The Mistake Bank

Aims and Guidelines

"From failure you learn; from success, not so much." Meet the Robinsons.

The Mistake Bank is a place to share stories of mistakes people have made in their lives and careers. Please contribute videos or blog posts recounting your mistakes that you think others could learn from. Start a forum topic or participate in an existing forum.

Please comment on and share the entries. Invite others to join. All are welcome. Sharing mistakes is a gift--please honor that by keeping your comments constructive and civil.

Regards, John

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Latest Activity

Leigh Leigh joined The Mistake Bank. Leave a Comment for Leigh. 9 hours ago
John Caddell John Caddell added the blog post 'Slow learner' 13 hours ago
Daz Daz joined The Mistake Bank. Leave a Comment for Daz. 1 day ago
John Caddell John Caddell left a comment for Geekgirl397 1 day ago
John Caddell John Caddell left a comment for Roger Anderson 1 day ago
Roger Anderson Roger Anderson joined The Mistake Bank. Leave a Comment for Roger Anderson. 1 day ago
Geekgirl397 Geekgirl397 joined The Mistake Bank. Leave a Comment for Geekgirl397. 1 day ago
Mary Jones and John Caddell are now friends 1 day ago

Blog Posts

Slow learner

I was talking to my old college roommate today and he was explaining the challenges of raising a teenager. "I told my daughter pretty clearly she needed to do something. She listened silently and seemed to agree. Three days later she was doing 180 degrees different from what I asked. I said, 'I told you to do something different and yet you're doing this instead.' And she said, 'Yes, I thought about what you said, but decided that it wouldn't work for me.'" This reminded me of my days as a prog… Continue

Posted by John Caddell on July 23rd, 2008 at 4:18pm — No Comments (Add)

Failure can be brilliant

Member Mireille pointed out a neat post on failure that I missed when it came out last year ("In Praise of Brilliant Failure" from the HBS Discussion Leader blog). The whole thing is worth reading, but here's my favorite part: Failure is also a critical route to innovation. If companies want to become more innovative and develop,… Continue

Posted by John Caddell on July 17th, 2008 at 10:32am — No Comments (Add)

"Failure is just evidence that you haven't mastered the task yet"

Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson has an important article in the latest HBR that says a lot of things about learning in the business world. The following excerpt has some particular relevancy to The Mistake Bank: In her research on individual mind-set differences, Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck has shown that the way children… Continue

Posted by John Caddell on July 2nd, 2008 at 11:41am — No Comments (Add)

Jill Konrath Mistake Story #3 - Five minutes to engage a prospect, and nothing to say...plus losing your cool

Our final sales mistake story from member Jill Konrath. Jill, you will need to make more mistakes, so we can get some more great stories! When I walked in the front door of The Kaplan Company, there were at least 30 desks filled with women who were busy doing order entry and handling customer service issues. I told the receptionist that… Continue

Posted by John Caddell on June 26th, 2008 at 4:30pm — No Comments (Add)

Jill Konrath Sales Mistake #2 - How NOT to get to higher-level decisionmakers

Another sales mistake story from Jill Konrath. One of the prospects I uncovered while cold-calling was Trussbilt, a company directly across Como Avenue from Quality Products.... Back then, I was working with Tinsey, a very articulate woman who told me she was in charge of the copier decision. Shortly after our first meeting, I read a boo… Continue

Posted by John Caddell on June 16th, 2008 at 9:27am — No Comments (Add)

 
 

About The Mistake Bank

John Caddell John Caddell created this social network on Ning.

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A note on privacy

This network is open to anyone to join, but the posts, videos, etc., are only available to members. Search engines do not have access to the data on the site other than the main page.

This I hope will provide the safety people need to share stories. And, with the efforts of everyone who shares mistake stories, perhaps we can do a small part to reduce the stigma of making mistakes.

Which, of course, is something everyone does--especially, I am learning, prominent, successful people.

Regards, John
 

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