Mistakes aren't fatal

"Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his error."  Marcus Tullius Cicero

Mistakes Aren't Fatal.  That was the headline of an article I read the other day.  My first thought was tell that to one of The Flying Wallenda's.

We've all tried to subscribe to the "let's learn from our mistakes" philosophy.  And it's important we do because mistakes will happen and understanding what happened, why it happened and what could have prevented it is critical for moving forward.  There's a great story from my ADP days where one of the computer room operators kept putting good data packs on a defective drive thus destroying every one of them over the course of the night shift.  Uh, yeah.

It seems a trait of Human Nature that we always seem to be able to find the time to do things a second (or third) time but adverse to taking the time to do it right the first time.  However, there are situations and professions where that doesn't hold true.  Wallenda walking a tightrope over Niagara Falls, the first test flight of a new jet,  a stuntman falling off a 10 story building as examples only get one chance.  Forget having time for a second try, how about never having the opportunity.

With some exceptions making mistakes, like almost everything else, requires some balance.  When life and death isn't involved you must at some point in time weigh the cost of waiting versus the cost of jumping.  Tom Peters in his classic "In Search of Excellence" talks about "Try it, Fix it, Try it".  The point being that you can over-design, over-engineer, over-think things to the point you miss the market opportunity.  Plus you can't figure everything out in the lab.  At some point you need to put it out in front of the buying public and get real feedback.

Some of the best products I've been associated with over the years originated with some individual sitting at a job and thinking that a mundane task they have to continually repeat could be easier so they designed and built something that would do that.  It then got into the hands of a company that could properly market it plus give it a road map for expansion and improvement and it became a valued and valuable product.

So, do your research and due diligence, try to identify the "D-OH" mistakes, make sure no one's going to die in case of a mistake and step out onto the tightrope.