I have made mistakes, small and big, good and bad. In recent times, one of the biggest mistakes I made was taking on clients who were clearly outside those we wanted to serve.
These clients often fail to pay on time, and some never pay at all. They disrespect you and your team. They devalue your advice. They don’t give you testimonials. They are excruciatingly slow to reply to your communications, and so on. At the beginning, things seem like they are fine, but there are always signs that are ignored to land in a spot working with such clients.
The founder of the company we know today as Toyota, invented many loom machines in his early days and many of them failed, but he did find success. Toyoda apparently also had many struggles in his personal life, but his struggles and resilience led to the culture at Toyota and that culture has driven Toyota to success in numerous fields today even when they suffer setbacks.
As long as you’re doing business you will make mistakes. Should you be tolerant of all mistakes? Are all mistakes good?
A good mistake comes from an honest effort to try something combined with a diligent attempt to execute it well. A bad mistake is one where an idea fails primarily because of sloppy, inattentive, or indifferent effort.
Saying “mistakes are valuable” should not be interpreted as, “we don’t have to try to do our best.” It’s one thing to put the wrong product on the market, it’s another to do a sloppy job of putting the product on the market.
The worst mistakes, however, are those that are repeated over and over again. It is the lesson learned from a mistake that makes it valuable, not the mistake itself.
