When I came into Learning & Development one of my first bosses coined a phrase that has stuck with me ever since. He said that he was great believer in Happy Accidents.
I’m sure we’ve all had one even if we’re not quite sure what it means.
Essentially it’s when you make a mistake, but that very mistake turns out to be one of the best decisions you could have made.
That initial ‘heart in your mouth, oh my god, what have I done?’ very quickly transforms into a light bulb moment, a stroke of genius.
I had another this week. Yes, they happen quite often to me, more of that in a minute.
I designed another module of a 6 month programme and mistakenly put in the latest journal something we had already done in the first module. How could I do that!?
I had the realisation when I opened the journal on the day of the programme! My mouth went dry. The butterflies in my stomach were flying randomly and performing acrobatics.
What shall I do? Well, I’ll do what all great, professional facilitators do. Pretend like it was there on purpose. No one will know.
That’s when it happened. The Happy Accident.
When we turned to the page and I introduced the model and the theory, all remembered it, but couldn’t quite remember it. It was there, tip of their tongue, top of their head, but not quite yet engrained.
So we went back over it, I challenged them to teach it back and it was incredible. The level of understanding was beyond expectations. The gap between seeing it first time, attempting it back at work and then 3 months later almost being tested on the very same thing, brought out examples that they hadn’t realised they’d done. It was one of the best learning experiences I’d seen. It was real Skill into Art stuff.
From now on, I’m going to definitely put in later modules, models and theories from the earlier ones. We’re often asked how do we enable people to put development into practice, how to show return on investment. Well I think this latest Happy Accident is a way. It’s re-presenting ideas they had before and all it needs is a little shove to be engraved into memory and primed for use.
I mentioned earlier, that these happen to me quite a lot. You could decide that I make lot’s of mistakes and that I can’t be that great.
Quite the opposite.
I don’t see mistakes anymore. I see Happy Accidents.
Mistakes will always happen, it’s whether you let them impact you or you impact on them.
Instead of brooding, sulking and being hard on yourself for making a mistake, why don’t you try and look at them as Happy Accidents. Changes your perspective instantly. Gets you to look for solutions. Forces you to be creative. Makes you positive.
Try it, what do you have to lose? You’re going to make mistakes, or are you having Happy Accidents from now on?