Mea Culpa Management

Some view the flippant “my bad” as irritating, but at least there’s been acknowledgement and ownership of the problem. Learning how to manage failure may be more important to your business than knowing how to handle success.

Bad things sometimes happen to good companies and their clients suffer. It could be a planning mistake, a less-than-stellar employee, a misplaced email or any number of small-to-huge errors that wreak havoc on business relationships. No one wants to look incompetent. But not owning up to a mistake makes you look deceitful, which is far worse.

had the opportunity to practice some Mea Culpa Management recently. On February 22, unrelated issues caused Samsung Galaxy 3S devices to crash and messed up Facebook’s page reach reports. On the same day, Sprocket’s servers went offline for about an hour.

The number of folks affected by the server problem may be miniscule compared to Samsung’s and Facebook’s numbers, but those people were mighty important to Sprocket. They immediately employed Facebook, Twitter and email to let clients know that they were aware of the issue and working on a repair. Sprocket kept clients updated as time passed and alerted them when the fix was made. Later, Sprocket sent an explanation of the problem, an apology for inconveniencing them and a plan to prevent this problem in the future.

Mistakes happen every day in million and billion dollar corporations. But small- to mid-sized businesses can be especially shaken when mistakes happen in their organizations because the owners are so closely involved. Admitting to failure can feel like admitting to “little guy” stature. But refusing to dodge a problem while rolling up their sleeves to fix it is the true measure of a company’s stature.

“To acknowledge a mistake is to assert secure leadership; to take responsibility and prescribe a corrective course of action is wise management,” writes Linda Stamato of the Ivey Business Journal.

Certainly none of us look forward to the opportunity to practice Mea Culpa Management.  But instilling a company culture for handling failure and creating a plan to support it will make a huge impact on customer relationships when the worst happens.