Mistakes are inevitable. No one achieves anything meaningful without stumbling along the way. The question isn’t whether you’ll make mistakes—it’s how you respond when you do. Too often, mistakes are viewed as final—a failure that closes doors. But in reality, mistakes are rarely the end. They’re lessons in disguise, providing insight, experience, and an opportunity to grow. There are 3 steps to overcome mistakes: Own them, Analyze them, and Move On. Use them as fuel to keep going. Mistakes are a sign that you’re trying and stretching beyond your comfort zone. Making progress. I like to say: Progress, not perfection. In 1995, a Stanford professor named John Krumboltz asked his students to take two approaches to learning photography. One group would focus on creating one perfect photograph. They could spend as much time as they wanted planning, shooting, and editing a single masterpiece. The other group, however, had a different challenge: they were tasked with producing as many photos as possible—quantity over quality. At the end of the term, something surprising happened. The quantity group not only produced more photos but also created better quality work than the perfection group. Why? Because every photo they took was a chance to learn, experiment, and improve. While the perfection group spent time agonizing over their single image, the quantity group made mistakes, adjusted, and progressed. The lesson is simple: progress comes from consistent effort and learning from mistakes, not waiting for perfection. https://lnkd.in/dfn7egP4
Ajay Buti
3mo
Your post resonates deeply. While we aspire to view mistakes as learning opportunities, the reality is that many organizations still operate with a punitive mindset. Navigating between personal growth and workplace expectations requires both resilience and strategic self-advocacy. It's about documenting lessons learned, demonstrating how an error led to improved processes, and showing tangible steps taken to prevent future occurrences. The key is transforming a mistake from a liability into evidence of your problem-solving capabilities and commitment to continuous improvement. This approach can help shift both individual and organizational perspectives from blame to learning.
Atanas Iliev
3mo
I totally agree. We can not gain experience without making mistakes, and it is sometimes way more valuable than pure knowledge.
Jeff Bell
3mo
Such an inspiring perspective—mistakes truly are stepping stones to growth. The photography experiment is a powerful reminder that consistent effort and learning from missteps often lead to far greater outcomes than striving for perfection from the start. 📸✨
Imad Lodhi
3mo
In any human driven system mistakes are bound to happen. As you said, it’s how we respond to those mistakes, is what matters. Are we learning from the mistakes? Are we taking the appropriate steps to ensure that the mistakes are not repeated? We have to acknowledge and realize that mistakes Are part of our growth.
Adarsha Gowda
2mo
Rob Thomas , IBM culture is screwed up under bad leadership and your guys are treating employees like slave and manager threatening employees to terminate and forceful PIP and too much power to people manager and useless HR team who don’t care employees concern and posting online such thing doesn’t matter and old age manager who same position doing nothing just monitor employees
Mladen Kostesic
3mo
The trickiest (and often significant) mistakes are those you discover years after you make them. Part of the progress is constant doubting and reevaluation of what you consider true and right. I appreciate you are talking about progress, not growth, the latter being a very problematic and devious word when used as a synonym.
Sayan Banerjee
3mo
Knowledge comes and goes...its mistakes that turn this knowledge into lessons....and lessons stick around for life!
Product Manager at Turbonomic, an IBM company
3moI think there's a higher level response to this - progress is based on how LEADERS respond to failure. If your team cannot experiment and take risk, they will not accomplish anything extraordinary. Create the environment that encourages the behavior you want, and that's exactly what you'll get.