Fail Lately??

Samuel Beckett has a famous quote from his poem Worstward Ho that says:

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

What does that mean, fail better?

My interpretation is that without failure, without mistakes, you cannot grow. You will fail again but in a different way and that continuous learning process makes us better.

I made a mistake last week. (Gasp) I forgot to update an important piece of documentation to reflect a decision that was made in a previous meeting. It wasn’t a huge error, but it was large enough to cause a bit of confusion among some members of my team and we had to have an emergency conference call to alleviate any concerns. No one is perfect, mistakes happen. The first reaction to mistakes is often to find blame; to blame yourself or to blame others. Instead of finding blame, it’s better to acknowledge the mistake, find a solution, and recognize the lesson.

The key for me is to learn from those gaffes and find ways to avoid making the same errors repeatedly. Instead I make different (better?) mistakes and continue that learning process. My lesson from the above error is to be more thorough at updating my project documentation to better reflect our decisions, and to make those updates right away. Plus, if I dare to look for the positive side of this situation, I would say it proved that my project documentation is used by members of my team and they find value in it.

How have you failed lately? Want to share the lesson?