Is Creating A Culture Of Mistakes Okay, Where It’s Acceptable To Learn From Them?

Is it effective and wise a principle that says creating a culture of mistakes where it is acceptable to learn from them is ok? I think not. Nevertheless Ray Dalio Co-chief and Co-chair of Bridgewater Associates wrote in LinkedIn in an effort to advance a principle of the day: 

Everyone makes mistakes. The main difference is that successful people learn from them and unsuccessful people don’t. By creating an environment in which it is okay to safely make mistakes so that people can learn from them, you’ll see rapid progress and fewer significant mistakes. #principleoftheday


But this is not prudent and seems rather nonsensical when you think about it deeply. For if it’s okay to have a culture of mistakes where you can learn from them, isn’t that’s why we had 4 years of #Trump.... That’s why we have the #pandemic raging out of control while people played politics and ignored the science and reasoning behind safety; that’s why "No lessons have been learned”, despite of lawmakers' promises to avoid the mistakes made in 2008, much of the $2.2 trillion dollar bailout package went to wealthy institutions and people and the same is true during the COVID pandemic where billionaires end up richer with this 2020 stimulus package. Moreover, isn’t that the reason we continue to have mass protest and violence regarding BLM as police and the system continue to disproportionately take out black and brown people and in spite of the mass protests innocent black people such as Floyd continued to be killed. People continue to lack economic access and to live in poverty. 

In deed, a culture that okays making mistakes suffers from advancement and progress or the progress is slow and painful as this lowers standards and promotes inefficiency and waste. You see the problem with that principle is that people seem to make the same mistakes over and over again getting the same results without ever learning. I’d never want to make those same kinds of mistakes repeatedly as this creates a culture of confusion and chaos backwardness and static. 

Instead, I’d say “Let your yea be yea and your nay be nay”. Do not send mixed messages about being flawless. This kind of principle creates confusion and leads to lots of time trying to fix problems and one end up loosing the international race of life which is basically a competition or a survival of the fittest at worst. 

Rather, one should create a culture in which it is NOT okay to make mistakes but if made one MUST learn from them; for if it’s okay to make mistakes how many mistakes should one or can one make before one say m, “okay enough is enough”. Again, remember that mistakes have a cost value that affects “profits”. Every mistake or failure has a cost so it defies me that one would have a principle that promote more cost and looses and time wasting.  

To be blunt, a principle promoting mistakes is not effective management principle or life principle at all. For you can’t okay mistakes and at the same time find learning from them acceptable then we may find ourselves living in a society where we constantly make the same mistakes without much learning or progress because it’s okay to make those mistakes. And if it’s okay to make mistakes why do we need to learn from them. 

I posed a Question to Ray Dalio:  Who #benefits from #mistakes? Who bear the #costs? And maybe mistakes are needed to continue the #statusquo. But costs are usually passed onto the #masses or the #laborforce not the #rich #capitalists or their #technocrats. I guess mistakes  are okay when you are #wealthy and can rise above the cost and can pass on the costs as well. Who bore the mistakes of the  profits and losses of the #plantocracy and its effects #slavery? #Black and #poor people who are still suffering today. And some people are good at #obfuscating so that mistakes are just ways to #control and keep down the many under the few!

Rather, You should learn from your mistakes because it’s not okay to make them. If you say it’s okay to make mistakes then it’s defeatist you expect one to make the extra effort to not make them when it’s okay. It’s an ambiguous principle to expect one thing that is antithetical to the corresponding value.