Brilliant Mistakes

Subtitled 'Finding Success on the Far Side of Failure', this book acknowledges that although mistakes are inevitable, they can widen your range of experience while also shrinking your ego-thereby opening you to discoveries you'd otherwise never make.

For example, if you've ever flown in an aeroplane, used electricity or taken antibiotics, then you've benefitted from a brilliant mistake!

What is a brilliant mistake?

Schoemaker defines a brilliant mistake as an action you take or a prediction you make that turns out to be wrong. This hurts you initially, but then it also opens up new vistas, and it may result in innovation and discovery. You start to see the world - or yourself - differently.

It is of course important to distinguish between potentially brilliant mistakes - which are made in good faith and with positive intention, and mistakes that stem from reckless or sloppy thinking.

The ingredients for a brilliant mistake to happen are:

1. Something goes wrong far beyond the range of prior expectation; and
2. New insights emerge whose benefits greatly exceed the cost of the mistake.

The brilliant part lies in part 2, but of course part 1 is necessary for this to happen. And being aware and alert is essential throughout.

Example of a brilliant mistake

A significant contribution to chaos theory was made when meterologist Edward Lorenz used data from a computer printout to complete a simulation which diverged massively from what he had expected. He then realised that the printout had rounded data figures to 3 decimal places, whereas the simulation computer worked to 6 decimal places. Thus the 'butterfly effect' was developed, showing that in a complex system, tiny changes in the initial inputs can cause massive changes at a later stage

Four key messages of the book

1. It's important to allow the learning potential of mistakes by overcoming the shame and fear that cause us typically to overlook the covert messages they carry about how we think.
2. To learn from a mistake it's vital to separate the decision making process - the part you own - from the outcomes, which are usually determined by external factors.
3. Distinguish between brilliant mistakes and silly errors. The difference hinges on relative costs and benefits of what's at stake.
4. In some cases it's advisable to leave space for mistakes to be made - just as random mutations have advanced natural evolution, so clever well-designed mistakes can open up new thinking and advance progress.

"Success is 99% failure."