Saying

Good judgment comes from experience, experience comes from bad judgment.

To Me

This is my favourite saying that I pretty much live by, and keep telling people about once a week. It means to me that it’s all fine to make mistakes. What’s important is how one learns from it. How one works to understand how one is at fault – fault is not a problem in itself.

Two other things fall out of this when I apply this ongoing. The first is that I allow people to learn in my teams by setting them challenges that I tell them that I’m deliberately allowing them to fail in a safe way. I won’t just tell them the answer, I let them try and work it out and find the hurdles, fall, get up and carry on.

The second is that the saying doesn’t say who’s bad judgment it is. So one can gain experience from learning from everyone else around you. Learn from their bad judgments and gain the experience that way too!