On Mistakes

As WARG encourages us to seek more novel and challenging tasks mistakes have and will continue to occur. As this comes up frequently I figured I would write a piece for guidance following mistakes. If you’ve recently made a mistake, specifically a mistake in a WARG task, you’ve arrived at the right Confluence document.

First off, the only thing we can’t replace is you! Please follow SDC safety guidelines. More importantly if you see anything unsafe please speak up and if necessary feel free to ask others to stop working for a moment to discuss.

Next, let’s recall the purpose of WARG from the team charter. Notably the first point; “enable students to learn about robotics and develop innovative new aerial robotic solutions through collaboration and non-classroom instruction.” In doing this enabling WARG is anticipating mistakes. Assuming you’re staying safe, the only thing mistakes can cost us is time and money which WARG has accounted for. As corny as it sounds you really will learn more from building things that don't work than things that do. You will learn more from destroying expensive hardware than from employing it successfully.

What WARG is expecting though is communication with your team. Keep your team posted so we can improve in the future and keep timeline’s up to date. In the past we have asked people to write “Root Cause Analysis” documents for incidents and in the future we may employ a similar system. With this type of writeup names will not be included as we are not trying to blame anyone for mistakes. The goal is purely to reflect on actions for the purpose of improving in the future. If you feel as though team culture is not upholding this mentality please communicate with your team directors and/or leads.

To be clear, it doesn’t matter how much time and money a mistake ends up costing WARG. In doing new and challenging things mistakes will occur, that's the cost of doing business. That's WARG's cost, you do not owe the team anything following a mistake. As long as you are learning and staying safe we're all winning.

Some mistakes are much smaller than the ones the introduction of this document focusses on. Regardless, for these mistakes we want to avoid being upset with individuals for their mistakes as this leads to a toxic environment which we do not want to foster. For example if in a design review a poor design is caught, please refrain from asking directly who made the mistake and/or laughing at them for their design decision. This is a culture that will not be tolerated. As above, please contact directors if you have concerns regarding general toxicity even if it’s “just a small thing”. This sentiment is echoed in Team Charter (2021-2024) as well! As we start ramping up for competition it's going to be normal, and common, for everyone to make mistakes. WARG isn't a full time job and we can only put in so much time, effort, and attention. If something happens it happened, we need to learn from it and we need to learn how to fix it, improve it, and prevent it from happening again in the future. Do not dwell on the past.

Further, you may notice as you become more involved and invested in WARG that your frequency and severity of mistakes is increasing. This is par for the course primarily due to the Time Commitment associated with being more involved and invested. Further you will notice your leads and directors make lots of mistakes! This is due to the exact same reason and consequently we rely on Leadership Feedback as a requirement to facilitate our improvement!