Mistakes, mistakes, mistakes! Are they not the businessperson’s biggest bogey? A misstated phrase in an email that blows up into a huge misunderstanding. A mis-labeled file that causes vital information to get dis- or mis-placed. A mistaken brand strategy or pricing position for which the market shows no mercy. The ever-present and infinite range of possibilities for making mistakes have managers hitting the Maalox like macaws hitting a mango tree.
There is a different approach, one used by improvisers. It’s also an approach that will be familiar to agile developers. In improvisation, every ‘mistake’ is received, instead, as an opportunity. An opportunity for what? Depends on the ‘mistake.’ It could be an opportunity to learn. To upgrade a system. Improve a relationship. Refine a process. Eliminate a defect. Correct a mis-perception. Could be anything.
Here’s the flip: Don’t focus on eliminating the bad. Focus on creating the good. 
The key to the flip is using the Activity Formerly Known as a Mistake as a kind of fulcrum for fast action. Don’t waste time dwelling on it or assigning blame. And especially don’t let your fear of making another so-called mistake limit your range of options in the future. If this is your M.O., it won’t be long before you are giving yourself no range of options whatsoever, and will only engage in activities that are perceived as ‘risk free.’ That’s when you stop learning. When you stop learning you stop evolving. And when you stop evolving, you lose touch with the marketplace, which is evolving, with you or without you.
A mentor of mine, Art Swerdloff, used to have a saying that had been handed down to him by his mentor, the legendary film editor and former Dean of the USC Cinema School, Slavko Vorkapich: “There are no mistakes, only effects.” Vorkapich and Art were talking about film editing, but they could have been talking about any kind of communication process. According to their approach, it was impossible to make a film edit that was ‘wrong.’ Looking at their process like this let Vorkapich and Swerdloff perceive their work as a direct interaction with their audience. No edit is a mistake. Every edit produces an effect on the audience. Does it confuse them or underscore an emotion? Reinforce or change the flow of the story? Is the edit a jarring experience for the viewer? Does it surprise? Build or resolve tension? Add or shift perspective?
This approach transcended craft, and let them build a dialogue with their many collaborators—directors, cinematographers, composers, sound editors, et al—built on a vocabulary of effectiveness. If their discussion with their collaborators had focused, instead, on mistakes, it would not have been long before they’d get getting into one another’s business, and critiquing another person’s area of expertise. By focusing, not on the edit itself, but on the effect produced by the edit, they were able to their share their objective with their collaborators, and pursue it with a shared sense of purpose, with each collaborator working at the height of his or her craft.
Say it once more, maybe even say it out loud. There are no mistakes, only effects!
Then don’t let anything get between you and your effectiveness.
It’s too obvious not to bring it up: the global interest in the Jeremy Lin narrative underscores again how fast and dramatically the game can change…and how a player like Lin–or you—can create the change and benefit from it when it happens.
One night when my son, Alex (who’s leaving tomorrow for a job in NYC) was five years old, we watched the movie E.T. together at home. When E.T. left Elliot to return to his home planet, Alex cried. He was still sad when I tucked him into bed a little later. “Why did E.T. leave?” he asked.
In hierarchical organizations, leadership moves primarily from the top down. That’s its sole direction. In this model, the CEO is automatically the leader in every scene that doesn’t involve the Board of Directors. The people who report to the CEO are the leaders in every scene that does not involve the CEO or the Board etc. etc. etc. until you get to the janitor, who is the leader of the broom. Every scene has a pecking order, and the pecking order has been decided before the scene begins.
