When You Fail in Business (And You Will), Own Your Mistakes and Learn From Them
The following is adapted from F*ck Me Running (a Business)! by Nolan Garrett.
There’s no such thing as being perfect in business. Failure happens. It might happen because you’re experimenting — that’s the best possible reason. It could also happen due to inexperience (I’m guilty of that), hubris (also guilty), greed (guilty), or because of an inability or refusal to learn from one’s mistakes (so very, very guilty).
Early on at Intrinium, the consulting and managed services firm I founded, I signed a large account. The client was located in a rural area with a shallow talent pool, and they needed an IT manager, so we placed one of our people at their site full-time to handle the job.
To maximize our profits, and because we couldn’t afford much else (we were four people at the time), we sent an entry-level person. The training we provided before dispatching this poor guy to the customer site consisted of “This is how they’ve always done the job, this is how many hours we want you to work, and oh — you also need to manage the client’s politics.” Because we trust you, new guy, to single-handedly manage our newest, biggest account.
Within a few months, the IT person and the customer were complaining about each other. My guy said the customer treated him like crap. The client said my guy couldn’t do the job. I chalked it up to a personality clash and sent a new entry-level guy over — with the same training.
That person screwed up the account so egregiously that I had to fire him. Halfway through the three-year contract, I tried a third person. My only extra advice was, “Don’t repeat the other two guys’ mistakes.”
You can imagine how that turned out. My guy wasn’t happy, and by this time, the customer was beyond frustrated with my company. Again and again and again, we weren’t taking care of business for them. Three times we sent them a person who wasn’t qualified to do the job. It shouldn’t have gone that far. The first mistake can almost be forgiven as a genuine error in judgment, but the second? The third?
So naturally, I fired the customer. Yes, you read that right. I fired them, because I thought they were the problem. I thought their culture and politics made it impossible for my people to succeed.
Yet the entire time, we were the problem. Regardless of any issues our client had, our company culture was so out of whack we couldn’t see our own mistakes. Even if we had, we wouldn’t have owned them.
We had no defined values, no pillars, and no principles for how we carried ourselves. We had no rules for making decisions or interacting with clients. I wasn’t the role model my people deserved. I wasn’t setting the standard or providing the training they needed to succeed.
Even though that experience happened many years ago, it still haunts me. It’s embarrassing now to put it in writing as a confession to the world. Most of my current staff and colleagues have never seen that side of me. Today, “Accountability” is my middle name.
Without accountability, you are nobody. You stand for nothing.
Unfortunately, that concept didn’t occur to me until much later — too late to save that account. But I hope the lesson serves as a warning to everyone running a company or managing a team.
When you fail in business (and trust me, you’re going to at one point or another), your job as a leader is to use that mistake to propel you and your organization forward. Because the problem isn’t failing: the problem is failing and then refusing to take accountability for your part in the failure.
When you screw up, admit it. Own it. Don’t look for someone to blame. Figure out how to fix it and don’t make the same stupid mistake twice. Or in my case, three times. Do that, and your mistake won’t be a failure. It will be a successful lesson.
For more advice on how to transform your failures into successes, you can find F*ck Me Running (a Business)! on Amazon.
Nolan Garrett is the Founder and CEO of Intrinium, a firm dedicated to providing clients with comprehensive consulting and managed services in security solutions and information technology. Voted Best Place to Work Inland Northwest for three consecutive years, Intrinium has distinguished itself as a leader in IT solutions and workplace culture. Nolan is a member of the Forbes Technology Council and the Information Systems Security Association, among other organizations. With CIO and CISO experience and a background that includes multimillion-dollar cybersecurity transformations, Nolan provides specialized insight for businesses large and small in a variety of industries.
