Leadership Today

Every day managers face all kinds of challenges at work: disappointments, problems, blunders and bloopers. They lose good clients and good employees. Projects fall apart. Goals aren't met. It happens. But Finance One CEO Don Winkler believes in the power of mistakes to transform a business. In fact, such "breakdowns" are part of Winkler's Breakthrough Leadership Process. "You can't innovate unless you're willing to make some mistakes," writes Winkler on his Web site, www.cyberwink.com. "Be willing to see failure as a stepping stone to success." He sites the story of 3M chemist who was trying to make a super-strong adhesive. He failed, creating a super-weak one instead. But that breakdown led to a real-and real profitable breakthrough" Post-it notes. To achieve such breakthroughs, managers need to get employees over their fear of falling short, Winkler told THE WIRE." "Give them permission to fail," he said. Then when mistakes do happen, remember: "People don't fail. Events fail," Winkler said. It's easy to loose sight of that, though, in the middle of a messup, said Susan Wilson, president of Executive Strategies. "People instead look at themselves as if they are the mistake," she said. "We need to depersonalize the mistake or error." That's where managers can help, said Richard Wessler, professor of industrial psychology at Pace University in New York. "Managers have to comment on the error and comment on the employee's work-and not comment on the employee. It's very important to distinguish the mistake from the person who made the mistake. "The worst way to (address a problem) is to chew out the employee and put him down or her down. That only lowers morale and makes it likely the mistake will be repeated," Wessler said.

Take time to celebrate

Garrett Jamison, CEO of Bank One Trust Co., is another believer in the power of problems to bring about good-so much that he instructs his managers to throw parties when they occur. "We have an unconditional service quality guarantee that we offer our external clients and it's pretty simple. If they're not happy with our service they can request our fee back and we'll give it to them-all or any part of it they think is fair," Jamison said. When that happens, the manager is expected to celebrate. Why? "To celebrate the fact that we learned something," Jamison said. "We learned what made a client unhappy. We call that a golden nugget opportunity." The party also rewards the employee for doing the right thing: confronting the mistake instead of covering it up.

Plans for problems now

Another tactic: If your department regularly faces similar problems-such as customer-service slip-ups or processing breakdowns-it can help to have a formal process for handling them ahead of time. The trust company has a four-step process for what to do when customers want their fees back, Jamison said. "No.1 get the fee back immediately, in person, eyeball to eyeball, so you can find out what's wrong," Jamison said. Second: "Thank, the client for the opportunity to show us how to improve our service and apologize if we really have done something wrong," he said. Third-and only after the fee has been returned-ask what went wrong. And fourth step is to come back to the office to celebrate and share what they've learned with their colleagues. And regardless of whether you're dealing with someone inside or outside the bank, you should acknowledge your mistake. "It's relatively simple to correct the mistake. But what you want to then do is overcome the feeling that people have about the mistake," Jamison said. This doesn't have to be time consuming, he said. After all, it doesn't take long to say you're sorry.