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

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

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

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

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