Start small, make the kind of mistakes where you can exclaim “Oopsie!” and everyone lets you get on with cleaning up the mess. 

Make another mistake – but never the same one. (That gets you escorted out of the door.)

Make a new mistake, based on the learning you made previously. 

Example: in safety workplaces, “near miss” reporting is an excellent example of learning by doing, failing forward. Every time something could have gone wrong, it is reported. The more reports made, the more the team is rewarded. 

The alternative is:

“Nothing to see here! Everything’s ok!” 

The result of which: catastrophe, sometime, not sure when, we just know it will happen. The team will fall off the side of the cliff.

Show that there is growth in the process, share the process, learn as you disorganize – work out loud, right?

This Much We Know.