This One’s on Me

I really enjoy writing down my thoughts on management and leadership. Until today, that is. This installment covers a mistake I made which was entirely avoidable. It was not catastrophic or terribly significant but it is important because it illustrates what happens when anyone, especially a leader takes his eye off the ball.

For whatever reason I have always enjoyed doing “mindless” projects. They give me a chance to relax while still accomplishing something positive. I recently tackled one of those mindless projects: producing the 2024 playbooks for our 5-year plan. Over a week I spent a part of each day editing, printing and finally assembling the books. Upon completion I happily dropped them off on the GM’s desk for distribution.

Early the next day the books were returned to me by the GM with those hated words, “These are all screwed up. The pages are all out of order.” I knew he had to be mistaken so I grabbed the first one. Sure enough, the pages were out of order. I was embarrassed, confused and irritated with myself. How could I have possibly messed up such a simple task? In retrospect, I was asking the wrong question. I often make mistakes, and for a variety of reasons. The question I should have been asking was “Why didn’t I check my work more carefully?” Unfortunately, I don’t know the answer to that question, but I don’t plan to make the same mistake again!

In the overall scheme of things my mistake was fairly minor and easily rectified. But as someone who preaches personal accountability the mistake was entirely unacceptable – because it resulted from laziness. As the leader of an organization, I must set the standard for performance and accountability. In this case I clearly fell short.

Many years ago, I took on a significant volunteer project for our church. The results of my work were to be presented to the Board of Elders. It had been many years since I answered to anyone other than our customers and employees and I found myself being more diligent than usual in reviewing my work. It was a good reminder that work quality should be top notch whether or not someone is looking over your shoulder.

There are plenty of decisions to be made in the life of a leader which are subjective. Those decisions are fairly easy to get wrong, as uncontrollable factors can affect the outcome. But in the case of objective decisions, where outcomes are predictable and controllable, sloppiness and laziness will produce unacceptable results – like mine.

Mindless or not, my future projects will get all the attention I can muster - every single time!