mistakes on Business

Tom Watson, Sr., is the man who founded IBM. You can imagine the money, the investments, the experiments, this man, and his multi-billion dollar company have made through the years. Once, years ago, w...

There is an old story about a florist who mixed up two orders one busy day. One arrangement went to a new business that was opening, and the other went to a family who had a death. The man with the ne...

God does for you what Bill Tucker’s father did for him. Bill was sixteen years old when his dad suffered a health crisis and consequently had to leave his business. Even after Mr. Tucker regained his ...

“Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.” “Popular Mechanics,” forecasting the relentless march ofscience, 1949 “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” Thomas Wat...

Many years ago a senior executive of the then Standard Oil Company made a wrong decision that cost the company more than $2 million. John D. Rockefeller was then running the firm. On the day the news ...

What use could this company make of an electrical toy? *President of the Western Union Telegraph Company, in 1876, rejecting an opportunity to purchase Alexander Graham Bell’s patent on the telephone

A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them.

A traveler, between flights at an airport, went to a lounge and bought a small package of cookies. Then she sat down and began reading a newspaper. Gradually, she became aware of a rustling noise. Fro...

Success is often the result of taking a misstep in the right direction.

I read of a young man who had just been appointed to the presidency of a bank at the tender age of thirty-two. The promotion was far beyond his wildest dreams and very frightening to him, so he went t...

Computers give rise to many amusing salutations that could also offend. Humorous examples include the legendary Mr. Obe, a fine old West African name that didn’t happen to belong to the recipient (OBE...

We readily confess our little faults in order to suggest that we have no big ones.

A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying… that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.

When you repeat a mistake, it is not a mistake anymore: it is a decision.

Mistakes were made in communicating to the public and customers about the ingredients in our French fries and hash browns.

(What’s the worst good news you’ve ever received? Here are a few that come to mind for me. “Mr. Halter, this is Bill from the Ford service department. I’ve got some good news for you. All the smoke y...

If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.

We know mistakes were made.

It is human to err, it is devilish to remain willfully in error.

A man is being tailgated by a woman who is in a hurry. He comes to an intersection, and when the light turns yellow, he hits the brakes. The woman behind him goes ballistic. She honks her horn at him;...

Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.

Mistakes were quite possibly made by the administrations in which I served.

To err is human; to admit it, superhuman.

I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.

Gracious God, sometimes I think that I can figure out all the consequences of my decisions. I can become overly impressed with what I perceive to be my strategic vision and analysis. Forgive me for my...

In her aptly title book, Being Wrong , Kathleen Schulz describes just how difficult it is to be wrong: A whole lot of us go through life assuming that we are basically right, basically all the ti...

At eighteen, a self-assured Benjamin Franklin returned to Boston, the city he had fled just seven months earlier. Dressed in a fine new suit, with a watch on his wrist and a pocket full of coins, he p...

Henry Ford Sr. the car magnate, having already become massively wealthy, had decided to visit Cork, Ireland, the hometown from which his father had emigrated to the states. Upon arrival, he was warmly...

The prefrontal cortex is responsible for the success of the human species. It enables us to learn from our mistakes and make plans. When the PFC is healthy, we behave consistently in ways that enable ...

All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride.