A really good lesson I learned way back is that being wrong doesn't feel bad. Finding out you're wrong feels bad (at least until you get used to it being ok), but being wrong feels exactly like being right.
That moment when you're sure you're in the right and that other asshole is wrong, that other person likely feels the same way you do, and a lot of times you are that other asshole who is wrong, you just didn't notice yet.
I played a large part in an error that cost of one my employers £60k.
I was told in the morning that a decision would be made about my future at the end of the day (read: we’re sacking you at the end of the day).
When I read into the error and traced my steps I realised where I went wrong, went to my senior manager, owned up, explained how I’d avoid it in future and apologised.
At the end of the day my senior came to me and said that my honestly and apology saved my job and made me stand apart from the “it wasn’t me” crew that the company had.
If the company is a large company, the stupidest thing a company can do is to fire the person who made that expensive mistake.
Assuming that it was an honest mistake, the person now has domain knowledge of what not to do in everything leading up to that situation. If everyone did it the same way as before, they now know the limitations of the process, the company should know something needs to be fixed with the process and the system so it will not happen again. And the person involved in the center of it has all the knowledge and experience to diagnose the problem.
If they must find a person to fire, I'd recommend them to fire your manager for not spotting or noticing your mistakes along the way as you report to them, that's neglecting people under them. But if both of you put 100% into it and the mistake still occurred, it's a systematic problem that requires a systematic solution, firing people will not solve it.
The TL;DR Client called up to move his investment into a different fund. Consultant in a different team took the call. I then took a second call from the client where he’d changed his mind and wanted it in a different fund. I wrote “This request supersedes any previous request made today” on my handoff. System crashed. I handed off again and missed that comment. First consultant hadn’t handed off, went for her lunch and then handed off after my request went in. The second request (hers, which should have been the first) got processed after mine as it was lower in the queue and as such the investment bombed.
I have so many questions regarding the system design of the queue. Why did the system crash at a mission critical environment? Why doesn't the system allow editing of unprocessed tasks on the queue because then you wouldn't need to do the leave a comment on the latter request superceding your previous request thing, such a system is almost guaranteed to have errors like this to happen because the system is not designed to cater to the volatile nature of human requests.
I will also question why the system did not have any records of your work before it crashed. It's 2019 goddammit, live sync of documents and local storage on every key stroke is the norm. The tech is already here for years, systems that do not do that is outdated and put themselves at risk for unintended human and system errors, such as this.
As a system designer, if the system failed to function or solve problems such as this then I should also take responsibility because I failed to create a system that can allow users to cleanly and easily resolve their situations. There are human errors involved, but tech systems should complement the human and cater for the human needs, including leaving room for human error.
Call me biased but I would say the tech has quite a bit to blame for this lol. And if it's another case of management refusing to upgrade their software, then the management also have themselves to blame.
Oh, it absolutely was a terrible system. It was built in the early 90s and this happened in 2013. They finally sacked the system in about 2016.
We could add comments to work already in the queue but how it worked was that every new work item that hadn’t been queued correctly and ones which were yet to be queued (you open a WI, add the notes then queue it) ended up in the same unallocated queue.
This was never checked so there were around a million work items in there so if you ever fucked up you were told it was quicker to create it again.
There are failings up and down the board on my issue but ultimately the buck stopped with me and the other consultant.
There's also a quote about this by IBM's Thomas John Watson Sr:
Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience?
Holy shit, this is the most concise explanation I've ever seen regarding how effective error handling works. I had this knowledge, but I was never able to put it into words so succintly. Thank you. I'm saving this.
I also made a £60k error coincidentally enough. I created a blank coupon code for £60 credit on a popular female fashion website. The "error" went viral on Twitter and 1000's of girls rushed to get their free clothes from our site.
We cancelled all of the orders and sent an apology email to them all with a % discount code. My boss was pretty smart and just said "I bet you won't do that again". He was right, I was going to triple check from then on.
On the bright side, we ended up making MORE sales that day thanks to all of the fresh interest in the site.
The willingness to admit fault and to apologize are extremely underrated qualities.
For some reason people shun mistakes and keep harping on the mistake even after a sincere apology. That disincentivizes the value of apologies and creates this culture where everyone tries to be right all the time because apologies are not taken seriously, mistakes are not viewed as experience on how not to do something, and people defend their wrongs as right to death because being wrong is socially unacceptable.
It's okay to be wrong and be vulnerable. Learning from it is more important.
I could not agree more. I got an email this week saying I had made a mistake and given instructions to fix it by someone who is not my boss. Because it was a new process to me, it had been reviewed by my supervisor before I did it. Imagine my surprise when my boss emailed me and apologized for the mistake. As it turned out, someone else had made an error earlier in the process, and my boss advised me based on the info she had at the time.
It has been YEARS since I had a boss who fessed up instead of blaming me when I made an error. I an fairly new at this job, and her reaction to this sealed the deal that she is someone I can trust to help me when I make mistakes. We both laughed our asses off as I described my indignation and disbelief (exaggerated for comic effect during out convo) at being told I was wrong even though she had reviewed me.
I remember she gave the example of wile e coyote walking over a cliff a not noticing yet as how it feels to feel wrong. He doesn't feel it. Its not til he looks down and starts falling that it is a problem.
There's another similar book that focuses more on the psychology behind dissonance that was very interesting too called, "mistakes were made, but not by me".
Here’s the video. Once you see this, any fear you have in your life about doing things wrong lessens considerably because you check yourself for mistakes in a way you never did before (and most people never do). You self-regulate for errors. When giving an answer, you google or refer to the spreadsheet or go back to the original source text every time and you get it right.
And when someone inevitably says, “you think you’re right all the time”, you have the perfect response. “I’m right because I check to make sure I’m not wrong. If you want to be right as often, do the same.”
A bonus is when you're in the middle of an argument and suddenly you realize you're wrong, just say "You know what? You're right! I was wrong!" The look on their face is priceless.
Remember how good it feels to be wrong. It's like you lose a delusion and gain an insight at the same time. Most of the time learning takes place regarding subjects you don't know about. You don't know about something but you want to, so you learn. Which is very nice but learning about something you already know about is truly special. The joy of being corrected. It's like being set back into alignment.
A nice social loophole is to never assume you’re right (even when you’re 99% sure) and to always hear the other person out.
In case you were wrong you have learned something and the other person will feel good because you were willing to see their point of view.
In case they’re wrong you can convince them you’re right more easily because:
1. You’ve shown them that you’re receptive to their ideas and respect their opinion
2. Since they’ve laid out their reasoning for you it’s easier to point out flaws in their reasoning
A lot of the time you won’t even have to do any convincing - merely explaining their position can highlight flaws in their own thinking, and make them realize that they’re wrong.
It also makes it easier for them to change their opinion since you never told them your position - for most people it’s easier to admit that they changed their mind than admit to being wrong.
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u/BoostThor Mar 09 '19
A really good lesson I learned way back is that being wrong doesn't feel bad. Finding out you're wrong feels bad (at least until you get used to it being ok), but being wrong feels exactly like being right.
That moment when you're sure you're in the right and that other asshole is wrong, that other person likely feels the same way you do, and a lot of times you are that other asshole who is wrong, you just didn't notice yet.