Creating "Brilliant Mistakes"
The government of the Netherlands supports public-private partnerships (PPPs) under the sustainable water fund (FDW) in the field of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), water efficiency and integrated water management worldwide. The FDW program is administered by RVO.nl and implemented by public, private, NGOs and knowledge institutions partners. As leaders, funders, designers or implementers of FDW projects we would generally like to share our ‘prouds’ rather than our ‘sorries’. Our success stories instead of our failures. That’s a shame because it impedes innovation: there is a wealth of lessons we could learn by sharing the mistakes we all make or the things we would have done differently with hindsight. Especially those mistakes that we really didn’t foresee or are embarrassing to tell. In the complex world of today, we dare to argue that a ‘safe to fail’ climate would spark more innovation. To stimulate this, RVO in collaboration with Perspectivity, initiated a small pilot to collect stories on “Brilliant Mistakes” from people involved in Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) projects. Up until today, nineteen people from various projects have shared their brilliant mistake stories. These "brilliant Mistakes" are presented in this report. What are your "Brilliant Mistakes"?!
Reading guide: Every dot has a story. Click on a dot to read (text)/a story. By clicking on the dot it enlarges and you can follow the individual throughout the report. You can click the dot off and on again.
About the stories and "Brilliant Mistakes"
...If they had relied on local knowledge or grassroots wisdom of this community, the women and children would not be going through this drudgery today...
Frequency of mistakes by others (x) - Impact on project implementation (y)
Occurrence of similar mistake by others (x) - Impact on project implementation (y)
Factors playing a key role in influencing your "Brilliant Mistake" (gender):
Factors playing a key role in influencing your "Brilliant Mistake" (role):
The lesson learned probably is: never take things for granted
To capitalise on our “Brilliant Mistakes”, what we need or the sector needs more of is (role):
To capitalise on our “Brilliant Mistakes”, what we need or the sector needs more of is (gender):
How an eye for details reduced costs of sanitation
About the storytellers
The mistake was costly, but in the end, it has offered us a very useful lesson about the importance of placing trust when working with different partners.