Make no Mistake is a Mistake
Unbelievable rainfall in Hong Kong recently. But no-one should have been surprised. After all, I predicted this weather a week in advance with amazing accuracy.
Oops – apologies. A slight typo. That should have read ‘AI predicted this…’
An ‘honest mistake’ on my part.
But whilst I do my very best to maintain a healthy level of consistently making mistakes, the rest of the world would appear to be heading in the opposite direction.
Whether it’s using Google Maps when driving, waiting for VAR to confirm a goal has been scored, writing a LinkedIn post, or putting a PowerPoint deck together, there seems to be an ever-increasing desire to do things without making mistakes. Often as fast as possible (except in the case of the English Premier League).
This, I fear, may in itself be a terrible mistake.
Make no Mistake is a Mistake
For whilst there is a great deal of uncertainty about what the future holds, there’s one thing of which we can be sure: the need for innovators. For creative minds. For problem solvers.
And innovating must, by definition, include the probability of making mistakes. To quote the late, great, Sir Ken Robinson:
“whilst being wrong is not the same as being creative, if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original”.
Not only, as Sir Ken suggests, do companies stigmatize mistakes, leaving employees afraid to make them, but we now have AI to sort everything out. Gen Z are increasingly unable to solve problems for themselves, to think creatively, because there’s no need to do so. ChatGPT will do it for them.
It was a different playing field back in 1992 when Gavin Newsom started the PlumpJack Winery company in California. The business grew over the following decade to an enterprise with over 700 employees. Newsom is adamant that one of the key reasons for its success was the monthly Failure Award. Every month, the employee who had made the biggest mistake received a US$50 gift certificate. Then come December, they celebrated the biggest failure of the whole year.
Employees felt seen, heard, and safe. Safe to take risks, to try out new ideas. As Newsom himself has said: ‘there can be no success without failure’.
And therein lies the lesson. For schools, corporates, or governments (anyone, actually), it’s not the mistake that’s the heart of the matter. It’s whether or not people are prepared to be wrong, that they feel comfortable to challenge the leadership. Or AI, come to that.
Meanwhile, back at the Observatory, it wouldn’t be a surprise to find a few employees clicking on Google for Jobs.
Tales from the Media Room by Rebekah James
How to Prepare to be Interviewed
As an ex-BBC broadcaster, hosting my own radio and TV show for years, I was always the one doing the 'digging' on my contributors and writing the briefs on them.
This could have been on The Spice Girls, explorers such as Sir Ranulph Fiennes, chefs such as Gordon Ramsay, and conductors including Sir Simon Rattle.
No brief was ever the same however the process was always similar and formulaic. Scrupulous research and getting into the habit of leaving no stone unturned.
Read: How to Prepare to be Interviewed
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