9.1 Mistakes, Pitfalls, and Bruised Knees

Making mistakes is the biggest part of learning. To bolster the learning process, great managers encourage their teams to make mistakes early and often. Whether encouraged or not, we've always strived to get on with the mistakes so that we can reach the point at which we're doing things better.

In this chapter, we point out the mistakes we've made or that we've observed others making. Our main reason is not to help you avoid making these mistakes; you'll make them anyway. Instead, our aim is to help you recognize the mistakes when you make them and to help you move quickly to other ways of doing things. The preceding chapters have been "what to do." This chapter is "what to do and then move on."