Handling Failures and Mistakes

Change is difficult. The future is unknown. Corruption and criminality apart, honest mistakes can be made.

More significantly, the differing thinking styles appear to encourage or even generate failure. As a result, handling is different according to the quadrant.

UL Quadrant: Denial of Mistakes

Unitary-based dictatorial regimes end up creating serious failures and disasters due to the pervasive corruption and use of lies to curry favor with superiors. When mistakes occur, they are covered up and denied. Blame is assigned to external forces. Reviews whitewash the authorities, and those involved in the mistake may be imprisoned or killed to prevent information reaching the public. Whistleblowers who attempt to warn and protect others are typically imprisoned or killed.

Dualistic governing regimes also deny and hide mistakes, but there are mechanisms like official reviews, auditors, and often the press for bringing failures to light. Politicians routinely deny, lie, shift blame and cover up. In significant cover-ups, the truth takes several years, even decades, to emerge and only after causing serious harm and even death to large numbers of people e.g. the contaminated blood scandal in the UK, the robodebt scandal in Australia.

In most countries, politicians are the least trusted group in society; trusted in the UK for example, by under 10% of the population in the 2023 survey. This appears to be an intelligent judgement. However, the reasons for the persistence of socially-destructive behaviour are many and include:

• Expectations of infallibility i.e. immaturity of the electorate.

• Fear of loss of support i.e. the electorate could lose trust.

• Access to levers of power i.e. it is simple, quick, easy and expedient to deny, falsify etc.

• Narrative control i.e. public perceptions essential to public stability get harmed.

• Cultural pressures i.e. society often deems errors as unacceptable.

• Policy implications i.e. pursuit of a difficult but necessary policy will be impeded.

• Personal egoism i.e. unwillingness to accept imperfection and lose self-esteem.

• Exploitation by opponents i.e. admitted errors are highlighted, exaggerated, criticized and publicized.

Because simplistic thinking and polarization of public opinion are a recipe for an endless stream of mistakes, it is hard to see how improvement within a dualistic system is possible.

LL Quadrant:  Learning from Failure

Atomistic adherents regard mistakes as part of living and see denial of failure as a personal problem. They see initiative as essential and failures as inevitable. It is hard to learn from success and easier to learn from failure and be sure not to repeat the same errors. By generating initiatives and then learning from failures and mistakes, experience and confidence develops.

Structural entities, like organisations, recognize that mistakes can lead to failure that is so severe that the entity requires costly repair or even collapses. So evaluations and reviews are held regularly to look for emerging problems and ensure remediation is not excessively delayed or avoided.

LR Quadrant:  Mistakes are in the Past

Causal thinking results in a consensus around a prediction based on the relations between a few key factors. But if that relation is not as simple as presented, then choice based on it will likely lead to problems, potentially serious. When that relation turns out to be misconceived due to confounding factors, inappropriate assumptions, incomplete information or some other scientific error, no blame is apportioned and no redress is applied. There are countless medical treatments that harmed people despite best intentions and where withholding the treatment would have been regarded as malpractice.

UR Quadrant:  Continuous Adjustment is Preventive

Dynamic & Unified systems are characterized by continuous monitoring and feedback because it is assumed that decisions will need to be revised or even reversed and a course of action may need re-shaping as events unfold. Unlike other quadrants, unsatisfactory choices tend to be labeled as unsuitable or inappropriate rather than as mistakes or failures if they made sense at the time. Continuous reflection and adjustment to changing conditions should avoid serious mistakes.

Thinking in general and failures particularly contribute to personal identity formation and maintenance. Group views and pressures can either form member identity or be formed by the people involved.

Originally posted: 30-Jun-2024.