I was chatting with a building contractor I know. Harry had just bought a new table saw, and was very excited.

“No way you can be without a table saw in this business,” he told me.  “It cuts a ton of wood accurately and super quick. But, if you’re not careful, it’ll take your arm off.” This is important wisdom with broad applications. There are a lot of powerful tools we can’t do without that can do damage beyond the value they provide if not treated with respect.

That’s certainly true in my profession, qualitative research. Qualitative is a foundational tool for marketers and researchers. But, when designed, executed, or analyzed poorly, it can lead to bad decisions with disastrous consequences— I’m looking at you, Crystal Pepsi!

Here are a few more essential power tools that must be used with care:

The Profit Motive. The desire for economic gain is a powerful force. Market mechanisms shape our world, and are largely responsible for our high standard of living. Don’t get me wrong, I’m definitely a capitalist. But it’s easy to see the consequences of capitalism gone off the rails. Look no further than the history of the tobacco industry as an example. You could make this same argument about socialism – it’s a useful economic tool that, if misused, can really mess things up.

Intuition. It’s amazing and can advance thinking and analysis with tremendous speed. But intuition must also be viewed with skepticism, lest it lead you badly astray. I devoted a newsletter to this topic recently.

The Criminal Justice System. A functioning police and legal system is essential to a safe and free society. However, it can’t do everything. For instance, for over 100 years we have tried to use it to solve the problem of substance abuse, despite the obvious fact that this is a public health problem. So, all we’ve done is create crime and suffering. Furthermore, if a society doesn’t provide its criminal justice system with sufficient resources, it will do its job poorly, often making things worse.

Prescription Drugs. Modern pharmaceuticals are wonders of technology, enabling us to cure previously incurable diseases. The amount of suffering and death they have prevented can’t be overstated. However, it’s also possible for doctors to become overly reliant on the prescription pad. Many afflictions are better addressed through lifestyle interventions.

Ultimately, one key to success in the world is being able to use tools that are both indispensable and immensely powerful with respect and skill. Remember – the factors that make these tools so powerful are often what also make them potentially dangerous. I’d love your thoughts on other powerful tools that we can’t avoid but must use with caution.

It’s great to learn from your own mistakes, but even better to learn from somebody else’s. 

When I worked in client-side marketing, I took a job managing new products. This was a responsibility I’d never had before, as my previous positions had been on established businesses. This business unit had a near-zero success rate when it came to new product introductions, so my first priority was to identify factors that might explain the high failure rate. One commonality I found was that many of the new product concepts the company had tested quantitatively and qualitatively were fatally flawed, making failure nearly inevitable.

This served as a course on how to write concepts – I learned from the mistakes I found and was able to put this knowledge to good use. In other words, I learned to write new product concepts by first learning how not to write them.

We all make mistakes. That’s part of life. In fact, if you’re not making mistakes, it means that either you’re not trying hard enough, or you’re not taking risks. You’ll never accomplish much with that approach.

Learning from your mistakes is a fundamental life skill. However, by itself it’s insufficient for success. If you’re going to stay ahead of the pack, you also need to learn from the mistakes of others – another essential life skill. You might even say that this is a little-known superpower. There’s actually a technical term for gaining knowledge from others’ experiences: ‘social learning.’

It’s preferable to learn from others’ mistakes than your own, for a number of reasons:

Your ego interferes with learning from your own mistakes. You’re emotionally detached from other people’s mess-ups. While it’s hard to view your own mistakes objectively – or even to admit you’ve made a mistake at all – taking a clear-eyed look at somebody else’s error is not so difficult. It can actually boost your own ego. There’s probably no better way to feel smug and self-satisfied than the realization that you didn’t make the same mistake the other guy made.

The consequences are not yours to bear. When it’s your own mistake, you must shoulder the costs and clean things up. Not so when it’s somebody else’s misstep. You get to observe from a distance and chart a better course while they deal with the mess.

There are just more mistakes from which to learn. The quantity of other people’s mistakes you can observe will always dwarf your own. Thus, observing and learning from the mistakes of others – social learning – is a force multiplier.

So, make a practice of learning from the mistakes of your fellow humans. Remember – if they’re smart, they’re learning from yours, so you might as well return the favor.