[Video Tip] Never let me make a mistake

Dr Patrick White from SME Academy talks about the dangers of surrounding yourself with ‘yes-men’ in your business. His story illustrates how not allowing people to challenge your decisions can lead to expensive mistakes.

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Transcript

Welcome to today’s tip of the week. Something I’d like to talk about is called: ‘Never Let Me Make A Mistake’

And this is very important when you’re an entrepreneur or manager or leader because it has two values that I want to talk about initially and then I’ll tell you a story to illustrate how I came about this rule.

One of the things you don’t want when you’re running a business is a lot of ‘Yes’ people around you. You want people to be able to be empowered to tell you if they think you’re making a mistake because sometimes we as owners and managers tend to rush off and do things that our staff think aren’t too bright at times.

So one of the things you need to instil in your business is to let your people know that they can actually come up to you and say: “I think that you are making a mistake.” – And then have a discussion about why they think that.

I have found this very empowering for people and I’ll tell you a story where I actually learned the lesson about this.

One day I happened to be visiting a fellow fuel distributor, which was one of my past businesses. And on his premises he had this really shiny, very nice Pantech truck with a nice big back on it all painted up and sign-written and it had a drop-loader elevator on the back which was great; it looked really good.

And it immediately came to mind that I had a depot that I had visited not long ago which had a very poor looking truck which was 20 years old and had just a flat deck on the back.

I thought: Wouldn’t it be great to buy this truck and send it to that depot and give that particular truck driver a big thrill?

So I went ahead, purchased the truck and then rang the Manager of the depot, told him I had purchased the truck and sent it on to him.

A couple of months later I had to go and visit that depot and when I got there I met the truck driver just as I was walking in the door and said something to him and I got a bit of a grunt.

After that I carried on walking and talked to the actual depot Manager and I said: “What’s wrong with Brian? We’ve just sent him this brand new truck and it looks really good, why is he not happy?”

The depot Manager proceeded to tell me why. He said: “The reason we had the old truck with a flat deck is because we needed to move a lot of fuel tanks around so we don’t need a truck with sides on the back because we can’t manoeuvre the fuel tanks in and out of the truck.”

So what was actually happening was they were using the new truck I’d bought for local deliveries but when they needed to shift a tank they would go and hire a flat bed truck.

So not only had I bought another truck that I didn’t actually need but it didn’t serve the purpose that they needed it for. What I should have done is asked the question. But if I had empowered these people before I bought the truck they could have told me that this was a mistake, that wasn’t the truck they actually needed.

So hence I learned the lesson ‘Never Let Me Make A Mistake’. It’s important to give your people the right to talk to you when they think you are making a mistake.

It’s also important to encourage them to make sure they tell other people in the business if they think they’re making a mistake and most importantly they must tell the customer if they think he or she is making a mistake.

So that’s a lesson I have learned. So if you want to empower our people get rid of the ‘Yes’ people around you and empower them so that they can tell you when they think you’re making a mistake.

Thank you.

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