If you screw up, admit it
Posted on February 21st, 2007 in Business, Leadership |
When you screw up, admit it. Sometimes, even when it’s not your fault, you should take responsibility (those of you with significant others know exactly what I’m talking about.)
Jetblue is one of my favorite airlines and they screwed up big-time. I just got this in my inbox from them:
We are sorry and embarrassed. But most of all, we are deeply sorry.
Last week was the worst operational week in JetBlue’s seven year history. Following the severe winter ice storm in the Northeast, we subjected our customers to unacceptable delays, flight cancellations, lost baggage, and other major inconveniences. The storm disrupted the movement of aircraft, and, more importantly, disrupted the movement of JetBlue’s pilot and inflight crewmembers who were depending on those planes to get them to the airports where they were scheduled to serve you. With the busy President’s Day weekend upon us, rebooking opportunities were scarce and hold times at 1-800-JETBLUE were unacceptably long or not even available, further hindering our recovery efforts.
Words cannot express how truly sorry we are for the anxiety, frustration and inconvenience that we caused. This is especially saddening because JetBlue was founded on the promise of bringing humanity back to air travel and making the experience of flying happier and easier for everyone who chooses to fly with us. We know we failed to deliver on this promise last week.
My experiences with them have been stellar and I hope they come out of this well, but that’s neither here nor there. I like their apology a great deal. And granted, after what happened, it needed to be good. What I like about itis the repeated use of “we did this…” and “we did that…” - they made it personal.
Taking responsibility is critical. We own our actions (or inaction) and there’s no escaping that. Once you take responsibility for the screw-up, you commit yourself to fixing what went wrong. It’s a lot easier to sweep things under the rug when your reputation isn’t what’s at stake. “I have to fix it,” follows much more readily from “I screwed up,” than it does from “the weather screwed things up.”
We all screw up. What’s important is what happens next.
4 Responses
Good post. Your point about internalizing ‘I have to fix it’ from stating ‘I screwed up’ is really good (and non-obvious). At the end of it all, the best way to deal with any screw up is to 1. honestly apologize, and 2. then actually fix it. Doing one of the two may placate, but won’t delight.
That’s a great point Dave. You need to do both. Now that I think about it, just fixing the problem without accepting responsibility is also unsatisfying.
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