Is there anyone here who has made a mistake recently? Raise your hand. Yes, I thought so. Not so many flawless people here.

No one likes to make mistakes, especially not if it has major consequences. And when we make mistakes in the Oil Fund, the numbers become very large.

Imagine coming home after a day at work and telling your family that today I made a mistake, and it cost 80 nursing home places, 50 ball pits, and a tunnel in Western Norway. Not fun.

And recently, we made such a mistake in the Oil Fund. We made a calculation error in the index we measure ourselves against, and that error cost us 900 million Norwegian kroner.

900 million Norwegian kroner. What we thought was a watertight process turned out to leak. What we thought was completely impossible happened.

And I had several colleagues who were heading straight down to the basement. Then we corrected the error, and we have ensured that it can never happen again.

Why? Because no one hid. We didn't bite anyone's head off, because as is known, without a head, one thinks poorly.

Firing someone who has made a mistake is expensive adult education.

We can all agree on one thing: making mistakes is never good. But if we try to be 100% flawless, what happens then?

I work in the public sector, and I am really proud of that. Yes, it wasn't so easy to get that job.

Uh, there, people are not happy when mistakes are made. Sometimes it almost seems like the only job we have is not to make mistakes. To put it a bit bluntly, we are not measured by whether we do something good; we are measured by whether we don't make mistakes. And that doesn't lead to many good solutions.

And that's why we are here today, to talk about solutions and leadership. And if we don't make mistakes in the Oil Fund, it means we're not taking risks. Then we don't earn money.

And that is our job. And I'm not talking about the kind of risk where you jump out of a plane and hope you find a parachute on the way down. No, I'm talking about calculated risk, and then it's not wrong to make mistakes.

Taking risks is part of any activity that doesn't want to stand still, and no one wants that. Then we must accept that mistakes happen, and we must actually like it a little too.

Because if we have a culture in the fund where no one wants to take risks, then no solutions will emerge. We never try anything new, and there will be no learning. There is, in fact, a lot of good learning at the other end of a mistake.

So when I hear that something has gone wrong, I try not to get angry, not irritated. I become curious.

And I'm not alone in this, because a while back, we started a podcast in the Oil Fund called 'In Good Company.' There, we don't just talk to the best leaders in Norway; we talk about the best leaders in the whole world.

And you might think that leaders are people who don't like mistakes and find them awkward. But let's hear what James Gorman, the CEO of Morgan Stanley, thinks about this.

"Of course, we get things wrong. We're going to get something wrong. We've done things wrong. Rather than saying, 'Why did that happen? How could that possibly happen?', it's part of moving a complicated organization forward."

I had this conversation when I lived in the USA for a month in November. And if there's one thing they're good at in the USA, it's having sky-high ambitions and taking risks. Of course, sometimes things go wrong there too.

But the fact is that in the USA, things are booming; growth is much higher than in Europe. Why is that?

I believe it's because they are less afraid to fail. Here in Europe, if we make a mistake, we don't get a second chance. Very few people like to mess up, and we don't need to like it, but I think many are simply too afraid to fail.

It's completely human, because you want to appear as good as possible to your boss and your colleagues. No one likes to be scolded.

And this is what it's about for you as leaders. If you are to take one thing from this lecture, it is this: remove that fear; make it safe to fail.

If people are afraid to fail, there will be no risk, no solutions, no growth, and no one dares to talk about it when they have made a mistake.

I believe that if you don't fail, you haven't tried anything difficult enough.

Bruce Flatt, who is the CEO of a company called Brookfield, says this:

"If you punish mistakes, no one will ever take a risk. We want the culture of the place to grow, excel, try things, and learn from small mistakes. Judging them is important."

So, how do you remove that fear?

Well, you start with yourself. You admit mistakes. What's incredibly interesting is that if you admit mistakes, people trust you more, not less.

As for me, there are enough mistakes to go around, so to speak. And it might not be a good strategy for everyone to spread their mistakes all over the front page of Dagens Næringsliv, because that's what happened to me.

I was hacked by our cybersecurity team and clicked on a link I shouldn't have. The entire front page of DN.

It's not fun to admit mistakes. I don't think so either. But we can train ourselves in it, both as individuals and as groups.

Let's just face it once and for all: no one is flawless. But to quote a former prime minister: 'Why make the same mistake over and over again when there are so many to choose from?'

If we learn from our mistakes, we won't have to make them again. Then we can use our time to make new mistakes.

How we handle mistakes when things go wrong says a lot about us as leaders.

When I was in the USA, I also got to speak with Jane Fraser, the CEO of Citi. She's really cool and says it straight out:

"I don't need to be an asshole. There is a big difference between an asshole and being straight with people, clear, and then supportive."

So when your colleagues make mistakes, don't be an asshole.

If you are the person who is a bit grumpy and whiny when mistakes happen, try with a smile next time, because there is so much good learning at the other end.

Then I wish you all a fantastic 2024 with lots of mistakes and a heap of learning. Thank you very much.