(This is an excerpt from my upcoming book “Agile in the Bloodstream: Creating Change-Ready Teams Using the Power of Systems Thinking,” to be published August 2010.

Success is a lousy teacher. (Bill Gates)

The only way to learn is to make mistakes. What happens in your culture when someone makes a mistake? Is blame assigned? Is there a glare of attention on the person who made it? Is there any type of punishment meted out?

You can’t learn anything from doing something right. If you did it right, you merely confirmed that what you already knew or believed was correct. Nothing learned. But if you make a mistake, you can identify it and correct it.

There are two types of mistakes: commission and omission. An error of commission is doing something that should not have been done. An error of omission is not doing something that should have been done. You may think we’re talking only about errors of commission here, but actually errors of omission are much more serious.

Errors of omission signify a lack of innovation in your team. Maybe someone thought of a better way but was afraid to say anything. Or maybe nobody even thought about it.

What happens in organizations is that people get punished for committing sins of commission but they do not get punished for sins of omission. This shapes the mind of a person into saying “No, we better not try that,” attempting to avoid the nasty results of commission errors while ignoring the problems of omission errors, which don’t seem to cause as much havoc.

This helps build a team of people who try to create the appearance of doing a lot without actually doing anything. We all know the person who received one promotion after another even though it was widely known that they had never actually accomplished anything. That person is a symptom of a culture where mistakes are punished, not tolerated.

What you want to create, as a manager, is a Learning Organization. One way to do that is to tolerate mistakes by your people and not to punish them for making them. It is helpful to have “the speech” available, repeated by everyone from Thomas Watson of IBM to Larry Page of Google, which goes something like this:

“I don’t mind you making that (insert monetary figure here) mistake. I’m glad it happened. No, I’m certainly not going to fire you! I consider this money a well-spent investment in our organization’s education.”

For many years, people pointed to this oft-repeated but seldom practiced maxim as “the right thing to do.” But it’s more than that. If you do not practice this attitude towards people’s mistakes, you will create a Learning Suppression Machine which will cause your team to be unable to adapt to the changes it encounters and therefore a brittle mechanism instead of a thriving living team. The extent to which your team can overcome unforeseen obstacles (and what obstacles are foreseen??) is directly correlated to the way you handle mistakes in your team.

By the time you reach my age, your life patterns are fairly well established.

There are things I do as a matter of practice – part of my daily routine. I get up early, I eat a bowl of Raisin Bran Crunch, I read, I stretch, three days a week I go to the gym to work out. You get my point.

Our habits as “Human Doings” is to “do” the things others have taught us to do. Our community has shaped us: Our parents, our friends, our culture, our past, our schools, our contacts, and our co-workers.

Not everything I do is necessarily good for me, but I do these things anyway. I eat too much, I drive too fast, I get angry, I avoid awkward moments…Let’s just say I’m not perfect. My wife of 33 years is still working on me.

As a people group or a culture, we do try to influence change in others to allow them to meet their potential or at least prevent them from harming themselves or others. In some cases, we just try to encourage people overtly or indirectly to behave or dress within patterns of what is expected by the culture. We do this to our children, our friends, and our neighbors. Whether we admit this or not, we do try to influence others towards “good” behavior.

Coon Lake Road is a twisting road that connects my township to the “massive” city of Howell. It is a dangerous road for many reasons: Deer, falling limbs, road hazards, and the most annoying speed traps. 45 miles per hour is the standard. 60 miles per hour is the local custom. I’ve been stopped at least once on this road.

Yesterday I was driving on Coon Lake Road on my way to Grand Rapids. As I was speeding down the road, I was met with on-coming traffic with flashing lights. One car then two then 3 more – all of them providing me with the same visual clue – slow down if you want to avoid a ticket – speed trap just ahead.

So as a culture of drivers, we do this for each other: We send out visual clues of danger that is lurking in the woods just off the road. We tend to try and help each other as we travel. So when I passed the speed trap (going 45), I returned the favor to the next series of cars headed toward the speed trap – flashing my lights as I went. DANGER ahead!

So here’s my point: THIS IS WHAT WE DO AT PILLAR – We Flash our Lights! In our collective past, we have traveled down the same road of failure for too many years. We have been witness to patterns of development that result in failure. We have participated in the writing of massive requirements docs. We have been guilty of coding without a test harness. We stand guilty of just pushing crappy code out the door. I stand guilty of all of this and more.

So we can’t help but flash our lights! We see others heading down a path that will yield failure and we try to help by flashing our lights. We try and get the attention of those who continue to walk down similar paths of doom. Some heed the warnings and begin to introduce cultural change, others choose to ignore the flashing lights; they will pay the fine and continue without much regard for their crime.

Coon Lake Road taught me something about myself. I am willing to allow others to alter my negative behavior. But more than that, I am overly anxious to get in front others to effect change of their behavior – for their own good.

You see, a great revelation of truth demands a great response. I appreciate the truth that has been spoken into my life, but I also sense a great responsibility to speak back into the IT community a set of practices that will bring great benefit for others. The agile practices that we believe in do in fact provide for a measure of safety. They collectively save time and money as projects are developed. Beyond that, they encourage a responsible community of developers to bridge the fractured bridge of hope and trust to our shared business communities.

“Test Drive” everything safely. Allow others to teach you. Teach others what you have come to know and value. Do what you know is right – even when others try to knock you off the path. Keep your eyes on the road – flash your lights as needed.