Clean Up Your Own Mess
Clean Up Your Own Mess
I’m a firm believer that an entrepreneur’s role is to make decisions based on the information at their disposal, and then move forward. When they’re wrong, they need to clean up their mess. It may not be the same story for big corporations but this is reality for the entrepreneur.
As Tru Earth has grown, I suddenly have all kinds of people to help me. We have EAs and an org chart and lots of people around to make things happen but that doesn’t mean I don’t still need to clean up my own messes.
One day when we’d been bouncing between spaces in a new facility and playing office roulette, I was rushing to prepare for an unexpected video meeting. To get the right background, I was hurrying to hang a picture. Despite the fact that there were lots of people offering to help, I felt I should do it myself. Everything was feeling just a little out of control but I insisted. After all, I was born and raised a carpenter’s son!
Just moments before the video conference, that picture hit the floor and suddenly there was glass was all over. At that point, all I could do was pick up the frame, and flick away the bits of broken glass. I leaned it on a chair to make it look as if it was hanging on the wall and carried on with the meeting, with shards of glass crunching under my chair every time I moved.
When the meeting was over, I got a garbage can and started picking up the glass. People came hurrying in to offer help. “Brad! You don’t have to do that. We’ll clean this up.”
No. I broke the glass, and I’ll clean up the mess.
If I want to jump out of my lane, and make a mess, then it’s up to me to clean up.
It’s what I believe. If I want to jump out of my lane, and make a mess, then it’s up to me to clean up. And I’m not talking about minor things – I mean an actual mess where I’ve made a core decision and it was wrong.
A while ago, we launched Dawg Pack, a subscription box for dogs. I’m a partner in Uptown Dawg and we knew Bark Box was already on the market so I thought Dawg Pack was a great idea. It was totally my thing. I dragged people into a room, took them way outside their comfort zone, asked them to make decisions, used time and resources and launched it.
What I didn’t do was follow our process.
We tried to keep Dawg Pack alive but it didn’t work. So I dismantled the dream, apologized to the stakeholders, accepted the inventory extras and found other homes for them.
I cleaned up my mess and we never broke the VLOS (Validate, Launch, Optimize and Scale) process again.
Dawg Pack failed because it was a pet project that I didn’t handle properly. It’s been a “zero” on our organizational dashboard for a long time and serves as a good reminder of what not to do. That’s what’s important about cleaning up your own mess, because if you don’t, you won’t remember what went wrong. The truth is, if you’re going to be a leader and you decide, based on the information in front of you – and because it’s your job – that you’re going to take a different path, then you have to be prepared for what might result.
The same can be said about everyone in our organizations. If you’re going to make a decision, we’re going to back you up. If something goes wrong, we’re not going to hold it over your head or show you the door, but we are going to expect you to clean up your mess.
Cleaning up is step one of a two-step process.
You also need to own your messes. It’s important not to clean up and hide what happened because then your team won’t have a chance to see if there’s a way to fix it or if there was an impact that we didn’t see. Cleaning up a mess and owning it means that you can’t hide. You have to accept it and be conscious about not making the same mistake again. That’s why it’s so important not to let others clean up your mess. The learning comes from the cleanup. When I broke the glass, it might have been argued that the CEO could have found more effective ways to spend his time, but then I wouldn’t have learned anything.
Look around your organization and ask yourself: Is there a mess you need to clean up?
I’d love to connect with you, so send me a message with your answer.
To purchase one of Brad’s books, select the links below:
https://www.amazon.ca/Sales-Refresher-Brad-J-Liski/dp/0987819453
https://www.amazon.ca/Clear-Mind-Success-Learning-Meditation/dp/0987819461