There are no «right» mistakes. There is only the art to stay in touch with reality.

Many of you have filled in my questionnaire about what you would like to read here. One topic really intrigued me. Someone wrote: «How do I make the right mistakes?».

My first reaction was almost childish. What do you mean, right mistakes? There are no right mistakes — there are only mistakes! The question kept knocking on my brain. And after a few weeks I had to admit something uncomfortable: I was wrong.

Yes, I still think that we cannot plan for better mistakes and avoid certain ones that are unhelpful to us. Any kind of mistakes can happen while we try to build something new, exciting, unknown.

The difference, for me, lies in the attitude that we take towards making, or experiencing, these mistakes.

For me, it is all about staying in touch with reality.

Before we get to that, I want to investigate why mistakes are so frightening to many of us in the first place. Because I believe that underlying the question «how can I make the right mistakes» is fear. Fear of mistakes in general, and maybe a kind of «adopted» acceptance that in order to build something, mistakes are unavoidable. But please, please let me make the «right» mistakes so I can learn faster and arrive at my goal without too many scars.

The thing is: We cannot avoid things happening that we don't want. Probably the whole idea of «mistake» is wrong, if I think of it, because «mistake» has a notion of «me doing something wrong» that will keep me from reaching my goal.

It is no surprise that we think that way. After all, our whole world is geared towards telling us what is «right» and «wrong» from early childhood, and to make us fear mistakes.

So maybe let's re-name «mistake» and call them «information from reality».

Signals from reality

When we follow a purpose and want to reach a goal, we make assumptions. And based on those assumptions, we start working, creating, implementing.

On our way, we get «signals from reality» (formerly named «mistakes») that will give us valuable information on how right or not right our assumptions were.

Here lies the main movement to the «right mistakes»: We take assumptions, we do something, we get information from reality, we course correct based on that information, and we do the next thing.

The crucial thing is to stay connected to reality. The feedback we get can be confirmation («yay, this is working!») or resistance («no, this is not working»), and often it is something in between, something that nudges us to do it a tiny bit differently. I find the third category the most challenging, because it really asks me to pay close attention.

If I think of the questions I got in my newsletter questionnaire, it would have been easy to go with the confirmations. Writing about the things I had proposed that got a lot of approval already. It's nice to stay in my comfort zone, after all.

What I chose is to pay close attention to a new idea, an idea that bothered me, and to sit with it and write about that. Because it was a valuable feedback from reality. If I am ready to connect to reality, I will learn and thrive, is my experience.

Small steps

One thing is crucial to stay connected with reality in order to move forward towards my goal or to follow a specific purpose: It's the size of the steps I take.

Most of us grew up with a mindset of planning and executing. We put a lot of effort into formulating a plan and when we had enough confidence that the plan could work, we started implementing. Maybe this is where the idea of «mistake» comes from, as well, because there is a hell of a lot that will go wrong once you try to execute a plan.

Reality does not respect your plan. It will interfere with it, thwart it, maybe even destroy it. It will send you back to square one more than once, asking you to formulate a new plan.

And our current reality is even more volatile, more brutal, and more unpredictable than it was ten or twenty years ago, so I suggest making definite plans is a thing of the past. Plans can be helpful to state one possible way. And realizing that the path that you will take will significantly deviate from that.

What I suggest doing is small experiments. Make an assumption of something you could try on the way to your goal to stay in touch with reality. Define the experiment as something that you can implement in a few days and to which you get real feedback in a few hours, days or weeks.

With this information from reality, build your next experiment. Either expand on what you did and change it based on the feedback, or try something new, if the information from reality is that this is not the way.

In any case, stay closely connected to reality as it is, and not as you wish it were.

In life, there are a few things where we cannot do small steps. Where we leap into a completely new reality. Having a child is one of them. Founding a company. Or deciding to tackle a large body of work, like writing a book. Here, we cannot test the waters. But the mindset of being in touch with reality is also helpful here: It is easier to deal with difficulty if we do not fight reality but acknowledge it and deal with it.

Reality is moving, as well

Something I hardly ever hear anyone acknowledge is that as humans we tend to treat both our plans as well as reality as fixed entities, almost as the truth. In reality, both are changing all the time. The «truth», if it even exists, is dynamic.

Think of a gardener. They cannot control the weather. All they can do is observe, plant, observe, adapt. Something that looked like a good decision yesterday can turn out to be a mistake next week. It requires patience and humility to be a gardener. And it is the same with any other endeavour.

Maybe last year things looked up and you enlarged your team. And now, the market turned and keeping that team size is a real challenge. It was not a «mistake» to take that decision. But it would be foolish to not be in touch with reality.

On the other hand, something you did not try three years ago because you were in touch with reality then could be the game-changer today because reality has shifted.

When my friend Laurent and I started developing purpose statements with individuals, teams and organisations, we worked from one assumption: formulating something is hard for most people. So we built a process that took the work off their shoulders. We asked a lot of questions, collected the answers, and wrote a first version for them. With the best intentions — they could always adapt it.

Reality answered clearly. You cannot formulate a purpose statement for someone else. The real statement is not a composition of good answers. It is an almost alchemical process that a person or a team has to go through with themselves.

Testing that assumption was the best thing we did. It brought us, eventually, to a process that is entirely led by the person or the team. Our only job is facilitation.

Being adaptive is not a quirky idea from a management book. It is a necessity to survive and to follow your purpose and to reach your goals.

Just imagine a garden that someone plants in one year and then just leaves it to its own devices: It will soon not be a garden anymore, but a wilderness. Creating something needs tending, observation, patience and experience accumulated over a lot of time.

The «mistake» of not listening to reality

If there is something I would call a «mistake» for real, it would be not paying attention to reality. Ignoring the feedback, the information from the market, the current climate, even if you clearly see it.

Being out of touch with reality can cost us dearly. And yet, it is still something I do, even with many years of experience. Cultivating a relationship with what is real takes life-long practice, and it's easy to cover up with stubbornness or ignorance.

The right errors are small errors

Let's come back to the initial question: How can I make the «right» mistakes?

Small experiments. Close attention. And the humility of a gardener who knows they do not command the weather. That is all. And it is quite a lot.

My closing questions to you:

• What have you sent out into the world but ignored the feedback from reality?
• What could you test this week that has the potential to bring you closer to your goal?
• Which of your decision is still standing on last year's reality (or last year's weather)?

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