I never intended to steal a shopping cart from a fellow shopper but it happened.
I had been working the early morning shift at a TV station and that meant being at work at 3:30 a.m. After a week on this schedule, I was severely sleep deprived. Coming home one day from work, I decided to make a quick stop at the grocery store.
Shortly after leaving the produce department, I looked down at my cart and realized that most of the items inside weren’t mine. I was so tired that I had taken someone’s cart by accident.
At that moment I imagined someone not only recognizing me from the news but also accusing me of being a cart thief. I quickly got rid of the stuff that wasn’t mine and made a fast getaway to the checkout line.
The Big Picture: In your organization, people are going to make mistakes. Ideally you don’t want them to happen but some will. How people handle mistakes will impact their future productivity.
Too often, mistakes lead to fear and fear leads to wasted energy on things like coverups. Do you want your team so focused on what just happened versus what needs to be done? Let’s Clear the Path of this time gobbler:
- Does your company culture look at mistakes as something to be ashamed of? This climate makes it less likely that someone would look to get help from a coworker before a small problem grows into a big one.
- Are mistakes seen as a way to collectively learn? If one person makes a mistake, then it’s possible someone else might fall into the same trap. Isn’t it it better for colleagues to share their failures as well as their successes?
- A mistake may not be as bad as you think. ?After my grocery caper, I realized that it was possible that I grabbed someone else’s cart because someone else had mistakenly grabbed mine first. ?Instead of going to a panic level of Defcon 5, I could have calmly looked for cart full of food I like to eat, explained the switch, and went on with my day. ?But if you’re so focused on the negative aspect of a mistake, you won’t look for fast solutions.
Worrying wastes time. The more people fear being shamed by of a mistake, the less they’ll have time to do the great stuff that will build your organization.
