The, Rules of Work, 4th Edition

RULE 8

Learn from others’ mistakes

A clever man learns from his own mistakes, but a wise man learns from others’ mistakes. That’s what they say, and any Rules Player with sense^* follows this principle. We all make some mistakes, but the fewer you make the better.

It sounds good, doesn’t it? However, you can’t just have the odd catchy quote up your sleeve. You have to really do this stuff. That means that every time someone near you messes up, you need to know all about it. You’ll have to do your detective work, subtly mind you. No one wants to be cross-examined by a colleague about where they went wrong, and there’s a danger of coming across as smug and self-satisfied and nosy and condescending because it wasn’t you that made the mistake, and ...