communicating mistakes to add value

[David Sandusky]

Maturing as a leader, heck, as a person is a result of learning from our mistakes. Countless times I would interview an executive with dialog around past mistakes they made that can be used to add value moving forward. Often times the honesty of poor decisions benefited the candidate more than hiding the facts. It would come out in due diligence anyway.

Inc. magazine had a recent article about organizations finding ways to reward people for logging or posting mistakes on a company blog. Read more..."Mistakes Were Made"
As mentioned in the article, such internal blogs are rare still. The challenges come in the obvious point that we as humans may shy away from such activity or the grey area in rewarding vs. punishing.

I see it like this: we all make mistakes, let's get real. The value of training increases greatly within any organization when mistakes are documented with the lesson learned story to follow. Others may be making the same mistake and don't even realize it yet...this open culture could save valuable relationships with clients and vendors not to mention valuable time.

Can the same benefit be obtained in a forum / community like this?