Perfect Execution vs Learning

At the various places that I have worked, I have always been told by management that you need to have "Perfect Execution".  They say this because Six Sigma tells them that a process should only have 3 defects per million opportunities of having a defect.  When talking to co-workers, there is a completely different attitude.  The motto tends to be you "Learn by Making Mistakes".  These two concepts tend to be at odds with each other.

Learning by making mistakes is a very productive way to learn.  There are a few reasons for this.  When you make a mistake, and something breaks, you see the cause-and-effect relationship between things.  To me, this is very important because you can't teach someone every possible scenario or permutation.  If you teach the basics and teach them the cause-and-effect relationships, the person should be able to extend that knowledge to new scenarios.  By allowing them to make a mistake earlier, you allow them to make fewer mistakes later.  Making a mistake also has a psychological effect on a person.  When you are publicly shamed for a mistake you make, you learn to not make a similar mistake in the future.

This concept of learning on the job seems to be at odds with the concept of perfect execution.  I think the disconnect comes from trying to apply concepts like Six Sigma, which were designed for manufacturing, to sectors like information technology.  Manufacturing is very static.  Employees perform the same task over and over again.  New employees have to learn the repetitive task.

In information technology, everything is more dynamic.  One of the metrics of a good IT shop is how fast they adapt to change.  As the world changes, the IT industry needs to change as well.  Although there are repetitive jobs in IT that could fall under the perfect execution blanket, most of IT's job is to make changes.  Once you make a change, perfect execution goes out the window.  Making a change is by its very definition not repetitive.  This is why the workers tend to have the learning attitude.