Making mistakes

A reality of making many decisions is some will be wrong. Everything can be viewed as an opportunity, and mistakes are no different. Nobody should want to mess up, but at least make adverse outcomes worth it by having a framework to learn and improve.

At Digiday, over a decade, we executed hundreds of events. We were very good at doing events, in large part because our GM, Megan Knapp, built a high-functioning events team. But we also had a big advantage over competitors: We had more opportunities to mess up – and then correct shortcomings very soon afterwards since another event would always be right around the corner. For competitors with a handful of events, they had far fewer opportunities to commit atrocities – never try to hold a panel during cocktails, trust me – and then had to wait far longer to make them right.