As a business owner, getting caught up in the idea that you should avoid mistakes at all costs is easy. However, mistakes are a vital part of the learning process and can ultimately lead to your success. If you want to build a better business, and I hope you do, you must change your current approach. When we change, there is a chance that we will make a mistake, and when we do, it guides us towards an even better way.
In this blog post, we’ll discuss the importance of mistakes in business and how business owners can use them to improve their businesses and move closer to mastery.
Embracing Mistakes
If you want to build a better business, and I hope you do, you must change your current approach. When we change, there is a chance that we will make a mistake, and when it does, you have an opportunity.
Some may not be errors, just unintended, unexpected outcomes, not bad outcomes. Can you adapt what you did or use that outcome to your advantage?
Sometimes something goes wrong, which is detrimental to you or your business. You have to take remedial action. As you do you have the opportunity to learn.
The Journey to Mastery
In my book, “Intentional Mastery,” I outline five levels towards mastery: Explorer, Novice, Practitioner, Expert, and Master. Each level represents a different type of learning. Mistakes play a crucial role in moving from one level to the next.
As an Explorer, you’re just starting and will make mistakes from lack of knowledge. Embrace these mistakes, use them to gain experience, and move up to become a Novice. You can start to hone the skills needed there, but you will still be prone to errors. Use these mistakes to refine your skills, and you will advance to become a Practitioner.
At this point, you’re starting to develop expertise in your field. Mistakes are less frequent, but when they do occur, they can be significant. Use these mistakes to refine your processes and move up to be seen as an Expert. It’s the absence of frequent mistakes but the embracing of those that do occur and their speedy resolution that often demonstrates expertise to others.
Even though mistakes are rare at the Expert level, they still happen. It’s the insights they bring that fine-tune your skills and allow you to move towards being seen as the Master of your topic.
Taking Action
When mistakes happen in your business, you must take intentional action to correct the immediate problem but do not stop there. The best businesses also take ownership of what happened and change their approach to minimise the chance of it happening again. This means reviewing what went wrong, reflecting on the root cause, and redesigning to prevent it from happening again. It also means being open to feedback and continuously refining your processes to improve your business.
In conclusion, mistakes are an essential part of the learning process and can ultimately lead to your success. By embracing mistakes, understanding the journey of mastery, and taking action, you can use mistakes to improve your business and move closer to your goals.
The Business Audit (https://audit.williambuist.com) identifies where your business should focus first to learn from past mistakes and impact your business best.
This is SO true. And yet so many people shy away from mistakes, quickly covering them up and move on! I’ve always believed there is SO much more you can learn from a mistake than from success. Which is what led me to head up a research team, looking at the cause of failure of more than 150 of the UK’s biggest businesses!
Drom this, we were able to deduce the most common flaws (along with WHEN they are most likely to occur) and have now designed, implemented and had accredited our proven scaleup methodology from this.