Page 197 - Roy W. Rice - CEO Material How to Be a Leader in Any Organization-McGraw-Hill (2009)

178 • CEO Material: How to Be a Leader in Any Organization

Suzy Welch says that when she was the editor of the Harvard Business
Review, every week every editor had to phone a subscriber who canceled
and find out why.
A Harvard Divinity School student who loudly booed at a President
Bush speech and was arrested for disorderly conduct, jailed for the night,
and then fined, says, “If there’s one thing I learned, it’s that if you want
to interrupt the president of the most powerful nation in the world while
he’s delivering his inaugural address, it’s going to cost you about $25.”
View every mistake you make as a new adventure. Then fix it. All
people make mistakes. The good leader knows when he or she is wrong
and immediately repairs the damage.
One CEO told me that “a rant from a customer was a gift from
God” because it made me aware and motivated me to do something
about it quickly.
Your mistake is a failure if you don’t understand how and why it hap-
pened and what to do about it. Console yourself that the compensation
for an error is education.

Keep Going

After you’ve learned what you can from your mistake, forget the mistake,
but remember the learning. Do the “time” (hopefully not jail time) and
even be willing to quit the job if it will help the situation.

Don’t fret. Do your best. Move on.
Don’t let a mistake affect you for the future—only at this point in
time. Be lightly and temporarily angry mainly at yourself. Within
24 hours, get back in the saddle in some productive, constructive, and
visible task.

Failure is almost always temporary. Tomorrow is a new day.
ƒ

Don’t worry; in 100 years you’ll be dead.