How Do You Deal With Mistakes In Your Business?
Growing up, I feared making mistakes. While I can confidently say that I grew up in a loving and supportive environment, my ability to deal with making mistakes was lacking. It held me back. But I learned to get over it. Eventually.
I remember being about 10 years old when my dad took me out on the lake to spend the day fishing. Fishing was something he loved. (He still does.) I, on the other hand, did not.
Admittedly, I was much more of a homebody, and the thought of sitting in a drifting boat in near-silence waiting for a walleye to nibble on my hook just didn’t appeal to me. I understand now that he simply wanted to spend time with me, but back then, it just felt like it was preventing me from doing important things, like watching Saturday morning cartoons for six hours straight.
We were up at dawn. The water was calm and glassy. And we were slowly trolling to the fish-rich areas of the lake that only well seasoned anglers like my dad were familiar with.
I baited my hook, and cast my line into the water. This is where things went awry.
My cast — both in its direction and in its power — were severely lacking. I was instructed to quickly reel my line back in, but it was too late. It had become entangled around the boat’s propeller and in a few seconds our day of fishing had come to an end. The boat motor needed to be taken apart to ensure that not too much damage was done. We rowed back to the cottage in strained silence.
The Trap Of Perfectionism
My dad is not the villain of this story. And I’m not the hero. It was an annoying situation. He was understandably frustrated, and I was understandably embarrassed and defensive.
I was a kid. I made a lot of mistakes throughout my childhood. I’m sure most of us did. It’s a normal, fundamental part of growing up, but I had a hard time with failure.
When I accomplished something successfully? Well, that’s the way it was supposed to be. But when I would mess something up? It was a monumental, character-defining disaster.
To be clear, I put this sort of pressure on myself. I’m not sure why. But what I do know is that this way of thinking can prevent you from trying new things for fear of failure. It makes learning from your mistakes difficult because you feel ashamed. It can even stifle your creativity because you’re editing yourself before you’ve given yourself a chance to explore a new idea.
Luckily, I’ve spent a lot of time unlearning this way of thinking. Much of this comes from many of the professional experiences I’ve had throughout my career. There’s freedom in accountability. And there’s a certain enthusiasm that comes from giving yourself another chance.
Learning Through Failing
For a time, I was a proofer, editing print and digital ad copy. I was the last line of defense.
These ads — particularly the print ones — represented real ad dollars invested by small businesses. It was nothing to be flippant about. I took pride in giving these entrepreneurs an added sense of security that their businesses were being taken care of.
Most of the time, things went off without a hitch, but there were times where I missed a typo or forgot to double check a phone number. I never took these mistakes lightly, but I learned so many important lessons in my time doing that job.
One was, you have to have a system. I proofread every ad in the same way every time in order to reduce the possibility of error.
Second was, if any variable whatsoever was altered in that ad — it didn’t matter if it was a simple background color change — the ad in question had to go back through the proofing process. No exceptions.
Third, when you learned that a mistake was made, you needed to let the right people know as soon as possible.
Lastly, you needed to come to the table with a plan. How were you going to make the client feel whole? And what was your plan for limiting the possibility of this happening again?
More often than not, these folks understood. Maybe they would ask for a make-good. (And they deserved it!) But they appreciated the accountability. They would often take accountability themselves for also having missed the error. For the most part, it deepened our sense of partnership.
It also taught me that while mistakes aren’t good, they’re also not the end of the world, especially when coupled with the right message.
A Lesson In Accountability
Last week, I saw an incredible example of a company that made a big mistake and took accountability for it in a really unique and admirable way.
For years now, I’ve been an avid follower and patron of JHS Pedals. JHS is a Kansas City-based guitar pedal manufacturer, specializing in a variety of products that give the guitar and other instruments different sonic textures and characteristics.
While I like the pedals that they make quite a bit, I am just as impressed with their approach to social media and content creation.
What’s particularly interesting about their content is how much time they don’t spend promoting their own products. They simply love guitar pedals, and they love talking about their history, the manufacturers who created them, and the musicians who use them to make unforgettable pieces of music.
Truly, they spend a ton of time talking about other company’s products. It’s a real show of confidence, and also a great way of showing how much they love the industry that they’re in. Music is good! Guitar pedals are cool! And expressing excitement about what your competitors are creating while promoting your own products is also very cool.
But let’s get back to that mistake I mentioned earlier.
Total System Failure
Several years ago, JHS partnered with John Mayer in order to create modern versions of a few vintage guitar pedals he owned — durable replicas that he could take on the road, produce the tones he wanted, and not have to worry about damaging an irreplaceable piece of gear.
Years later, JHS decided to mass produce one of these pedals for the general market. (Remember that I said one of these pedals.) This particular pedal is based on a rare vintage piece of gear that most people have never played before, but are of course excited to experience for themselves at a reasonable $119 price tag.
What makes these particular pedals extra special is that they come in the form of DIY kits, complete with an IKEA-inspired packaging, instructions, and naming convention.
In order to alleviate the stress on their production team (and gauge market interest), JHS releases these pedals in waves, a few thousand at a time.
But after their first wave of pedals was released, the JHS team discovered something: They had created the wrong pedal.
You see, they were given two different pedals by Mayer to study and replicate, which they did, but due to unforeseen circumstances — pandemic-related chaos, the unfortunate passing of a beloved engineer, and an unintentional divergence from their standard method of record keeping — the documentation on this project was sketchy.
But they didn’t know that at the time.
Owning Your Mistakes
When it came time to mass produce this pedal for the mass market, they mistakenly used the wrong schematics and didn’t discover their error until after the first wave of pedals had been released.
Did it change the sound of the pedal that they were trying to create? Not really. But it wasn’t specifically what they were advertising to their audience. So what did they do about it? They created a 22-minute explainer video outlining every single detail — the history of the pedal, the error they made, how they made the error, and what they were going to do about it for those folks who had already purchased the initial run of pedals.
When you watch the video, which is pretty much everything you want an apology to be in terms of its honesty and accountability, it’s hard not to sympathize with their situation.
It’s a mistake that anyone in their situation could have made. They make no excuses, they offer everyone a full refund who wants one, and then outline how they’ve modified the technology to meet their original intent and fulfill the next rounds of orders.
In short, it was a masterclass of accountability. And you know what, they didn’t even necessarily need to do it.
No one, and I mean no one, outside of a very select group of people, has ever used the original vintage equipment before. No one except the folks at JHS knew that they made this mistake, and no one probably would have known if they had never said anything about it.
But they knew. So they did something about it. And this “big mistake” has made me appreciate this company even more than I did before.
People make mistakes, but often it’s what they do afterwards that matters most.
Epilogue
Last summer, I was sitting in our old fishing boat, getting ready to take it for a ride along the lakeshore. I pulled the choke on my dad’s vintage 1957 Johnson 5.5 boat motor, and accidentally snapped it in half. My heart sank into my stomach.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket and called him to tell him what had happened.
“Dad, I accidentally broke the choke knob on the boat motor. I’m sorry.”
“You did?” he responded, “That’s okay! It’s just a piece of plastic. I’ll be over in a few minutes with some Gorilla Glue. We can fix and then go for a ride after.”
And that, dear reader, is exactly what we did.
Nathan Miller is a brand strategist, copywriter, and recovering perfectionist. If you’d like to learn more about how he and the Formada team can help you grow your business, contact us today!