Household Task Analysis

There aren't too many guarantees we can make to one another, but here's one I feel comfortable with: I guarantee that I will make wrong decisions. The only people who can make a guarantee like that are those of us who have the confidence to make decisions in the first place.

What that leads to is the concept of everyone being a manager. Maybe we don't all manage people, but we all need to manage ourselves. Confidence is the key to success in any arena, in any area. Every major breakthrough, every successful business, and every great invention all started with a person who had the ability to manage themselves and lacked the fear of being wrong. When Thomas Edison was asked how many tries it had taken to succeed in making a light bulb, he answered that it had only taken him one try to succeed, but he had over a hundred opportunities at failure.

Now, we know we can feel comfortable making a mistake, but what do we do with our mistakes. Yes, the old adage about learning from them rings true, but let's take it a couple of steps further. When a mistake is made, there are a couple of things to do before you worry about learning from them. The first is to identify the mistake. This may seem easy, but things are not always what they seem. Let's look a common household mistake. The Visa bill was due and we sent it in late. This of course incurs credit issues and late fees. Both of which are detrimental to a successful household. What was the mistake?

The first way to look at it is that sending it in late was a mistake. Sure, that was part of it, but what can we learn from that? If that is all you see, there's not much to stop it from happening again.

Let's go a little further. A great tool for understanding where mistakes come from is what I call a Household Task Analysis. This HTA is an important tool in gaining a better understanding of where the potential for error comes from. It is a very easy tool to use, and once you get started on a couple, it becomes almost second nature. The key for mistakes is avoiding them. In order to avoid them, you have to see them coming and put preventative measures in place. Let's use our late Visa bill as an example for the an HTA.

The first thing to do is take out a piece of paper. On that sheet, make three vertical lines down the paper. Label the first column, "Action", the second column, "Potential", and the third column "Prevention". Now, in the first column, write down all of the steps between receiving the bill and sending in the payment. Don't forget the little steps, like making sure you have the money to cover it, and that you have checks in the checkbook (or even know where the checkbook is). When you are done with that, in the second column (Potential) write down next to each action item what potential things can happen during that step which will cause a delay in the payment. When you have completed that, in the third column, write down what you can do to prevent the potential mistakes from happening.

Once you have completed this, you see that identifying the mistake is a little more involved than you may have thought. In order to make it not happen again, you have to make sure you have put the preventative steps in place for the next time. One of the things I have done in the past is used this tool as both a learning tool, and sometimes even a sort of punishment. Next time someone in your household makes a mistake, have them do an HTA for whatever it was. If understanding the flow doesn't help prevent costly mistakes, perhaps the thought of having to do an HTA will.

Remember, making mistakes is part of the learning process. Just make sure you are learning the right things from them and putting something in place to prevent them from recurring.