elimination.If we expect a possible failure, it does not become a disaster. The manager should explain to employees that mistakes happen and should be treated as a tool for growth. Whereas concealing the failure will only aggravate the problem.

An example of the successful implementation of a culture of errors is the American company Amazon. Its founder Jeff Bezos introduced an error mechanism into the workflow, which is as follows:After each non-profitable or failed project, the employees who were responsible for it must fill out a special document called "Correction of errors". Analysis of mistakes allows you not to repeat them in the future.

So in 2014, the company released a Fire smartphone, but the product failed, causing Amazon losses of $170 million. The company did not dwell on the wasted millions, lessons were learned from this failure and attention was shifted to other products.For example, on the "smart" Echo speaker with support for the Alexa voice assistant. The first such column was presented in 2014, and since then its sales around the world have only been growing. For example, in 2022, the company sold 82 million of these devices.

How to implement a culture of mistakes in the company

Let's consider what steps need to be taken to form a culture of mistakes in your company:

• Management should welcome an open dialogue with staff on the topic of failures and their benefits for training. To demonstrate openness, the manager can share his mistakes, show that he does not expect perfection from himself or others.It is important not to look for the guilty, to focus not on who is responsible, but on why this or that problem arose. Understanding the root cause will prevent a repetition of failure in the future.
• It makes sense to teach employees risk management practices, to give them an understanding of how to respond correctly to mistakes. This will help to create mentoring programs, where experienced employees will share it with others.
• Achieve transparency in communication so that team members can freely discuss their failures. Use real-time communication to be able to respond quickly to a problem.
• One of the important conditions for the successful implementation of a culture of mistakes is to encourage employees to take the initiative, test new ideas, conduct experiments, even if there is a risk that they will lead to failures.
• Regularly analyze the failures in the company's implemented projects, create a database with documentation to save experience and use the lessons learned in your future projects.

Conclusion

The culture of mistakes plays an important role in the development and success of modern companies. Working on errors, parsing and analyzing failures at each stage of work helps to avoid problems in the future.In order for mistakes to move the company forward, contribute to increased efficiency, they must become part of business processes. However, it should be remembered that the same mistakes, repeated systematically, do not indicate the process of testing hypotheses and testing new ideas, but banal unproductivity.