A concept I learnt to apply only failry recently in life, is to embrace mistakes. This life adjustment came with night sweats, hightened anxiety and plenty of tears- but it noticeably adjusted the way I work and interact with people for the better and garnered surprisingly positive results. Being right is easy, it makes us feel justified and gratified. But being wrong is everything we are told not to be in life and at work, it’s against the grain- reconditioning is incredibly hard. The catalyst for me was reading Kathryn Shultz book- “On Being Wrong”, which will continue to be a reference to me in work and life. I have become a huge advocate to admitting failure where it’s due, learning from failures, talking about failures and finding ways to handle failures better.
Why is this important for Risk Managers? It’s failry obvious really- risk management is about uncertainty and potential failures. If a RM has no confidence in rising to meet these failures, if they feel undermined by hierarchy to influence potential failures then it’s unlikley they will add any value to managing risks. By no means am I an expert ‘wrongologist’, it’s not easy and at times still rather daunting; but I can say that it has allowed me to see and appraoch everything I do with far more confidence, clarity and foresight than I ever had before.
So challange yourself to say- “wow that was a real f-up, how cool!”, then break it down and create a new way to avoid the mistake in the future. It’s going to be hard and you’ll be scrutinised and possibly called into meetings with the big bosses, but by cultivating a positive culture around mistakes it should organically flow into a positive culture towards risk management.
Watch “On Being Wrong” on TedTalks by Katheryn Schultz:
Recent Comments