Claire is the CEO of Know Your Company which delivers weekly insights to small-company executives about the internal aspects of their business
Claire is the CEO of Know Your Company which delivers weekly insights to small-company executives about the internal aspects of their business.’ These regular reports cover simple things, like employees’ favorite movies, and critical information, like problems in employee satisfaction. Two years in, Know Your Company has grown rapidly based on its uniquely valuable service.
Because reporting the right information matters so much to its business model, Know Your Company often rolls out new features.
Software-based products always carry the risk of buggy code get ting out the door, but thus far Claire’s company has avoided any major glitches. Now Claire has found out about a big bug, one with potentially disastrous consequences for her clients.
About six months ago, a misplaced bit of code within a new feature accidentally gave privileged information to new hires. Specifically, when they were added to Know Your Company, these employees could view private responses that only their CEOs were supposed to be able to access. It was a horrible mistake, affecting hundreds of employees in about 80 companies. Claire felt sick just thinking about it.
Making matters worse, it was a client who had noticed the error. Luckily, the client was kind enough to report it so it could be fixed.
Claire assumed other clients had seen the problem but hadn’t reported it. And there was no way to tell how many new employees had read information they shouldn’t have seen.
This left Claire with a terrible decision: should she tell the affected clients? On the one hand, if customers hadn’t noticed, why say any-thing? The damage was already done, and the problem was now fixed. On the other hand, as a CEO herself, Claire knew she would want to know if her employees had had access to those supposedly private responses.
Bill’s Experiences :-
Sometimes we find ourselves in the middle of a mess that needs to be repaired. Acting is always the right choice for those with a sense of justice, fairness, and concern for the injured parties.
I began this book with perhaps the biggest Repair dilemma of my career–the discovery of contaminated drinking water near our plant in Texas. In that situation, we disclosed the problem and offered a solution right away, even though there was no way to know whether our plant was at fault.
Interestingly, I had an easier time handling that multi-mil lion -dollar choice than a 50-cent choice I faced as a young paperboy.
Questions to Ask
Thinking through these questions will help you determine how to proceed when you find yourself in a Repair dilemma.
1. Is the blame shared?
If you were not the only person involved in the mistake, your repair strategy will need to consider more issues.
Fires, are the others who contributed aware of the problem? If not, What’s the best way to inform them and should you be the one to do? The harm done could be embarrassing to one or more people.
Also, if a superior in the organization was involved, it may be their place to tell the others. Next, should you decide on the repair strategy yourself, or should loudecide in collaborate on the repait state may not be your right to decide how to best fix the problem; the others may have better ideas than yours. On the other hand, coming to the group with a thoughtful solution may be the difference between their doing the right thing or covering up the mistake. Particularly if the mistake is the work of a group, it may be appropriate to address the problem or its solution as a group.
Be aware that shared blame creates the opportunity for everyone to escape accountability. Don’t give in to that temptation; work to get the right outcome for everyone. Be sure that you understand the ways you contributed to what happened. Be sensitive to the way others in the group may avoid blame.
2. Is it really your fault?
This question is not intended to make you feel better, nor should you use it to find convenient excuses. Asking if you’re truly to blame helps you better orient yourself to the problem and assume responsibility for what you’ve done.
You may have been underprepared for the moment, leading to your mistake. If that’s true, knowing this will influence how you and others address the problem in the future. Make it your responsibility to help your organization be better prepared to avoid the same mistake and others like it.
3. Did you act unethically?
Determining whether your mistake was unethical is important to your repair strategy. That’s because people will be more lenient toward a well intentioned mistake than they will be toward a mor ally suspect action. If your mistake involved an unethical choice, you will need to approach the repair even more humbly.
Do not attempt to cover, rationalize, or distract from the immoraliy of your choice. Repairing the problem while justifying your poor ethics will still leave a bad impression with people, invalidating your efforts to fix your mistake. Own your behavior and be willing to apologize sincerely. You may get scolded for what you did. Take your lumps so you can move on.
4. Who should bear the cost?
Doing the right thing means that those who ought to bear the costs are the ones who actually do. As noted before, the temptation to hide your mistake is partly rooted in the fact that repair might be expensive to you. Hiding your mistake possibly spreads the cost out on others. Be willing to pay the cost if the responsibility lies on
you.
The question about who should bear the cost is complicated if several people contributed to the mistake. Teams of people can make mistakes together, creating the problem of joint culpability. Put simply, when it’s everyone’s fault, it somehow becomes nobody’s fault.
Of course, this isn’t really true. That’s why in the law there’s a concept called joint and several liability. This means when a group of people caused a problem, each one is responsible for the full cost.
The injured party never gets more than they’re due, but if one of the wrongdoers can’t afford his share, the others are liable to cover the difference. So in a legal sense, just because you were one of multiple people who are at fault doesn’t mean that you only bear a traction of the cost.
5. Was the error foreseeable? By whom?
In the law, foreseeability is an important measure of fault. For example, if I go skydiving, it’s foreseeable that I might get hurt or killed. Unless the others around me do something that’s out of the ordinary protocol for skydiving, then I’m the one assuming the risks involved and can’t really blame anyone else if I get injured.
Your mistake may have been a known risk the other party reasonably asured. But be very careful not to take that concept too far. Don’t pretend that they should’ve known that everyone makes mistakes, so they’re to blame for trusting you.
What Happened
In the Repair dilemma at the beginning of this chapter, Claire was advised about an embarrassing software glitch in her company’s product. Once the problem was fixed, she wondered what, if any-thing, she should tell her clients. Claire called her co-owner, a more experienced executive, for advice, His response surprised her. He said, “I like moments like these. This is an opportunity to show what kind of company we are. We get to show our customers what we stand for” That was what Claire needed to hear. She sent a short, personal email to each CEO. She explained the problem and expressed regret. She also offered a small account credit, acknowledging that the credit would not, of course, make up for the mistake. After repeating her assurance that the problem was now fixed, Claire included her personal cell phone number and invited the CEOs to call her anytime with questions or concerns.
Then she braced herself for their reaction.
In Claire’s own words, this is what happened next.
I received a flood of replies from customers. Not a single one was negative. A few folks were concerned (as they ought to have been!), but no one was angry. No one left. In fact, the response from customers was overwhelmingly positive. People said “Thank you for letting me know,” and, “No biggie, these things happen.” One of our Dutch customers emailed, “We have a saying in Dutch: Waar gewerkt wordt, worden fouten gemackt. That translates to ‘Mistakes are made if you’re doing work.”” Another person replied, “We all screw up from time to time. Go have a cocktail. ;)” I even had one customer who said he was so impressed with the email I’d sent that he’d forwarded it to his entire company as an example of how to handle a mistake. In Claire’s assessment, the mistake became a defining experience for her company. It solidified who they, as a company, were and what they stood for. It also demonstrated that customers’ best interests would be put first. Claire believes she gained her customers’ trust and confidence as a result.
Planning Ahead
In a simple world, the best preparation for the Repair dilemma is to never make mistakes. Knowing that won’t be the case for any of us, here are some tips to help you be ready in the future.
Learn from your mistakes. You won’t stop making mistakes, but you will make fewer mistakes if you understand why you made them. This process requires time and attention. Write down your thoughts and, where appropriate, discuss them with a friend or mentor. Doing this has the added benefit of making you more open to feedback from others.
Develop strong friendshigs, We’ve said it before, and now we’ll say it again: Remember the power of social capital. You’ll need to draw on others’ patience and kindness to forgive your mistakes. A psychological phenomenon called the fundamental attribution error predicts that we are less understanding of people we don’t know well? Make sure your associates know you and like you. This will make your mistakes more tolerable to them.
Be open to criticism. We all tend to be uncomfortable with critical feedback. Whenever we hear it, our brains invoke defense mechanisms to help us preserve our self image as capable, successful people. But practicing an openness to erit-icism does two important things relative to repair. The first 15 that others insights help us make better decisions. The second is that humbly accepting criticism builds relationships with those giving feedback. Those relationships are a great resource when you need to repair a mistake.
Encourage a culture that allows for mistakes. Your mistakes will be more tolerable to others if you, yourself, are more forgiving of others’ mistakes. Research into firms that launch satellites into space shows that those that saw failure early on experienced more success down the road, because they learned more from the failed launches than the successful ones.” View your work as an iterative process. Iteration requires mistakes and learning from mistakes. As much as possible in your organization, culture that enables this iterative process, incorporating mistakes into improvement.
Review your work to minimize mistakes. On a personal level, an iterative approach to your work will also increase your performance. As you plan your tasks, be sure to include time to review, assess, and improve what you produce. If you don’t build this into your timing, you’ll develop a habit of finishing work just as it’s needed. Without time to review what you’ve produced, you expose yourself to more errors. Be sure that, whenever possible, everything you create goes through more than one version. Remissber that the first version of your work is never the finished version.
Pitfalls
Be careful to avoid these mistakes as you navigate the Repair
dilemma.
1 Fixing Things by Yourself
You’ll be tempted to fix your mistake on your own. Your instinct tells you that you’ve already imposed a burden on others, and involving them in the repair will only become more of a burden. But fixing things by yourself is usually a mistake. First, there’s a high likelihood that people will be particular about the way the problem is repaired. They may be concerned about things like privacy, input from others, or timing. Really any number of concerns could justify their input, and not all of those concerns will be unpleasant for you. Second, when people have been hurt, they can find a great deal of emotional satisfaction in participating with the solution. Fixing a mistake is an inherently social thing. Be sure that people have a chance to engage in the repair so they can enjoy the fulfillment and confidence from being a part of a better outcome. Of course, the injured people may want nothing to do with you. Be sure to respect that. Still, ignoring their interests in the repair may make matters worse, so try to give them a chance to participate.
2 Not Apologizing
Another common mistake is to avoid apologizing, a tactic almost universally recommended by lawyers. The idea is that an apology is an admission of fault, exposing you to legal liability. In reality, this can be bad advice even from a legal perspective. For example, doctors who apologize for malpractice are much less likely to be sued than doctors who don’t apologize.?
Apologies matter because they are a sort of emotional repair. You might restore someone financially for a loss you caused, but the feeling of being hurt usually doesn’t go away with a payment.
Apologies also inspire confidence that you’ll make sincere efforts to avoid this mistake in the future. This is why you should also avoid making a false apology. Be sure Your apology is sincere and meek. Saying ‘I’m sory this happened” is not the same as saying, “I’m sorry I made this happen.” Sincere apologies reflect ownership of your choices and their outcomes. Insincere apologies make things worse because they heap disrespect on top of the carelessness of your mistake.
3 Delaying
Finally, avoid delay. Although it’s important to be thoughtful and deliberate in solving the problem, waiting too long can just make the problem worse. While you wait to fix your mistake, the injured party may consider options that may be very costly to you, includ ing a lawsuit. In general, it’s best to be quick to claim ownership for your error. And remember, it is far, far worse to wait until you get caught. The problem may worsen if you’re the only one who knows about it. You will lose a great deal of influence and trust if it appears you were hiding the mistake. You lose your chance to influence the outcome. Besides, hiding your mistake will almost certainly be evidence against you if a lawsuit is brought.
read the sections Questions to Ask, Pitfalls, Bill’s Experience, and Planning Ahead in the chapter.
Next, read the section What Happened.
Then, answer the following questions:
Do you agree or not with the decisions presented in the What Happened section? Why? Why not?
What else could the actor in the story have done?
In your answers, use at least three ideas from the sections Questions to Ask, Pitfalls, Bill’s Experience, and Planning Ahead. Please highlight those ideas
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