Errors of Omission and Commission
I like doodling on Post-It® Notes and playing with two-by-two tables and recently I came across one that triggered a bit of an “Eureka”
moment.
The two dimensions were Action (Nothing-to-Something) and Outcome (Worse-to-Better). We are all familiar with the good feeling that comes from doing something and seeing things get better; and the not-so-good feeling of doing something and seeing things get worse! I discovered that this latter option is called the “Error of Commission” and is the one we fear most because we leave an audit trail of evidence that can be traced back to our action. It does not seem to matter that we did not intend the outcome to be worse.
However, the 2 x 2 table also suggests that there are two other combinations. How do we feel when we do nothing and things get better? What do we learn from that experience? And how do we feel when we do nothing and things get worse? This, I discovered, is called the “Error of Omission” and is an error that is more difficult to learn from because there is no audit trail of cause-and-effect evidence. It is also the error that generates the greatest sadness – a feeling of loss of what might have been.
Both the Error of Commission and the Error of Omission can lead to unintended negative consequences. It appears that our systems are better designed to manage the Errors of Commission. I wonder if we could learn to better protect ourselves from the Errors of Omission?
The late Russell Ackoff – almost 90 – was recently interviewed by Peter Day for the BBC, and he specifically wanted to emphasise that there are 2 types of mistake:
– not doing something you should have done (error of omission)
– doing something you shouldn’t have done (error of commission)
He started life as an Architect, and this is perhaps where he first learned systems thinking, for as he said in the interview.. “architects usually draw the building first, and then put the rooms in, and it’s not unusual for an Architect to compromise a room in order to sustain the whole”. In organizational life however managerial leaders rarely put the whole system first. They worry about making mistakes and being found out. The problem is you never learn much by doing it right, so if you can’t admit to a mistake, you can’t learn. Moreover, if you’re blind to the possibility of not doing something you could have or should have done organizations become inert.
I love Simon’s 2×2, I smiled at the thought of how my responses have changed through my life to the box 1 situation.. namely things have apparently got better, but nothing I know I did caused it to be like that.
My local University (Derby) is offering a Masters in Systems Thinking starting Sept this year. It has John Seddon as visiting prof