Why being Wrong is good for you

Even the most prolific blunderers can go on to do great things.

"Mistakes are the portals of discovery," wrote James Joyce in Ulysses. In 1888, Lee Kum Sheung, a young cook in a coastal province in southern China, forgot the oyster soup he was boiling on the stove until it simmered down to a thick, sticky gravy. Once he discovered how tasty it was, he decided to sell his "oyster sauce" in jars.

That lucky mistake would make him and his heirs rich. According to Forbes, the Lee siblings - his great-grandchildren - are worth US$17.7 billion (S$23.7 billion), making them the fourth-richest family in Hong Kong.

Your columnist has not been so fortunate in her mistakes. As with most people, hers have led not to riches but, usually, to stomach-churning embarrassment and a good deal of self-flagellation.

From fat-fingered spreadsheet errors and incoherent interventions in meetings to failed mergers and bungled products, failure is a part of corporate life. Yet even the most humiliating mistake can prove to be useful.

Some failures can be chalked up to a lack of experience. Ms Katharine Graham wrote in her autobiography of the many ignominious blunders she made after she became the publisher of The Washington Post overnight, following her husband's suicide. "I made endless unnecessary mistakes and died over them," she wrote.