The Art of the Mistake
No matter the size of your business, there is a fine line between not worrying about something minor and overlooking something big. Certainly no one want to work in or even manage an environment where every small miscue is grounds for a rebuke. Mistakes happen, tasks get forgotten or are not done correctly and human nature often leads us to put off an uncomfortable situation or realization until some time in the future. None of those occurrences are necessarily crippling….until there are a series of mistakes, a task that is never done correctly or that uncomfortable bump in the road is now an almost insurmountable mountain.
I have done all of the above and, on occasion, done them in a big way. Problems almost never fix themselves. They might get masked or circumvented by something good happening unrelate to the initial problem. Left unsolved, however, that problem will still be there and will likely rear its head again at some point down the road.
Back to the opening couple of sentences. We do not want to micromanage, nor do we want to make documenting that a task or process has been done right so time consuming that it makes doing so cumbersome to you and your employees. You sure don’t need seven people letting one person know they did not file the correct TPS form last Friday!
A gentle reminder to ‘be sure this task is done this way next time’ or ‘hey, I noticed a little mistake here’ without making it a big deal has a great chance of it NEVER being a big deal. Need to have that uncomfortable conversation? First, be sure it warrants the conversation, but if it does: DO IT. It won’t get less uncomfortable and likely will quickly escalate the level of discomfort. Have a bad couple of months to explain to partners, a bank or family? Explain it, don’t mask it and hope the next couple of months are better. Get out in front and have that conversation and ask for input and help.
The end goal of your business is to be happy and successful, not just for yourself but for those around you as well. Keeping the small problems small is a big part of that.
