Catastrophe
June 15, 2009
The crash of Air France Flight # 447 was a tragedy. It is impossible to imagine the horror of the last moments of the 228 passengers and the devastating trauma and loss for the families and loved ones of the victims as well as for all the staff at Air France. The investigation to determine what caused the crash is still not completed. I suspect that, as in most catastrophes, some human errors, at one level or another, played a determining role in the disaster. Seventy per cent of planes crashes are due to human error.
Hundreds if not thousands of people were involved in making the flight possible. Manufacturers of the equipment, software developers, Air Traffic controllers and many others each had a role, however minute in the organization of the flight. In the analyses of catastrophes we very often discover that there are multiple players in the chain of events that ultimately led to the disaster and that any one of the players could have avoided the disaster by his or her intervention or action.
The same is true in the corporate world, which has had its share of disasters lately. What may appear to us as a minor mistake can, in a succession of related events, have dire consequences.
We may think of ourselves as minor players in a big game and that our mistakes or errors are insignificant and will not have any major impact. This is not a wise way to think. We do not and can not always see the connection between our actions and the overall success or failure of an enterprise.
As Jim Rohn, author and public speaker once said:
“Failure is not a single, cataclysmic event. You don’t fail overnight. Instead, failure is a few errors in judgment, repeated every day.”
Yet errors are inevitable and are part of life. We even learn from them by “trial and error.”
How can we reduce the numbers of errors we commit?
1. We should first of all admit our errors without giving ourselves excuses.
2. We should then try to understand how and why we made them. There is a difference between an explanation and an excuse. By analyzing our errors thoroughly we will have a better chance to learn from them and not to repeat them.
3. We should also learn as much as we can from other people’s mistakes.
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