Irrevocable Mistakes at Work

By now, whether you are a Sports Center addict or not, you have seen the call by umpire Jim Joyce that cost Detroit Tiger pitcher Armando Galarraga a perfect game with only one out to go.

Talk about a bummer both ways, this was definitely a classic.

On the other hand, once you get past the emotion you feel for both men, if you followed what happened after the call and the next day, you also had a chance to experience a different emotion, or at least I did, and that was one of admiration and respect.

Admiration for the way that Jim Joyce expressed his regret and admiration for the way in which Galarraga handled himself. The scene of him handing the lineup card to Joyce the following day and the emotion shown by Joyce was a "special moment" and one which at least does something to restore one's faith in how people can deal with each other even under tough circumstances.

There are some who might well argue that the situation that developed in a baseball game is hardly of the same magnitude as some of the situations that surface between managers and employees at work. They might say that this is not a "game" and at work, these situations can come down to being about people's livelihood.

How people choose to react when faced with major disappointment is an interesting question, be it on the field of play or in the office. If you get a chance, read GL Hoffman's post which prompted the title of this entry: Irrevocable Mistakes at Work.

In it he asks us our opinion of whether or not Joyce's "mistake" is one which should cost him his job. My opinion was that it shouldn't, but GL's post also made me think of the dynamics of the interactions between manager and subordinate. It reminded me again of how critical a role behavioral choices have in that relationship.

While Joyce and Galarraga didn't have a direct supervisor/employee relationship, the fact that he was an umpire gives him the upper hand in terms of who has the POWER in the relationship. The same is true of the balance of power between manager and subordinate.

The big learning that I took away from the way Joyce handled himself by immediately taking responsibility, apologizing, and most importantly, acknowledge how deep his empathy was for Galarraga I believe made a huge difference in how not only Galarraga reacted but how his teammates and the public reacted.

Move this to the workplace, and I think many of the same elements can have an enormous impact on a team's productivity. As the saying goes we all make mistakes and that most certainly includes those in leadership roles.

How quickly the organization recovers and moves on is, I believe, in direct proportion to how the organization views our behavior following the incident.

Said differently, I think the real "irrevocable" mistake is failure to take responsibility. When you are most vulnerable is when people see your real value system surface and if they are comfortable with that, more often than not they will be looking for ways to help you, not hurt you.

The Data-Driven Life

They don't call it the digital age for nothing I guess and further proof showed up recently on the NY Times site with the publiation of an article written by Gary Wolf who, if you read the print article in the May 2nd Sunday Times magazine, you will already know writes about science and social issues for Wired, where he is a contributing editor. The article is called The Data-Driven Life. I found it a fascinating read.

Among other things it made me stop and think much more carefully about the degree to which data plays a role in our lives, both business and personal. If you believe what Wolf has to say in terms of the impact data has, you haven't, as the saying goes "seen nothin' yet."

From a business perspective it made me wonder if those executives who suffer from what back in the day was called analysis paralysis would soon become extinct or whether as data gathering becomes more and more sophisticated if those same executives would all of a sudden become the super heros of the corporate universe not to mention cyberspace.

Seemed to me one could make the argument on both sides and have an equal chance of making the right call.

On the other hand, as we all know data is just data until someone interprets and draws from it conclusions as to how it can most effectively be used to make decisions for the organization.

It was when I reminded myself of this last thought that I started to feel a bit better that maybe we were not all destined to be replaced by R2 D2 and/or C-3PO.

I found myself thinking that while technology continues to move at a pace that is harder to follow than re-runs of trauma cases arriving on ER, that at the end of day no matter how much data we are able to draw from the system value judgements will have to be made and so long as that holds true, people not machines will continue to manage the systems not the other way around.

And before you start sending in cards and letters that remind me that while all this may be true, given our track record as a species we would not likely get too many Oscar nominations for the decisions made to date, hopefully the advances about which Mr. Wolf has written will help us to do a better job.

Those who work with us and for us are probably hoping the same thing.