Can you make a mistake around here

I wrote my first book with Larry Prusak 25 years ago, while we were both working for Ernst & Young. In the intervening years he turned out another 8 or 10 books while I’ve only managed one more so far. I think he’s done writing books for now, so there’s some chance I may yet catch up.

When I was teaching knowledge management at Kellogg, I invited Larry as a guest speaker. He’s an excellent storyteller, so my students benefitted that afternoon. He opened with a wonderful diagnostic question for organizations: “Can you make a mistake around here?”

Organizations spend a great deal of energy designing systems and processes to be reliable and not make mistakes. This is as it should be. No one wants to fly in a plane that you can’t trust to be reliable.

But what can we learn about organizations from how they respond to mistakes? Do they recognize and acknowledge the fundamental unreliability of people? Or, do they lie to themselves and pretend that they can staff themselves with people who won’t make mistakes?

If you can’t make a mistake, you can’t learn. If you can’t learn, you can’t innovate. You can extend the logic from there.