Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

We all make mistakes. Some are allowable and some not. There is the mistake budget.

We all make mistakes. The sooner we acknowledge and live that the better we will be (IMHO). Some mistakes, like typographical errors in blog posts, are embarrassing but that’s about the cost. Other mistakes, those that cost a million dollars of taxpayers’ money, are a bit more consequential.

I work with government documents much of the day. The folks who created those documents, the government’s employees, make lots of mistakes. Companies must follow the letter of the law or the letter of those documents. When people see the mistakes, they send questions to the government employees who then send answers. This Q&A costs time and salary money. That money doesn’t just add up, it multiplies. Stating “Friday the 13th” when Friday is the 12th, costs the taxpayers a million dollars. I am not exaggerating; it costs that much.

Now we come to the mistake budget. I learned this from the late author and consultant Jerry Weinberg. He had a few employees. Being people, these employees were mistaken now and then. Jerry would record the mistake and the cost it brought in dollars and cents. As long as the sum of the cost was below a set number (a month’s salary or something), things were fine. If, however, the cost became too high (a subjective but agreed upon number), the employee was no longer an employee as they were unaffordable.

This is all to state that while we all make mistakes, some are allowable and some are not. In government employment, there are no mistake budgets. I think that is a mistake, but that is just my opinion. Note, that there is a tool that we can use or not use. Not using the mistake budget is probably a mistake that itself may be allowable or not. To date, those who manage work in government have decided it is an allowable mistake. Perhaps that may change, but probably not.