1. Accept Your Mistakes

Beginning the journey of applying Dragos Roua's 100 Ways to Live a Better Life to my life. Number 1: Accept Your Mistakes.  Dragos says:
You’re human. We, humans, are making mistakes. Accept what you did wrong and try to do better next time. No need to punish yourself forever. In fact, accepting your mistakes is the only way to make them disappear.

Mike King had a really good post on Leadership:Accepting Mistakes in January. I like his use of the quote "Mistakes are the usual bridge between inexperience and wisdom." (Phyllis Therous) Mike also includes a couple really great lists that make his ideas easy to apply.

I'm of an age where I've had the opportunity to learn from lots of mistakes. I don't feel wise yet...more like I'm still on the bridge. I do want to share the one mistake I made that might help others the most.

My post before last was about trust, and it is interesting what role trust played in my mistake. As one more step in living up to Item 1. I'm even going to give you a link to the New York Times version of what happened. I was senior vice president at a charity that was hit with a multi-million dollar embezzlement. I could argue about where the responsibility lay for the theft but I'd rather point out how you might prevent it in your organization.

The person who engaged in the theft had been with the company for 20 years. That's where trust came in. It was not possible for us to imagine that she would steal from us. The result was that no one was watching closely enough. Procedures were unassigned or slipping. Simple safeguards weren't in place. Advisors weren't making sure that we understood their recommendations and weren't being persistent in demanding that we address them.

The point is that this could happen anywhere. We think of embezzlers as creative but the more I learned about the crime the more I came to realize that they are just opportunists. Accounting procedures work - if you follow them. But laxness is born of comfort and comfort is born of trust.

So I learned. I learned that the gravest danger to any business is in the smallest details. I work hard now to see that they are attended to. But I still miss some. Mistakes are always out there. Use mine if you can to avoid yours.