Episode Transcript

What’s up? What’s up? What’s up everybody? Welcome back to five minute rants guys, welcome back to THE a.m. I’m your show Michael Abernathy and welcome back. I’m your show. Well, I’m your host, Michael Abernathy. And welcome back to the show predicated on the journey of life and business.

Well, guys, today, I want to talk about failing big and failing loud. Oftentimes, when we make mistakes, or when we are choosing to not be bold, and just own things we’ll do What I call is quietly hide it, right? I don’t want anybody to see that I screwed up, I don’t want to see that I did a mistake. And so I’m just going to quietly hide it and hope nobody notices. Now Here’s a couple things. If you think about that, that’s more harmful than not. And the reason why is because nobody really knows that you’ve screwed up, nobody really knows that there’s actually a problem within the system. So it’s not even about you screwing up. It’s nobody knows there’s a problem within the system.

Now, however, if you’re working for somebody, and you’re in a toxic environment that doesn’t do well, with people making mistakes, I’m not telling you to be dishonest. I’m What my recommendation at this point is go find another job, go find somebody to work for and better yourself, right? However, if you’re working for a healthy place, and if you’re leading a healthy team, there’s going to be ownership, right? I would much rather have somebody in a team member tell me hey, I messed up, Here’s all the things I learned from it. And Here’s my plan to actually catch myself and make sure that this doesn’t happen again, that’s so much more valuable than having to rehire somebody, retrain somebody. And then when they make the same mistake, go through the same process.

And so we celebrate learning and self improvement, we celebrate failing forward, where mistakes happen. There’s a forward failure, there’s growth and learning out of it, right? There’s not just a Oh, man, I messed up, and it’s the end of the world. It’s like, No, we don’t expect anybody to be perfect. But What we do want is a heart position and heart attitude of continual improvement and growth, right? And you don’t have to improve to the same way I do and the level than Andrew does. But it’s like, no, let’s grow and learn together and move forward together.

And the reason why I’m saying this is, is if you don’t create that within your business, or if you’re not working for somebody where that’s really facilitated, you need to get another job. But if you’re building a company, you’ve got to create this where people fail loudly, they fail out loud. And then before fire occurs, you’ve caught it, right? Hey, I did this. A good example of this as I was putting away dishes in my kitchen, right? And I don’t know where every dish goes. And my wife has got these pots and pan holder things for like utensils, like, spatulas and stir spoons and all these things right by the oven. And right on the countertop out in the open where everybody can see. And you know What I did? I was like, I don’t know where this sucker goes, and I stuck it right there. So everybody could find it. And my wife actually needed it like, the next day. And she looked up and didn’t have to find it. She’s like, Oh, it’s right there who put it there? And I did, I failed loudly. I’m like, I’m an idiot. I don’t know where my own dishes go. Let me shove this right there in the holder. So that way everybody can see it. My wife can find it if she needs it. And she doesn’t have to go looking through all the drawers and cabinets being like, well, where’s that? Where’s that? Where’s that? Where’s that and

see if you quietly hide the mistake. And if you create a place where people are quietly hiding things, and you’re quietly hiding things, because oh, I just don’t want to be wrong. Or I don’t want to say that I messed up, you’ve created this culture, you’re going to waste so much time trying to figure out where the problems are coming from. But if you celebrate open honesty, of failure, you celebrate people being open and loud about their failure, you celebrate that. And then you celebrate the learning, you celebrate the growth and you celebrate the improvement and you treat people like people, right? You do that with empathy and compassion, and you lead with those things and pay it forward first, with all this, What you’re going to create is going to be amazing, and the whole company will change, right?

And then you do the same thing with clients. Like, hey, we realized that we messed this up, we found this. Here’s how we corrected it. And Here’s What we learned to make sure it never happens again, versus the client breathing down your neck and going, Oh, why did you do this? How do you mess this up? Why did you mess that up? Why didn’t you do What I said? It’s like, No, you met honesty, you talk about trust going through the roof. And if the client has a bad time with it, right? And then they don’t want to actually like partner with you through all that. Okay, they might not be the right client. If they’re not celebrating honesty, I would much rather have a contractor or a partner come in, they’re helping us build something and they’re honest with where they messed up.

Oh my gosh, that would be amazing to where I trust you now. So I don’t have to look over your shoulder to make sure you’re doing a good job and make sure you’re doing everything right. I trust you tell me when you mess up. And then we can have a conversation about how to improve Oh, wow, you talk about game changing. Same thing. So anyways, favor loudly. That’s it guys. I’ll catch you later peace