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Own Up to Your Mistakes
October 1, 2004
Jennifer, you are an articulate, opinionated, determined woman with obvious potential as a leader as I’m sure you would agree. But that’s where your problem lies. You are so sure of yourself that you never stop to consider that you may be wrong. You know what’s best and, as far as you’re concerned, everyone else is wrong. How dare they question you! What fools they are to disagree with you!
You declared, “We’re going to keep it simple.” But when Stacy Rotner argued that your idea of pan-Asian cuisine may be hard to pull off, you quickly shot her down. You wouldn’t even hear her out. You just cut her off. “Italian is so basic, I’m sick of it,” you told her. But wasn’t that exactly your point just a moment before… to keep it simple? Were you so small that you let your personal dislike of her guide your “executive decision?”
Before weighing the pros and cons of all your options, you made a rush to judgment. Worse than that, you never looked back to re-evaluate your decision. When you heard that the Zagat executives concurred with Stacy and said that you didn’t have the time necessary to get a complicated pan-Asian menu right, what did you do? You brushed off their professional opinion. When faced with mounting criticism, you dug in your heels and became more stubborn than ever. As a leader, Bradford may have been just as bullheaded at first as you were, but when the Mattel executives told him that his toy concept was ill-conceived, he had the commonsense to listen to their experience and change direction, resulting in a team victory. You, on the other hand, seem to place more value in being right than in doing the right thing for your team.
What’s worse, Jennifer, is you never once owned up to your mistakes. Carolyn was dead-on right. She told you, “You just can’t get it. You failed.” The words didn’t register, so she said it again, “You failed, you failed, you failed.” The sorry truth is you really didn’t get it, Jennifer. You did everything right and absolutely nothing wrong. That’s what you kept saying. The restaurant was “beautiful.” Sandy, who was responsible for the décor, did a “fabulous job.” Never mind that your restaurant scored the lowest on décor. You failed to own up to your crucial mistake of designing an upscale restaurant for a low-key neighborhood. The restaurant was right. The neighborhood was wrong. Them, not you.
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When told that the team’s lack of sleep contributed to its failure, you recited a tired story about a lesson you learned from your father: “If I ever complained about working hard, he would ask me, did you sleep last night?—and if I said, 'yes,' then he said, you had time to work.” Whom did you think you were fooling? You knew full well you had blundered on this one but yet wouldn’t admit to it. Making matters worse, everyone else knew you knew it too. Why else did you have that whole little speech canned and ready to go? Your story also misses the point. Your teammates weren’t complaining about working hard; they were saying their lack of rest affected their performance. You failed to own up your mistake of (1) not realizing that the restaurant needed to be cleaned before late into the night; and (2) not hiring a cleaning crew like the men did to do the job. But forget that. You weren’t wrong. No, no, no. Your team was wrong for being lazy.
You are so incapable of admitting any misstep, any error in judgment, or wrong turn—let alone failure—that you committed your gravest mistake yet. You lashed out at your customers. You were right. Your customers were wrong. Didn’t you ever hear, “The customer is always right.”—didn’t your father ever tell you that one, Jennifer?
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You are so sure of yourself that you never stop to consider that you may be wrong.
