Very excited that this book arrived in my mailbox. I run a small teacher-training outfit for the University of California and LOVE IT and still learning a TON. Today, my thoughts on the chapter: "Learning From Mistakes is Overrated".
Another common misconception: You need to learn from your mistakes.What do you really learn from mistakes? You might learn what not to do again, but how valuable is that? You still don't know what you should do next. (Fried & Hansson, p.16)
Is it all that a little deterministic? Sure, a terrible singer can fail 100 times at a singing contest and may never improve. A great singer will typically have the opposite result. Isn't learning what not to do useful? I would argue that in some instances, you may have to try again, perhaps under different circumstances, success will come of it. The authors point out that one should rather learn from success. Sure. I buy that. Look at successful companies, what do they do well? how can we do better? Should we do better? I would rather just LEARN. Learn from both. Both will come at us- success and failure. Let's learn from both.
Failure is not a prerequisite of success.(p.17)
The tone of this chapter sounds a little bit glib to me. Success is not a prerequisite of success either. Look at Microsoft.
Aside from this rant, I love this book so far. It challenges my notions of things, it helps me be honest and I truly appreciate that.
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