In mid-May, things took off like wildfire in one of Twitter’s many microcosms screenshot with a message from the BBVA. The message (“TEST XSELL. We don’t know how to send it to my phone. Jorge is a test” (sic)) caused complaints among users of the social network. First, because it contained spelling mistakes; Second, due to the assumption that those who manage the bank’s application are unfamiliar with the system.
Spectacularly badly done, isn’t it?@bbva?
All in this false message. Let it be a test but it got to me. Let write it as chat. Reveal someone’s name. That “XSELL” sounds like a sale and literally means you don’t know how to use your system. pic.twitter.com/DMNiV1Q737
– eduo (@eduo) May 18, 2023
the same entity he apologized In his report, other brands used the appeal of the scolding to show solidarity with the worker’s mistake. The Wuolah notes platform was inspired by the mistake of crafting an email where the failure was also a reason for humor Uber eats offered Jorge, the “perpetrator” of the error, a 25% discount and Milan offered to help him buy a new mobile phone.
On the Internet, complaints are the order of the day; Just like mistakes at work. No one is exempt from committing them, even on live television. Recently the moderator Andrés Hurtado said goodbye live to one of the producers of the Peruvian show Sábado con Andrés because of an error in one of the cards that served as a script for the presenter. Hurtado had read “moderate” instead of “fear,” and in a possible fit of shame, he ordered the worker to leave his post, saying, “Heads get chopped off easily here.”
We screw up jobs of all kinds, from poorly written headlines to involuntary nervousness at a crucial presentation, falls in the hospitality industry, or mistakes in law firms and optometrists. Failure—a mistimed email, a misjudgment, or a mistake that triggers many others—can bring frustration, anxiety, or a slight twist of the heart, but it’s human nonetheless. If it’s natural, then why is it so hard to deal with?
“We are afraid of mistakes because they are linked to two of the fears that affect people the most: the fear of ‘what are they going to say’ and the fear of ‘not being enough’”, explains Elena García Donoso, specialist for fear management and leadership. The expert says that in the past companies were run on the basis of a “culture of punishment” and not on the basis of learning, and gives an example: “If a launch, a product, a sales strategy or something like that goes wrong, a lot happens.” A lot of time is spent looking for the perpetrator. How many of us have spent hours reading emails trying to figure out who made that decision that didn’t turn out well and reasoning that someone else is to blame?!” he asks.
According to García Donoso, the verdict is perceived as a threat in this association process – mistake equals guilt. Here’s the recipe for overcoming the fear of making mistakes. “Our problem today is that we manage today’s fears, which are more psychological in nature and require rationalization tools, with yesterday’s mechanisms, designed to manage real and physical fears, which involved only three behaviors: fight, flight, and paralysis “, reflects the leadership specialist.
As a result, according to the specialist, employees and all their managers end up being afraid of making mistakes, believing that they cannot be wrong. “An organization is fully in its comfort zone, which breeds an aversion to change, a reluctance to innovate, and a reluctance to move forward, which are inevitably essential in the highly uncertain and dynamic world we live in today,” he says .Garcia Donoso.
The error culture in the workplace
Last summer, in the informative series I Was Wrong, four New York Times columnists attempted to examine the incorrect predictions they had made some time ago. In the Mondragon Team Academy international entrepreneurial community, it is customary to celebrate the Golden Mistake, an award that rewards the biggest mistake made during the course. “The more people know about this mistake, the fewer people will make it again. “Mistakes become a tool to make sure we learn and try not to make them again,” reflects Berta Lázaro, co-founder and leader of the global ecosystem at TeamLabs.
Lázaro defines the company as a learning laboratory “that assumes that some days things will go well and others not, that projects and relationships will and can fail.” Errors are naturalized because action is accelerated. And the more you do, the more you go wrong.” Some companies have a similar philosophy: They see failure as a starting point for learning. This methodology is known as “mistake culture” and is defined by the consultant and coach José Barroso as training and raising awareness of the employee so that he does not hide from the mistake but learns from it.
“That means finding out why it happened, what factors caused it, or what happened in the sequence of activities that failed. The goal is clear: that it doesn’t happen again,” he emphasizes. Therefore, according to Barroso, companies use methods such as Japanese kaizen – the culture of manufacturing excellence – and work better when they focus on the solution and not the defect. “In American society in particular, it is often said that you don’t have enough experience to carry out a great project if you haven’t failed several times. If the failure is analyzed and solutions are applied, failure does not have to happen. Businesses, American or not, prefer people who provide solutions to problems rather than people who provide a résumé of failed projects,” he explains.
Live with the mistake and not against it
Elena García Donoso shares several keys not to suffer with each new mistake. It pushes to naturalize the error and understand that it is impossible for everything to go as desired – and even less so in such a changing world – to take the reaction to an error as feedback and not a threat to the Initiating Errors The future – the question is “why was I wrong” rather than dealing with “why” – implement processes and spaces for areas of improvement and implement all changes in an agile manner. It’s about understanding the flaw in the culture without punishing the employee who messed it up. However, there are already companies that see this act as a further phase.
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