Mistakes happen. Making no mistakes, means doing nothing at all. That’s what my mother told me, and I still am convinced she was right. So we all can relax. We do make mistakes. Sometimes these mistakes are functional, like a parcel being delivered at the wrong address. Well, we can live with that. But a physician who operates the wrong leg or a pilot that lands his plain without permission can have fatal consequences. Mistakes at this level have front-page potential. Mistakes like that scare us.
To be honest most mistakes that are being made in our professional lives are not as visible as airplane accidents. Which does not mean that they do not have far stretched consequences. In my work I encounter a lot of managers. Big ones and small ones, influential ones and those who come in huge numbers. The managers I am referring to now are the big and influential ones. These are the CEO’s, COO’s, CIO’s, CMO’s, CFO’s and VP’s and never mind how they are called who are joggling about at boardroom level. These well trained, experienced and sometimes brilliant people see themselves as fast thinking, decision makers, analytical, pragmatic, knowledgeable etc. And believe you me, they are…most of the time. But just like any human being, they too make mistakes!
And here we encounter a strange and peculiar phenomenon. Unlike the pilot of a commercial flight or their own middle management, they do not have a ground control to help them or to review their decisions. It simply is not done to criticize the CEO. Hardly ever a CEO asks colleagues within his company to review his decisions. Let alone decisions that proved to be wrong! Isn’t that strange???
Senior management is the first to tell the employees that ‘Best Practices’ are important. But best practices only can exist by reviewing all practices, including the practices that went wrong or didn’t work as expected. In reviewing all the Best Practices are filtered and can be applied. This goes for everybody, but…senior management itself. To make it even worse it has become common practice at boardroom level to look the other way as soon as a distinguished member has made a mistake or simply is wrong in his or her analysis. This ‘being diplomatic’ can cause a company or an organization to falter or being exposed to mismanagement for too long.
The circle must be broken! The number of mistakes declines significantly as soon as board members discuss the decision-making process and mistakes made more openly. And mirror important issues on varying settings of employees almost neutralizes the depth of the consequences mistakes can have. This saves lots and lots of money. It also is more than nice that people find their workplace much more enjoyable and colleagues more trustworthy and nice. This really helps to improve productivity. I still keep on wondering why so many board members still do not recognize this potential…are they that uncertain or that vain?
Marie-José Jamin
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