Oops! Let's discuss our mess-ups.

[Andrew _Zim_ Zimmerman _Appfire_]

We all mess up. We all fail. They’re often very painful and uncomfortable experiences in the moment they occur but teach us some valuable lessons. Personally, I think people should discuss their failures more often. We’re all human after all, and I think openly discussing our flubs and botches provides a unique opportunity for connection and a chance to share important lessons.

So, that’s what I want to hear from all of you! Briefly describe an “oops” moment from your own life or career, and then tell us what you learned. No shame here. I want to hear about your mess-ups, big or small. 

I’ll go first! Prior to my career in tech, I studied filmmaking. The curriculum of film school was largely based in practicum. So, that meant we produced a lot of short films and worked on a lot of productions. On one such production that I was leading, there was a scene that called for lots of extras, as it took place at a lively party. 

We had promoted the call for extras, had people sign up, and made it through our talent release paperwork, etc. “That was that,” I thought. Another box checked. From there on out, to be honest, I neglected them. I focused all my attention on the crew and the lead actors. I didn’t set expectations or manage communications well with the extras on set.

Of course, this came back to bite me. We had fallen behind on the shooting schedule quite a bit, and the extras had no idea what was going on. Some were so frustrated that I think they just left; walked off set. I got really angry at the time, but I realized later that this was my fault. My lack of engagement with the extras pushed them away. We finally got through that production day, although I had to embarrassingly request that some of the crew double as extras, since we had some leave our set or not show up at all. We eventually scraped by and finished that short film, with a few more hits to my confidence and ego along the way. 

But, there was a big lesson I learned from this.

When humans are given responsibilities they should also be given expectations and continual engagement.

• I had given these extras a job to do, but then didn’t properly communicate what I expected of them or the changes that were happening on set in real time. They were frustrated and in hindsight, I realize this frustration came from a desire to succeed but a gap between that desire and the information I equipped them with. They were not equipped to do their job due to my lack of engagement with them. If you’re a people manager, maybe this resonates with you. And, just as missing a single screw can cause an entire machine to malfunction, my neglect of this part of the film production caused the shoot to temporarily break down.

So, what’s a failure you’d like to share? What did you learn from it?

I’m excited to read about how our past blunders have made us better. Thanks for sharing!

[Amanda Barber]

I've always loved the idea of failing forward. Failure is inevitable, but it's what you do after a failure that will either make an impact for the positive or negative. 

I think my most memorable failure was when I was a new teacher. I scheduled conferences as instructed (15 minutes per student), but didn't have the confidence to end the conferences on time. This meant constantly running behind for the entire evening. From that experience, I had to take away a couple of things - one, I am in charge of the conference and if well-prepared I can keep it on track (or push to schedule another time to discuss further) and two, I can't always do things the way that it's worked in the past for other people. With some tweaking to scheduling and adding in buffers, the next rounds of conferences were far more successful. 

In my current gig, I'm grateful for no-blame post-mortems...and the fact that we rarely have big enough blunders to even run these meetings at all. Our bi-weekly, anonymous retros also are a good opportunity to reflect on recent wins/fails. I think that by keeping your own growth at the forefront of your mind, you can fail forward and see how to continuously improve.

[Andrew _Zim_ Zimmerman _Appfire_]

Awesome takeaways, @Amanda Barber! Thanks for sharing! 

[Peter Van de Voorde]

Love the topic.

I've always been of the conviction that failures don't exists, they are lessons we haven't learned yet.

I've learned many lessons over the years. One that I still remember very well is when I accidentally deleted a production database of a big Jira instance. Luckily there were backups. It taught me to always double check any impactful action before executing the action.

[Andrew _Zim_ Zimmerman _Appfire_]

I love that mindset, @Peter Van de Voorde. Thanks so much for sharing! 

[Paul Wiggers]

Making mistakes is a big part of learning and there should be a culture where people feel free to share they made a mistake. I rather have an employee admit a mistake, and share it with the team so that we can all learn from it, than an employee who tries to hide mistakes. In the end, it will always come out, and most often at a time when it is most unwelcome. It also communicates that you can't take responsibility and will rather lie than try to solve whatever damage might have occurred. Both are not good traits.

Anyway, over the years I have made plenty of mistakes. Ranging from deleting databases (with and without backups), removing critical pieces of hardware that everyone thought were obsolete, deleting user accounts, or updating the network during office hours.

However the most memorable was during my first week in IT. Most likely because it was during this first week and not because it was so severe. The client was using thin clients that connected to and RDS environment. A user was having issues and I logged in with my administrator credentials through their thin client to fix the issue on the cluster. 
The user was done for the day after my fix and I thought I would just help him out by shutting down the thin client. So, you go to start > shut down > yes

The shouting and stumbling that occurred right after, told me that I need to read up on RDS connections. I accidentally shut down the RDS server and caused half the company to be disconnected. I will always remember that walk of shame to the server room to turn on the server again. 

[Andrew _Zim_ Zimmerman _Appfire_]

@Paul Wiggers thanks so much for sharing. You bring up great points, and I think it's important for leaders to set expectations and actively strive to develop an environment where their team members feels safe bringing up and discussing their mistakes openly rather than hiding them.

Thanks again for sharing your story. I can imagine that heart stopping feeling the moment you realized you made an "oops."