topic Mistakes - Not always a bad thing in PTC University Training

Mistakes - Not always a bad thing

BettinaGiemsa — Wed, 03 Jun 2020 14:49:13 GMT

Just ran into this article and thought it would be a good topic for discussion!

"Failure, mistakes, mishaps — they all play a vital role in helping employees learn and grow, too." The article suggests organizations to embrace rather than penalize mistakes so employees will be able to take risks and try out new things and sees mistakes as an opportunity for learning and growth.

What are your thoughts on this?

I do agree with the theory, but I think this cannot be generalized - taking risks can be a good thing, but only to a certain extend and this really depends on your role and responsibilities. I also think while you may be willing to take risks, you are not doing this because you are wanting to fail. You take them but you are still hoping for a positive outcome. Thus, you will do the most possible to avoid failure.

In regard to training, you can approach this from two sides:

You fail: You now know where your gaps are and can take training to improve your skills - that's clearly an opportunity.
You train first because you want to deliver the best possible outcome and avoid failure. We encourage "health checks" and offer free assessments to our customers to check their staff's proficiency with our products and ensure their teams are well-prepared for upcoming tasks.

What are your thoughts? Let me know your opinion on the article - I look forward to hearing from you.

PS: If you are interested in a skill assessment, you may want to talk to one of our Training Advisors!

Re: Mistakes - Not always a bad thing

rdumitriu — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 09:21:23 GMT

Hello Bettina,

Thanks for sharing this.

I thought of another approach, similar in flavour - categorizing your failure and renaming your risk taking activities as controlled experiments.

I think this simple trick can change one's mindset and take it to another level.

By deploying small concrete experiments that return specific feedback we can then explore the possibilities surrounding our general mission and try filtering those with the highest likelihood of leading to excellent results.

Most of the times results are obtained by exploiting opportunities. This is why we can look at our mistakes and take them as they are - a good opportunity evolve.

Re: Mistakes - Not always a bad thing

BettinaGiemsa — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 09:40:11 GMT

I like that!