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<blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 5924623" data-attributes="member: 177">I think you're still missing something.&nbsp; So, a real-world example: In 2008 the stock market took a dive.&nbsp; The Massachusetts Institute of Technology lost about a third of the University's endowments - several *billion* dollars evaporated almost overnight.&nbsp; Several departments got their budgets from the interest earned on the endowments, and had to cut their budgets, and therefore their staff, and so people got laid off.Perhaps you can view not being prepared for that level of disaster a &quot;mistake&quot;, but I think of it more as an unpredictable external event that no sane business tries to account for.That is an extreme case, for a large enterprise.&nbsp; The same idea still holds on the smaller scale - not everything that fails to go according to plan is a &quot;mistake&quot; by someone in particular.&nbsp; Viewing it that way is, I think, part of the blame-game that is itself a common error in modern business.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Umbran, post: 5924623, member: 177"] I think you're still missing something. So, a real-world example: In 2008 the stock market took a dive. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology lost about a third of the University's endowments - several *billion* dollars evaporated almost overnight. Several departments got their budgets from the interest earned on the endowments, and had to cut their budgets, and therefore their staff, and so people got laid off. Perhaps you can view not being prepared for that level of disaster a "mistake", but I think of it more as an unpredictable external event that no sane business tries to account for. That is an extreme case, for a large enterprise. The same idea still holds on the smaller scale - not everything that fails to go according to plan is a "mistake" by someone in particular. Viewing it that way is, I think, part of the blame-game that is itself a common error in modern business. [/QUOTE]

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