Katharine Graham? Warren Bennis? Chris Hildyard? E. B. White? Luc de Clapiers? Anonymous?
Question for Quote Investigator: Making mistakes in life is inevitable. Thus, learning to respond resiliently to setbacks is essential. A healthy perspective is presented by the following adage:
A mistake is just another way of doing things.
This statement has been credited to Katharine Graham who was the publisher of “The Washington Post” newspaper and Warren Bennis who was a Professor of Business Administration. I have been unable to find a solid citation. Would you please help?
Reply from Quote Investigator: Warren Bennis conducted numerous interviews with talented leaders to identify principles and techniques employed by superior managers. Bennis and Burt Nanus co-authored the 1985 book “Leaders: The Strategies for Taking Charge”. The book described the adaptive responses of leaders confronting difficulties. Leaders were not discouraged and continued to focus their energies on accomplishment. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:[1]1986 (1985 Copyright), Leaders: The Strategies for Taking Charge by Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus, Chapter: Leading Others, Managing Yourself, Quote Page 69, Perennial Library: Harper & Row, New … Continue reading
They simply don’t think about failure, don’t even use the word, relying on such synonyms as “mistake,” “glitch,” “bungle,” or countless others such as “false start,” “mess,” “hash,” “bollix,” “setback,” and “error.” Never failure.
One of them said during the course of an interview that “a mistake is just another way of doing things.” Another said, “If I have an art form of leadership, it is to make as many mistakes as quickly as I can in order to learn.”
The person delivering the quotation was not identified in the 1985 book; however, in 1994 Warren Bennis and Joan Goldsmith published a work titled “Learning to Lead: A Workbook On Becoming A Leader”. This book ascribed the quotation to Katharine Graham:[2]1994, Learning to Lead: A Workbook On Becoming A Leader by Warren Bennis and Joan Goldsmith, Chapter 1: Leadership for the 1990s and Beyond, Quote Page 6, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Reading, … Continue reading
Most of the people Warren Bennis interviewed for On Becoming a Leader looked forward to mistakes because they felt that someone who had not made a mistake had not been trying hard enough. Norman Lear, writer-producer at CEO Act III Productions, put it this way: “Wherever I trip is where the treasure lies.” Katharine Graham, from the CEO Washington Post, said, “For me, a mistake is just another way of doing things.”
Additional details and citations are available in the article on the Medium platform which is located here.
Image Notes: Picture of an eraser from Hans at Pixabay. Image has been resized.
Acknowledgement: Great thanks to Lonneke Boels whose inquiry led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration. Boels noted that the quotation had been attributed to Katharine Graham and E. B. White.
References
| ↑1 | 1986 (1985 Copyright), Leaders: The Strategies for Taking Charge by Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus, Chapter: Leading Others, Managing Yourself, Quote Page 69, Perennial Library: Harper & Row, New York. (Verified with scans) |
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| ↑2 | 1994, Learning to Lead: A Workbook On Becoming A Leader by Warren Bennis and Joan Goldsmith, Chapter 1: Leadership for the 1990s and Beyond, Quote Page 6, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Reading, Massachusetts. (Verified with scans) |
Dear Quote Investigator: A humorous and cautionary prediction states that the automated factory of the future will have only two employees: one human and one dog: