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It was a mistake, but it was the best decision.
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It was the best decision with the information I had.
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Unknown
Okay. Maybe you should have had more information that
00;00;27;08 - 00;01;03;03
Unknown
Hi. Welcome to another episode of Baktari MD. As you know, this season we're doing Crash CEO School, which is something I'm very excited about because we're going to go over leadership skills that will help you to take your organization to the next level. Today, I want to talk about something that is a big part of what I do when I mentor young leaders, and it's such a crucial part of growing into leadership and becoming an effective mentor yourself, which is how to walk back a bad decision or mistake.
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You know, we're all good at dancing in the end zone when our decisions come through and are successful, But how do you handle it when you make a bad decision
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and it comes back to bite you? It's clearly a bad decision. And the way you know that is you make the decision, then data comes back to you saying wrong decision.
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That was not the right path.
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Now, sometimes these decisions are not 100% wrong or 80%, but I think we all know what we're talking about. A decision that you made that really you shouldn't have you should have gone potentially a different direction or not made any decision. And while there may be nuances to, you know, what a bad decision really is, I think for the most part, we all understand when we again, talking in business make a decision or in an organization that probably wasn't the wisest.
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Unknown
Now, what's interesting is everybody's human and we all make bad decisions. We all.
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I think what really sets the professionals and the people with integrity apart are how they deal with those bad decisions. Right?
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Because I think when bad decisions are made, especially when there's ample data that comes back to tell you the decision was bad, more than likely everyone's going to know it anyway.
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So the only thing is are you willing to fess up or come clean and
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you may inadvertently, by trying to go in a non super clean route, you may actually add to the bad decision by also losing your credibility potentially. In other words, you made a bad decision. But then this was an opportunity where you could have owned up to it, but instead you conveyed not only did you make the bad decision, but you're not the kind of person that will own up to it.
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Or maybe, you know, bend the truth or exaggerate or change the story or minimize. You can take your, you know, adjective, but
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often there's actually nothing to be gained by not owning up to the bad decision. You will only compound and convey other, less desirable traits about yourself. And the truth about the bad decision will come out anyway.
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In other words, minimizing or covering up the bad decision often doesn't do that at all. And it only conveys to people your moral character when you make the bad decision, you know, it becomes a window on your on your character, rather the decision alone, because there's nobody here that doesn't make bad decisions or mistakes. We're all human.
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admitting to a bad decision is nothing big.
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Unknown
Hopefully, I eman, depending on- But within the scope of this conversation, everyone makes bad decisions and we can, you know, move on from it. But what you do with those bad decisions is actually going to be a window into your character, your principles,
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and in the, you know, ever ongoing, you know, moral Olympics that we all go through as we go through life.
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these are the events that shine brightly on your moral character and your principles. And so
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I would argue that some of these are actually opportunities to show that what you are made out of and it doesn't really matter about the mistake is that you're just human, but how you live up to those mistakes is what's going to shine a light on you on a bigger scale.
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So
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let's talk about owning up to a mistake. You know, I don't want to make this too clinical, but when you make a mistake, I think what people are really looking for is 1. that you understand it was your mistake 2. you've, you know, hopefully have learned something from it. And and most importantly, you're probably not going to make the same mistake or same type of mistake again.
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Unknown
So as a leader, you know, you certainly want to learn. You want to know, hey, sounds like this was a good learning experience. We now understand market forces better or this or that. And what really people are looking for when someone's admitting to a mistake is do they take ownership of it in a way that reassures everyone that the likelihood of this kind of mistake happening is minimal?
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Unknown
So to that extent, to confirm that it was your decision to describe the fallout from the decision, you know, since we decided to, you know, cancel that product or service, our sales has gone down 20% and I'm 100% responsible for it.
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Unknown
And this is what I have learned. I've learned that before we cancel a service, we need to really, you know, take an inventory of our customers and maybe send out a questionnaire, blah, blah, blah.
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Unknown
I'm obviously making something up, but that's type of taking responsibility for a mistake is what you want to see in a leader.
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Unknown
So let's kind of go over that. You want to detail what the decision was, right? You want to confirm that it was your decision. Describe the fallout from this. As you know, since I made that decision, sales have gone down 30% or we lost two major clients or blah, blah, blah.
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and I own that. I'm 100% responsible for that. But this is what I've learned that I should have taken the consideration of this and this and this, and I'm going to be a lot more careful, moving forward if a similar situation arises. So
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Unknown
that's sort of how you should do it. But maybe we should go over how you should not do it.
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Unknown
and there are several strategies for people who, for whatever reason, have made the conscious decision that it's better or people may not understand that it was really their fault or their decision, or that it'll be minimal or try to deflect, cover up whatever you want to call it. But these are the strategies. The first big strategies don't bring it up.
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Unknown
In other words, just we're not even going to address it. So something everybody in the organization knows something happened. We're just not going to bring it up.
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Unknown
That also is a window into your character, right? Especially if it's something that maturely is impacting everybody, right? If you just say, I'm just not going to bring up that because
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Unknown
if the goal of not bringing it up is for people not to find out, I guess.
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Unknown
But if they are going to find out any way what's to be gained by not bringing it up. Right. So that's number one.
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Unknown
The other thing is to own the mistake, but have a lot of buts. You know, I made this mistake, but but then you can fill in the butt and I'm going to have some of those,
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Unknown
owning at 100%, even if there were extenuating circumstances, is not a win anyway, because you want to own the mistake, but then you want to go on and say what you learned.
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Unknown
And I think people are very forgiving and people will understand
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other things that, you know, I hear people that I mentor, you know, I try to tell not to do is say things like that was the best decision at the time.
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It was a mistake, but it was the best decision.
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Unknown
It was the best decision with the information I had.
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Unknown
Okay. Maybe you should have had more information that
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Unknown
It really wasn't my idea. Okay, so you didn't float the idea originally, so. Okay, you know, other people seem to agree with it at the time. You know, I remember we were all in the room, and other people sort of were agreeing with it that may be true, but it's not relevant.
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Unknown
Right. If you really want to be the leader, that's not relevant.
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Unknown
The other thing is to minimize the fallout, you know? Yeah, we lost a few clients, but, you know, I honestly, the,
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Unknown
the, we were probably going to lose those clients anyway and they weren't really good paying clients and low value clients, which may be true or not, but it's not material to the bad decision.
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Unknown
Anyway, but I think you get my jist because even if some of those are true,
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the goal of walking back a bad mistake is to simply own it.
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Convey you understand it, convey the fallout and convey that you've learned from it and you're not going to do it again, because then that's all people want. Anything beyond that, for the 90% of the case that they do is irrelevant. And at that point you're now crossing into having a window into your moral character and your leadership and your ability to be transparent.
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Unknown
Okay. So I hope that helps you on how to walk back a bad idea or a bad decision. Obviously, this is nuance. Some of this doesn't apply. It depends on the scope of the decision, scope of the organization. I get all that.
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Unknown
But these are just some general principles that I like to pass on when I'm mentoring young leaders. Okay. Anyway, if you like this kind of content, please comment like and subscribe. Also, share with me your experience in walking back mistakes or things that didn't go well. I'd love to hear other take on it. And as always, thank you so much and we will see you on the next video.