A Single Yet the Most Important Tip to Make Mistakes

In our company HENNGE, we have a corporate culture which is called the HENNGE Way. In HENNGE Way, there are two statements related to mistakes. Those are as below.

• Ignite Changes to Learn from Mistakes Early
• Stay Curious, Be a Learnaholic

* These are statements in 2021. HENNGE Way is revised every year so that it may vary in the future.

This concept is to encourage challenge despite the risks of failure. And, we encourage our members to learn from those mistakes or failures. In order to make a number of mistakes, a person needs to be curious about many things and needs to have the will to learn. Therefore, we believe it is important to learn from mistakes to ignite changes to both ourselves and society. At HENNGE, as long as members can learn from mistakes, we encourage them to challenge themselves regardless of their results. In fact, there is a similar principale in Amazon Leadership Principles which states "Learn and Be Curious".

Although I understand this concept of our culture, one day, I noticed that it is difficult to make mistakes. In order to make mistakes, the person needs to be aware of what mistakes are. If a person is not recognizing a mistake which the person made, it is not a mistake for the person. Then, I came up with a question. What is a mistake? If we encounter a situation in which we don't know the basic meaning, there is always a dictionary to check. According to Cambridge Dictionary, mistake is "an action, decision, or judgment that produces an unwanted or unintentional result". A mistake is an unwanted or an unintentional result. Then, how can the result be unwanted or unintentional? To be unwanted or unintentional, there needs to be something wanted and intentional. This means, in order to make a mistake, there needs to be some expectation. And, if the result is different from something wanted or intended, that result can be stated as a mistake.

Let's think about an example. Let's say a person made a mistake in which the person put the wrong number in a quotation. In this situation, what can we say about the expectation? The expectation was to create a quotation with the correct number. But, the result was different from the expectation which was to put the wrong number. Therefore, we can say this as a mistake. If the person becomes aware of the mistake, the person can think why the wrong number was put in the quotation. But reasons can vary. Maybe because of putting numbers manually, maybe the person misunderstood the number or maybe there was a malfunction in the autofilling function. The important thing is that if the person becomes aware of the mistake, the person can analyze the reason why and learn from that analysis. If the person can learn, the person can improve next time.

Let's think about another example. If a salesperson fails to close a deal, will we see it as a mistake? The answer to this question will depend on expectation. If the expectation is to successfully close every deal the salesperson owns, we can see it as a mistake. (In the real world, it is extremely unlikely to assume a salesperson will be able to close every deal successfully.) However, if the expectation of this salesperson is to close 50% of deals, and if this salesperson has a close rate of 60% at the moment, we should see this salesperson is doing good despite the fact this salesperson failed to close a deal.

Hopefully, you can agree with the idea that in order to make a mistake, you need to have an expectation in advance. Without an expectation, you can not judge whether it is a mistake or not. Therefore, a single yet the most important tip to make mistakes is this.

Create expectations or goals in advance in order to make mistakes

Let's say a person has a dream to succeed in a startup. Unless the person defines the expectations of success, it would be difficult to judge whether the person is successful or not. One the other hand, the definition of success can vary by each startup so that one startup can define success by reaching 1 million USD annual revenue. And other startups can define they are still not successful even if they reach 100 million USD annual revenue if their expectation is to earn 500 million USD annual revenue.

Lastly, I would like to mention the situation where results exceeded expectations. If this situation occurred, should we see this as a mistake? Or should we think it is an unexpected success? The answer can refer to Han Fei Tzu which is old Chinese literature written in 250 B.C.

韓非子（二柄）

功當其事，事當其言，則賞；功不當其事，事不當其言，則罰。故群臣其言大而功小者則罰，非罰小功也，罰功不當名也；群臣其言小而功大者亦罰，非不說於大功也，以為不當名也害甚於有大功，故罰。

Han Fei Tzu

If the result matches the previous declaration, give rewards. If the previous declaration didn't match the result, punish. Punish not because the result is smaller than previously declared, but punish because the result didn't match the previous declaration. Also punish if the result was larger than the previous declaration. Punish because it would motivate people to declare smaller to have greater results.

Punishing people is a little extreme in nowadays. But the main point is that it is also not good to exceed expectations. As it is stated, if you reward people for exceeding expectations, people will have incentive to set smaller goals or expectations which will have a negative impact on growth. In addition, I have another reason why it is not good. If the result exceeded the expectation too much, this means there were some factors which were not recognized when the expectation was set. And that leads to the necessity of finding out unrecognized factors and analyzing why it was not recognized in advance. This means there is room to learn and improve. Of course, even if the results were as expected, there is always room to analyze and check the reasons why the results were as expected.

Thank you for reading and wish you to have great HENNGE days.