A "Rubber-Necking" Society
The news is full of people getting it dead wrong. Whether it's a politician, referee, corporate executive or celebrity, we seem to very naturally fixate on the egregious calamity known as human error. Certain individuals are unfortunate enough to have their biggest gaffes played out on the national stage, recorded and forever immortalized for all to gawk at for generations to come.
This post is not about screw-ups, though. We all screw up. The real question is what we do next.
Perfect Imperfection
There was an example in the news recently of a baseball umpire named Jim Joyce blowing a call with two outs in the ninth inning that cost a Detroit Tigers pitcher a perfect game. For those of you who don't know what a perfect game is, there have only been 20 recorded perfect games in 135 years of Major League Baseball. In order to notch a perfect game, a pitcher needs to retire all 27 batters in a 9 inning game - 3 per inning. No hits. No walks. No errors. It is the opposite of the type of imperfection we are addressing here.
A "Mea Culpa" Case Study
Jim Joyce did not pull a Rod Blagojevich and insist in his innocence. He did not pull a Bill Clinton and hide behind a technicality or semantics. He owned up to the mistake and apologized without reservation.
Here's what he said: "I missed it...this is a history call...and there's nobody that feels worse than I do. I take pride in this job...and I took a perfect game away from that kid that worked his [expletive] off all night...I thought he beat the play...there was nothing else...What do I say, I missed it. It's probably the most important call of my career and I missed it." When reporters gave him the chance to throw others under the bus - his staff, the fans, the Tiger's manager - he refused, and claimed that he would have done the same in their shoes. Remarkable.
...And when you're on the receiving end of a mistake
Perhaps even more remarkably, the pitcher, Armando Galarraga, didn't even protest the call. He never complained, or got in the umpire's face. He accepted the decision and moved on. When asked about Galarraga, Joyce marvelled, "He didn't say a word. Not a word." How many of us would have remained silent in his shoes? Not me.
It's usual to see screw-ups in the news. It's not usual to see people facing blame with the accountability of Jim Joyce. And it's not usual to see people facing unfairness with the acceptance of Armando Galarraga. If we take a page from these individuals, I believe we will be better equipped to deal with the inevitable errors and unfairness in business.
In case you're interested, you can watch the play here.
Thoughts?
I've often said that if you aren't doing it wrong pretty regularly, you aren't doing it right. We learn from mistakes and we have to learn to embrace that process. There was a great article on this topic that came out this week.
ReplyDeleteTo expect perfection is foolish. To require that folks learn from errors and apply that going forward is called accountability. It's a struggle sometimes to separate the two, but I would love to see more of the latter.
Hi Aaron - thanks for the comments, and the awesome article link! I especially liked the part in the Boston Globe article about mistakes and problems being seen as systemic instead of playing the blame game.
ReplyDeleteFor Jim Joyce, we can blame his error in judgment on the call, but at the end of the day, the "system" of baseball is prone to this type of error. It is built-in. A true solution would have to address people, process, technology & culture changes.
Great post Ben. I have found fear of making an error in business creates paralysis. The reality is that most of the time we get it mostly right and we are generally better off. The expectation of perfection is a huge problem.
ReplyDeleteHi Todd - thanks, I agree with your sentiments entirely. The industry of medical devices in which I work is extremely sensitive to errors, and rightly so. However, zero tolerance for error of any kind is just not a realistic expectation in an imperfect world, and is a sure way to grind progress to a halt.
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