“It’s not about doing perfect work. It’s about knowing how to fix mistakes.”

I was watching a YouTube video of an experienced woodworker. Back in the dark days of 2020, I got into woodworking.

Because my ambition often exceeds my ability, I’m now a couple of years into the month-long project.

There have been detour projects and distractions along the way. But much of the time has been stuck dealing with mistakes.

Mistakes I made. And mistakes I was afraid to make.

When I heard him make this statement, I felt a sense of relief. Maybe all of my mistakes weren’t so unusual?

Maybe getting good at fixing them was at least as valuable as any other skill I’d learn? Perhaps even more important? Because the fear of making a mistake has often prevented me from acting.

I’m talking about woodworking. But it applies to leadership.

Fail Faster

“Big red X’s!” shrieked Susie Anderson, my high school art teacher. She’d grab a paintbrush, jab it in someone’s red paint and slap red X’s over whatever it was in my painting that offended her.

It was painful. It was embarrassing. It felt offensive. And it was the right thing to do.

She forced the mistake, quickly, to its bitter end. And it helped me learn to fix mistakes.

If she hadn’t, I could easily spend days trying to salvage something that should just be redone. Afraid to just call it what it was, a mistake, and boldly start over.

Making a mistake wasn’t the problem. That was expected.

Taking too long to decisively acknowledge and correct the mistake was.

Mistakes Are Inevitable

Leaders make mistakes. We forget things. We get angry. We try too hard to please. We fail to confront. We made the best decision we could – and it turns out to have been the wrong one. Or we just make sloppy decisions.

Mistakes happen. You will make mistakes.

The big problem is rarely the mistake. The big problem is how we relate to the mistake.

Maybe we don’t know how to recognize it in time. Maybe we deny it. Maybe we feel too timid about addressing it. Maybe we hope it’ll fix itself. Maybe we’re suddenly sure someone else is responsible. Maybe we try to hide it.

For sure, let’s try to avoid mistakes. But just as for sure, let’s get good and fast at seeing and fixing the ones we do make.

The Worst Mistakes

The worst mistakes are the ones we don’t learn from.

The second-to-the-worst mistakes are the ones we learn the wrong lessons from.

Often, the wrong lessons are: “I’ll never try again”. Or, “I (or we) just can’t do this.” Or, “I’ll never get embarrassed again.”

It usually ends up with leaders who decide not to try or to start to hide things. Neither are helpful.

Mine Mistakes for Value

A mentor of mine often says, “Mistakes are data.”

The woodworking project that I started with is a piece of furniture. It would have made more sense to start out with a birdhouse. But I didn’t. I started over my head.

This particular piece of furniture is comprised of a lot of boxes. By now, I’ve built many boxes. My garage is filled with boxes. All of which had problems and couldn’t be used. For months, I couldn’t figure out the problem. But I kept gathering data.

Finally, I learned that lumber isn’t straight. Even if it looks like a straight, even board, it probably isn’t. It all needs to be milled – or cut to precise dimensions – before it can be used.

I didn’t know. I was definitely tempted to think, “I’m just no good at this.” Many times.

But I kept trying to figure out my mistakes. Finally, I figured it out.

After the fact, it seems obvious. But it sure wasn’t obvious to me.

I wish I hadn’t had to spend months and hundreds of dollars on lumber with those mistakes. But, I didn’t know what I didn’t know.

Plus, now I’ve had the experience of building lots of boxes. I learned a lot about my tools and the technique they require. I learned a lot about different joints and gluing and sanding.

I learned a lot.

A couple of weeks ago, I finally got it right (or, at least, close enough). Because I had learned my lessons, I was able to make all the boxes I needed, in just hours.

The idea is to get unstuck from the emotion of the mistake as quickly as possible and shift to learning.

Learning to evaluate mistakes objectively, try to understand how to correct or improve on them. And then, in most cases, try again.

Mistakes Are Valuable

Some of what I learned had to do with lumber and tools.

Some had to do with the value of good plans and receiving training.

But a big lesson was to just accept that mistakes are part of the process and keep trying.

I still don’t like mistakes. I never set up my tools and begin working, planning on a mistake. In fact, I usually am thinking about mistakes to avoid.

It’s really hard to avoid them all.

So, I’m learning about stopping mistakes when they are small. And fixing them quickly. And when it just makes more sense to do it over.

But in all of it, I keep trying.

Yesterday I “dry assembled” the piece of furniture. When I look at it – I still mostly see mistakes. But ones I’m pretty sure I can fix.

However, my eight-year-old son walked into the room and exclaimed to his brother, “Look how good dad is!”

It felt great.

It’s also worth remembering that most people never notice most of our mistakes anyways.

Take good care,

Christian

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