When I was only a few years into my career I accidentally deleted all the Cisco phones in the municipality where I was a sowtware developer. I did it following the instructions of the IT operations guy in charge of them, but it was still my fault. My reaction was to go directly to the IT (who wasn’t my) boss and tell him about it.
He told me he wasn’t happy about the clean up they now needed to do, but that he was very happy about my way of handling the situation. He told me that everyone makes mistakes, but as long as you’re capable of owning them as quickly as possible, then you’re the best type of employee because then we can get to fix what is wrong fast, and nobody has to investigate. He also told me that he expected me to learn from it. Then he sent me on my way. A few hours later they had restored the most vital phone lines, but it took a week to get it all back up.
It was a good response, and it’s stuck with me since. It was also something I made sure to bring into my own management style for the period I was into that.
So I think it’s perfectly natural to react this way. It’s also why CEOs who fuck up have an easy time finding new jobs, despite a lot of people wondering why that is. It’s because mistakes are learning experiences.
I'd much rather hear about a problem from a team member than hear about it from the alert system, or an angry customer.
plus when the big fuckup happens and the person causing it is there, there is an immediate root cause, and I can save cycles on diagnosis; straight into troubleshooting and remedy.
He told me he wasn’t happy about the clean up they now needed to do, but that he was very happy about my way of handling the situation. He told me that everyone makes mistakes, but as long as you’re capable of owning them as quickly as possible, then you’re the best type of employee because then we can get to fix what is wrong fast, and nobody has to investigate. He also told me that he expected me to learn from it. Then he sent me on my way. A few hours later they had restored the most vital phone lines, but it took a week to get it all back up.
It was a good response, and it’s stuck with me since. It was also something I made sure to bring into my own management style for the period I was into that.
So I think it’s perfectly natural to react this way. It’s also why CEOs who fuck up have an easy time finding new jobs, despite a lot of people wondering why that is. It’s because mistakes are learning experiences.