A Novel Idea

Advice for public officials:

Nobody — presidents, mayors, city managers — ever says "I could have learned from this mistake." You'll see the cops stop a car full of teenagers and there'll be some kind of altercation and the next thing the cops empty their revolvers into the car. And the chief of police will say "That's a textbook case. We handled that perfectly." And ordinary citizens say, "That can't be true."

If you never, ever acknowledge mistakes then it's not possible to learn. In the political environment, it is a huge deal to say, "Actually we should not have built the stupid damn arena" or "we shouldn't have paved the road with this kind of asphalt."

I don't know why. I acknowledge mistakes. I tend to say "I screwed up." To me it just seems absurd not to.

So simple. So true. So rare.

[Disclosure: The speaker is a professional colleague and friend.]