Fooling yourself twice

Is it ever a good idea to repeat a mistake? 

Maybe.

I was speaking with two musician friends a few days ago, and one of them said "If I make a mistake while I'm playing live, I repeat the mistake so nobody notices I screwed up".  The other musician said he does the same thing.

Someone said (and it probably wasn't Einstein) that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. But in this case, when these guys repeat the same mistake over and over, they do get a different result, because it makes it look like it's part of the show. 

I'm no Einstein, but this sounds crazy from an enterprise IT perspective - or does it?

Sometimes, mistakes lead to insights.  It's how we find bugs and misconfigurations. Occasionally, we even discover new ways of doing things and change our processes as a result.  Most of the time, of course, it's a really bad idea to repeat a mistake, and it is insane to repeat it over and over.

Take an honest look at your organization and ask yourself which of your processes are insane.  If you don't take the time to fix them, shame on you.   But also ask yourself which mistakes and snowflakes actually improve your process, and find a way to bake them in.