Simple doesn’t mean easy & learn as much as possible from other people’s failures

Simple doesn’t mean easy.

The best athletes, writers, programmers, and managers tend to be the ones who always see what they do as simple in nature but simultaneously difficult. Remember that simple is not the same thing as easy. For example, it’s a simple thing to run a marathon. You start running and don’t stop until you’ve reached 26.2 miles. What could be simpler? The fact that it’s difficult doesn’t negate its simplicity. Leadership and management are also difficult, but their naturegetting things done in a specific way toward a specific goalis simple.

The trick then is to learn as much as possible from other people’s failures. We should use their experiences to leverage against the future. While the superficial details of failure might differ dramatically from project to project, the root causes or team actions that led to them might be entirely transferable (and avoidable). Even on our own projects, we need to avoid the habit of running away and hiding from failures. Instead, we should see them as opportunities to learn something. What factors contributed to it happening? Which ones might be easy to minimize or eliminate? According to Petroski, real knowledge from real failure is the most powerful source of progress we have, provided we have the courage to carefully examine what happened.