Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Our mistakes put us in this situation, a tree didn’t fall on us.

“How did we get here? What happened?”

Simple, we decided to do this and that and some other thing, and we were mistaken. No one made us do what we did. We chose on our own. So, here we are, in a bad situation.

We make mistakes. We all make mistakes. We stumble and bumble—some days worse than others.

Accept our fallibility. Plan for our fallibility. Ask, “If this is a bad decision, where will we be? Will we be able to recover? Will this take all our resources? Is this fatal to our organization?”

Some call this “risk management.” Others call this common sense. Others call this pessimism. Whatever we call it, we should probably do some form of it. After all, we make mistakes—some worse than others.