Mistakes or Ristakes - What to Celebrate?
HBR has a interest blog post by Vineet Nayar that questions to blanket logic of celebrating failure. I am a big proponent of celebrating failure, but I think the distinction between Mistakes and Ristakes is important.
Definitions:
Mistakes: A mistake is as an error in action or calculation caused by poor reasoning, carelessness, or insufficient knowledge.
Ristakes: A risktake is an error — but not one caused by carelessness or insufficient knowledge. Its possibility has been foreseen, calculated, and accepted.
When I talk about celebrating failure, I implicitly assume you recognize that we are talking about failures of the Ristake variety, but I can see how some may not assume that I am including Mistakes as well. Although, I think we should "cautiously" celebrate the first occurrence of a Mistake in the organization. In business I think we often do not delve too deeply to determine if the failure was a product of a Ristake or a Mistake. Mistakes are embarrassing for employees and the company, so the common response is to shape it as a Ristake, celebrate it, and quickly move on. Unfortunately, your employees miss a valuable opportunity to understand and learn from the mistake. There is a chance that the same mistake will be repeated somewhere else in your organization. Is it possible for a company to celebrate the same mistake (although framed as a ristake) multiple times throughout the company?
I think so...
