{"id":674,"date":"2017-09-07T20:13:48","date_gmt":"2017-09-07T20:13:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/?p=674"},"modified":"2017-09-07T20:17:09","modified_gmt":"2017-09-07T20:17:09","slug":"are-your-mistakes-watching-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/2017\/09\/07\/are-your-mistakes-watching-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Your Mistakes Watching You?"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of my favorite Netflix programs is Japanese Style Originator<\/a>. A panel of Japanese celebrities views video segments on nooks and crannies of Japanese culture and tries to correctly guess the reasons for various details. The show is a delightful window into the subtleties of (for example) chopstick usage and tofu-making, but it also reveals the way those subtleties are viewed and understood (or not understood) by more-or-less ordinary people.<\/p>\n

Episode 28 is devoted to traditional Japanese crafts. One segment is about a workshop that carves heads for bunraku puppets. (Good examples here <\/a>and more information here<\/a>.) We see three generations of craftsmen working away on these expressive wooden heads for traditional puppets, and then we see a shelf sitting near one of their workbenches. A row of puppet heads sits there, for no apparent purpose. That’s the question for the panel: why are those puppet heads on the shelf?<\/p>\n

After a range of guesses from the panel the answer comes: these heads are the carver’s mistakes. A tiny misalignment here, a small stray chip there…and the head goes on the shelf, where it remains to gaze at the craftsman. His explanation? “Seeing these mistakes reminds me that I need to try harder.”<\/p>\n

How comfortable would you be having your mistakes on the wall staring at you? For many of us that would be a bit of a challenge – I know it would be for me. I gained fresh insight into my relationship with my mistakes from Carol Dweck’s book Mindset<\/a>. She describes two basic mindsets: fixed<\/em> and growth<\/em>. A fixed mindset would really rather not make mistakes at all…but if mistakes come, the solution is to shy away from them, give up, find something else to do. A growth mindset, on the other hand, makes you eager to learn – whatever it takes. If you need a row of leering misshapen samurai heads staring at you, then so be it.<\/p>\n

In the technology delivery world, the retrospective is perhaps the closest thing to a shelf of crooked puppet heads. It’s not easy to look at those errors, large or small, that made for late shipment or too many defects or a misalignment with user expectations. I think “growth mindset” is a great concept for shifting the tenor of the conversation. But it’s important to realize that, for those of us who have been reared in a fixed mindset (I’m putting my hand up here), it’s not necessarily easy to make that shift: we have old habits that don’t go away easily. Recognizing the voices of self-criticism and unreasonable expectations of perfection is a good first step. Hanging old mistakes on the wall? It might take a little while to get there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of my favorite Netflix programs is Japanese Style Originator. A panel of Japanese celebrities views video segments on nooks and crannies of Japanese culture and tries to correctly guess the reasons for various details. The show is a delightful window into the subtleties of (for example) chopstick usage and tofu-making, but it also reveals […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-openmindedness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=674"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":680,"href":"http:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674\/revisions\/680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}