#43 old-fashioned advice

At a recent leadership workshop I attended, one of the more profound nuggets came not from the presenters, but from a knitter in a nursing home. 

Dorothy Kennedy urges the fellow members of her knitting circle to go back and fix a mistake as soon as they see it.  Oftentimes this would involve tearing out rows and rows of carefully placed stitches that followed the mistake.  She knew that knitters would be tempted to ignore the error and foolishly believe that they could compensate around it or fix it later.  But her advice always proved prescient -- waiting just exacerbated the problem and the work to be re-done. 

Kennedy's advice holds true in multiple settings beyond her craft.  If you see a mistake -- in a report, in hiring, in what you communicated, in how you treated someone -- it is best to fix it as soon as you see it.  Waiting never makes it better.

-- beth triplett (& Yvette Jones)
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