The role of mistakes

[presonorek]

I guess I will never understand this concept.

do you understand now???

Not really. It seems like mistakes are inevitable. I don't see how you can eliminate them while still being productive.

It seems like mistakes are bad but not really bad unless it is something really bad then it can be very bad.

I'm trying but I am not quite there.

I still don't think you can make any mistakes if you don't do anything. The guy who does nothing is perfect. (This is a bad thing but not that bad.)

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

Not really. It seems like mistakes are inevitable.

dear, the entire world agrees including children yet you state it likes it's an amazing discovery. What does that tell us about you?

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

It seems like mistakes are bad but not really bad unless it is something really bad then it can be very bad.

you seem to lack the IQ to formulate useful concepts in English. The above is pure gibberish

 

[presonorek]

It seems like mistakes are bad but not really bad unless it is something really bad then it can be very bad.

you seem to lack the IQ to formulate useful concepts in English. The above is pure gibberish

Real Life Scenario:

The customer's account number was 15788 but was entered as 157888 by me. This resulted in the customer being billed for someone else's product. The wrong customer (157888) paid the bill. The wrong customer (157888) received a credit on their account and was refunded their payment. The correct customer (15788) was then billed correctly as should have been done originally. My boss asked me why I made the mistake.

What should my answer be? How can I improve in the future to avoid this mistake?

On the other side of the coin:

What should my boss do to prevent this mistake in the future? What type of discipline should be administered to the offending employee in this situation? What should the company do if anything to change procedures?

My observation:

This mistake needed to be corrected ASAP. These types of mistakes can be minimized but will never be eliminated. Once the mistake was corrected the employee should do nothing. Once the mistake was corrected the company should do nothing. These things happen and need to be resolved. If everything ran smoothly then there would be no need for work to be done by anybody. One mistake like this is no need for alarm unless the frequency of mistakes costs the company excessive time or money. In this case no money was lost and the time lost was around 2 minutes.

Your observation about the scenario.............

 

[Jomama]

So here's how I interpret it. For background, I'm a serial business owner and a demanding boss;

Order Entry jobs average around 1% error rate. Your variance may be +/- 50bps and depending on how the job is structured, accuracy may be 5% to 30% of the value of the job. For instance, if you are customer service who enters in orders (think calling LL Bean) where upselling and personality are very important, then accuracy is a small value driver in that function. If you are in the basement plugging in orders like a robot then accuracy and speed are the two biggest value drivers in your role.

Some people are more accurate than others and some jobs require super accuracy. If I'm running a pharmacy or hospital ER department, or special ops unit, or NASA command center then I am willing to pay a premium for the very few people who do not make mistakes. And I rotate out people who do. And everyone wants that job because it pays well and it is very rewarding to be part of an elite team.

But, if I'm LL Bean I have already factored in your mistakes to the low wage I am paying you. If I can get someone more valuable for the same low wage, off you go. If you're ever in the bottom 10% of any role in any company I manage, you will be leaving shortly. I do that because my best employees expect me to give them the best team mates.

My personal observation is that the people who consider themselves elite, take great pride in their work, are well compensated and have job security do not go on chat forums to justify making mistakes.

 

[presonorek]

So here's how I interpret it. For background, I'm a serial business owner and a demanding boss;

Order Entry jobs average around 1% error rate. Your variance may be +/- 50bps and depending on how the job is structured, accuracy may be 5% to 30% of the value of the job. For instance, if you are customer service who enters in orders (think calling LL Bean) where upselling and personality are very important, then accuracy is a small value driver in that function. If you are in the basement plugging in orders like a robot then accuracy and speed are the two biggest value drivers in your role.

Some people are more accurate than others and some jobs require super accuracy. If I'm running a pharmacy or hospital ER department, or special ops unit, or NASA command center then I am willing to pay a premium for the very few people who do not make mistakes. And I rotate out people who do. And everyone wants that job because it pays well and it is very rewarding to be part of an elite team.

But, if I'm LL Bean I have already factored in your mistakes to the low wage I am paying you. If I can get someone more valuable for the same low wage, off you go. If you're ever in the bottom 10% of any role in any company I manage, you will be leaving shortly. I do that because my best employees expect me to give them the best team mates.

My personal observation is that the people who consider themselves elite, take great pride in their work, are well compensated and have job security do not go on chat forums to justify making mistakes.

Excellent explanation. Thank you for that.

 

[presonorek]

So here's how I interpret it. For background, I'm a serial business owner and a demanding boss;

Order Entry jobs average around 1% error rate. Your variance may be +/- 50bps and depending on how the job is structured, accuracy may be 5% to 30% of the value of the job. For instance, if you are customer service who enters in orders (think calling LL Bean) where upselling and personality are very important, then accuracy is a small value driver in that function. If you are in the basement plugging in orders like a robot then accuracy and speed are the two biggest value drivers in your role.

Some people are more accurate than others and some jobs require super accuracy. If I'm running a pharmacy or hospital ER department, or special ops unit, or NASA command center then I am willing to pay a premium for the very few people who do not make mistakes. And I rotate out people who do. And everyone wants that job because it pays well and it is very rewarding to be part of an elite team.

But, if I'm LL Bean I have already factored in your mistakes to the low wage I am paying you. If I can get someone more valuable for the same low wage, off you go. If you're ever in the bottom 10% of any role in any company I manage, you will be leaving shortly. I do that because my best employees expect me to give them the best team mates.

My personal observation is that the people who consider themselves elite, take great pride in their work, are well compensated and have job security do not go on chat forums to justify making mistakes.

Any suggestions on how to avoid typing the extra 8 in the future?
Any suggestions on how to respond to the boss when asking why this particular mistake was made?

I would place myself way below the 1% error rate. That sounds like a lot of screwing up. I don't have the advantage of working for a large company though. The company where I work has 12 employees. There are only 2 in the office. If my boss was to fire the lower 10% then she would be firing 1/5 of me or 1/5 of my co-worker. I'm just going to quit worrying about this mess. It seems that there really is no clear cut answer. You just have to beat out your competition or perform so exquisitely that competition is never considered.

I really wanted to discuss this based upon differing management philosophies. This forum wasn't started for the benefit of my workplace survival skills. I worked at a company for 8 years even though I made mistakes sometimes. I worked for another company for 4 years even though I made mistakes sometimes. I worked at another company for 10 months even though I made mistakes sometimes. My workplace survival skills aren't really a concern to me. I just try to understand the world around me. It's just really odd to see the differences in people even though we are from the same species and all have similar goals in life. I'm just interested. If you are not then that is fine.

Just out of curiosity, Would you have fired an employee for adding the extra 8 onto an account number? If not, how would you have handled it?

 

[Jomama]

Your question is VERY situation dependent. If that was the launch code for an nuclear armed missile I would be upset. A zipcode for one of ten thousand customers, big whooop.

Merry Christmas Vasud

 

[presonorek]

Your question is VERY situation dependent. If that was the launch code for an nuclear armed missile I would be upset. A zipcode for one of ten thousand customers, big whooop.

Merry Christmas Vasud

In the situation mentioned the customer got billed $64 for a product they never received. The person who received $64 in product never got billed. It's in between the two possibilities that you mentioned.