Do you have to fail or make mistakes to succeed in your career?

N918KT

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I know it's probably cliche but do you agree with this statement in the title?

What do you think about this statement in general? Do you agree or not agree and why?
 
No. That's why we learn to read. So the mistakes don't have to all be ours.

You shouldn't need to run out of fuel to learn it's a bad idea.

Some occupations are exceptionally intolerant of errors.

If at first you don't succeed, maybe skydiving is a bad idea.
 
I believe it depends on each person probably.
For my father, he knew he wanted to become an aircraft engineer at the age of 11 or so and he strived hard and did pretty successfully and was offered jobs all across the world during his 60 or so years in the workforce. Rarely had a moment when he was unemployed or unhappy. He said if he could redo his life (his 80 now) he wouldn't change a thing.

Me, on the other hand, I've failed multiple college classes, even completely changed my College and Degree, rejected at job interviews because I wasn't good enough, and made painful mistakes (and debts) in the process, but I'm happy where I am, learning and working within my field now.

I personally don't know if I agree or disagree with the statement. I guess to me, it's all about making the right decisions at the most crucial and important choices given to us, to avoid completely f***ing yourself up later in life.
 
I think success come more from how you react to the failures. And a lot depends on your line of work - a heart surgeon with a lot of failures, higher than the industry average, might learn a lot from them. Hopefully he learns that this isn't the job for him.
 
I know it's probably cliche but do you agree with this statement in the title?

What do you think about this statement in general? Do you agree or not agree and why?

Are you testing us to see if we know that the title is a question and not a statement?
 
Seriously though, you need to be willing to fail in order to exceed. Risk aversion is not a negative trait, but it can lead to stagnation. Risk taking (and being right) can accelerate a career. Risk taking (and being wrong) can lead to the unemployment line.
 
I don't believe you have to personally fail in order to succeed. However, being observant in your shortcomings and the failures/shortcomings of others will help you succeed. I've been around a lot of people who have managed projects improperly and failed, sometimes spectacularly. I make it a point not to repeat their mistakes, which is similar to why I stay involved on aviation boards. I like to read and gather knowledge so that I can minimize the likelihood that I'd make the same error.
 
There's an old saying that goes something like learn from others mistakes because you don't have time to make them all yourself.

I can't say that I've failed along the way and now that I'm 59 and getting ready to retire next year I'd say I've been a success. Whenever I'm asked how I got to where I am I always reply that I read everything I can and remember as much as I can. I think reading about others peoples triumphs over failure (and not just about failure) has helped me succeed.
 
I know it's probably cliche but do you agree with this statement in the title?

What do you think about this statement in general? Do you agree or not agree and why?

Literally? No. Others making mistakes, or being able to blame yours on them and getting away with it can help. In some careers performance does not equal success. The Peter Principal, while often an exaggeration, does exist. What particular career are you talking about?
 
If you don't ever make a mistake, it means that you are either too risk adverse or you're dinking the dog and being a disservice to your fellow employees. Sure, I've made mistakes over the years and broken or damaged parts, but I've owned up to it, showed how I messed up and then we go on and recover.
 
If you don't ever make a mistake, it means that you are either too risk adverse or you're dinking the dog and being a disservice to your fellow employees. Sure, I've made mistakes over the years and broken or damaged parts, but I've owned up to it, showed how I messed up and then we go on and recover.

I guess it would help to know what we are considering material when we refer to a "mistake". Have I made a journal entry incorrectly? Certainly, but it is easily corrected and no one's the wiser. Have I made a mistake which was egregious and drew the wrath of my superiors? Not so far.
 
I wouldn't call it failing, but I've been turned down several times on the way to a career. I suppose it made me stronger, more persistent but I don't think it made me any better at being a pilot.

Making mistakes as a pilot can help you be a better pilot as long as they're not critical and don't become a trend. I've made several errors along the way and I'd like to think I'm a far better pilot because of it...at least that's what I tell myself.:D
 
Humans learn from mistakes. If you aren't making mistakes, or avoiding mistakes others have made so you don't have to, you aren't learning... or you aren't pushing yourself to do the best you can and you're just coasting because something is easy for you.

I can't tell ya how many times as a senior technical person I've had to stop a boss from flame broiling a newbie tech who showed great promise who made a mistake and caused an outage, not through maliciousness or carelessness, but through pushing themselves to attempt to fix something a bit beyond their skill set or knowledge level.

"Boss, he was trying to do stuff the senior staff is supposed to be doing but we're overloaded and you know it. Don't go on a witch hunt on him right now. We will make sure he knows he needs to talk to someone before attempting something like that again -- if he had called, I could have explained to him in five minutes how to do it right, and it would take me an hour to explain it to you. He's good. Don't burn him for this. We need more like him. He's trying AND he cares. How many people on staff do we have that do both? This isn't the guy you fired a few months ago for consistent carelessness who broke things like a bull in a china shop. I'll talk to him and you should schedule a meeting with a couple of us senior folks and you to get the point across that what he did was serious, but we need to channel that enthusiasm, not kill it."
 
I was told when I was young that making mistakes was a good way to learn and then progress and advance. I took it to heart so I keep making mistakes to see if it works. Not sure if it does. :(
 
If you could work without making mistakes, that would be ideal, but of course that's not possible, so you will make mistakes. In my line of work, software development, we go to great lengths to minimize the number of mistakes we make and to test for those that we did make. The only way to not make mistakes is to not do anything, and only a few senior managers can get away with that.

As far as failing goes, that's mostly about being able to try new things. Companies bring new products to market, some of them will succeed, most will not, that's just the nature of the marketplace. You can do product research and market testing, but you won't really know until the product is out in the marketplace. How well that is accepted depends on your company's culture. We had one CEO who said that if you asked for money for a project and got it, if your product failed, don't expect a second chance. If you're hoping to own your own business, it's very helpful to get more than one chance at success. Problem is that these days the smallest business that's likely to be successful in most cases is going to require an investment in the multi hundreds of thousands of dollars, so it's pretty expensive to fail.
 
I've learned so much from my mistakes I'm thinking of making a few more. :D
 
Thanks for the response everyone! In aviation, there is no room for error, so I'm not sure that if you made a big mistake during your career in aviation you would get back up on your feet and learn from it, or if your career would end all of a sudden.
 
Thanks for the response everyone! In aviation, there is no room for error, so I'm not sure that if you made a big mistake during your career in aviation you would get back up on your feet and learn from it, or if your career would end all of a sudden.
If you think that everyone in aviation has never made a big mistake you would be mistaken.

Of course there is always the chance of a huge mistake, or a mistake where luck and everything else is against you...
 
In the science business, if you aren't failing regularly, you aren't doing it right.
(Or you are cheating.)
 
Depends on how you define failure I think.

If I take something apart to fix it and it takes me 4 tries to reassemble it properly but in the end I have the thing working again I don't count that as a failure. Next time I'll just remember what I did before and it will go faster.
 
If errors are never made in aviation then no one will ever get to pull the handle and get a nice parachute ride. That would be boring.
 
I know it's probably cliche but do you agree with this statement in the title?

What do you think about this statement in general? Do you agree or not agree and why?
Why do you ask?
 
Thanks for the response everyone! In aviation, there is no room for error, so I'm not sure that if you made a big mistake during your career in aviation you would get back up on your feet and learn from it, or if your career would end all of a sudden.

I have yet to make, or see anyone else make, a perfect flight. We strive for perfection, but it isn't always humanly possible. Consequences can sometimes be very bad, which is why it is good to learn from the mistakes of others. We use safeguards, checklists, training, practice, and supervision to eliminate the killer mistakes.
 
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Thanks for the response everyone! In aviation, there is no room for error, so I'm not sure that if you made a big mistake during your career in aviation you would get back up on your feet and learn from it, or if your career would end all of a sudden.
You might be adding a lot of pressure on yourself, with the "no room for error" mindset - there is quite a bit of room for error in aviation, truly. You can eff-up a lot, still not break anything, or kill yourself, and learn from it.
 
If you don't have a few failures, you're not trying hard enough at life and have never blazed your own trail.

Just like racing cars, if you never put one in the grass, you never pushed yourself enough.

As long as it's not getting someone hurt and destroyed, or something dumb like running out of gas, it's simply part of evolving as a human in our terminal condition called life, don't be afraid to fail, be scare to death of not trying or not living though.
 
Here's what I do:
When I fail, I learn from it.
When others fail, I learn from that too.

As for perfection in aviation, that's why we have go-arounds, wind correction, magnetic offsets, radios, etc. I'd say that most of flying is correcting one error or another.
 
The school of hard knocks does teach you real skills since most of us don't learn well from others mistakes. That said, you don't HAVE to make mistakes to get ahead but those mistakes tend to be what we remember. In other words, the bigger the mistake, the more vivid the memory.
 
not necessarily, but as the saying goes ïf you've never failed, you've never lived"

In order to grow, you need failure, it is life’s ultimate lesson. Failing will happen, no matter how hard you try to avoid it, so you might as well have a ‘no fear’ attitude towards it.
 
No. That's why we learn to read. So the mistakes don't have to all be ours.

You shouldn't need to run out of fuel to learn it's a bad idea.

Some occupations are exceptionally intolerant of errors.

If at first you don't succeed, maybe skydiving is a bad idea.
True! That's why they try to weed out the potential failures in cadets for instance. Aircraft bad judgement can be catastrophic as in the screw up in buffalo a few years back. Another reason is being in the wrong field and disliking what your doing. For instance , how many people are on POA when they should be working, being paid by someone.???
 
Mistakes in my career could kill entire population centers... So.. No..
 
how many people are on POA when they should be working, being paid by someone.???
My job is kinda like a Fireman's... we jump up and respond when needed. My employer has written policy about Internet usage while "on the clock" and it's ok as long as it doesn't interfere with work.
 
My job is kinda like a Fireman's... we jump up and respond when needed. My employer has written policy about Internet usage while "on the clock" and it's ok as long as it doesn't interfere with work.

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