OK, THAT was a mistake. We don’t want to have THAT happen again.

As the leader, what’s your role in addressing this? Well, the top priority is to fix it as best we can, whether that means with customers, regulators, partners, employees, or whatever. But fixing it for THIS time is much different than getting to the root of the problem so we can ensure it doesn’t happen again. Or at least that recovery is a lot less painful.

While we’re digging into that, the question will come up about whose fault it was. It’s much easier when the fault lies outside our organization, or with a faulty system we set up. In those cases, we can be a bit more objective about it.

But often the fault lies with a specific person. How you handle this requires careful consideration and working through the human part of the problem. Since I tend to come with a more analytic frame of thinking, this has been tough for me throughout my career. I’ve learned some painful lessons.

My first principle, that I’ve said many times, is that everybody is just doing the best they can in their situation and the information they have. Let’s not assume bad intent before we have reason to, because 99% of the time the fault actually lies with:

  • Unclear rules and processes
  • Insufficient training
  • Bad information
  • Fault in leadership

I know that last one can be tough, to admit that perhaps your leadership is at fault, which led someone to make a mistake.

Which leads to my second principle, a question: What can we learn from this situation? Because life is imperfect, and everything we do. So our task is to learn from whatever happens and do the best we can to adjust.

We’re all constantly learning throughout life, whether it’s learning to walk, or forming social relationships, developing expertise, or becoming an effective leader.

As a consequence, it’s a lot less important to pick on who made a mistake, than to learn from it and adjust.

Just keep moving forward.