THE MOMENTS OF TRUTH- 3 tactics to avoid failing with your client or team when it may cost you way too much

Yesterday, hundreds of million viewers watched perplexed the incorrect announcement of the winner of 2015 Miss Universe contest. For those who could not watch the whole story, it follows the full moment video (2 minutes long), when the senior and amazing host, Steve Harvey, announced Miss Colombia as the winner, and less then a minute after that awkward moment, apologized to the public and confirmed the victory for Miss Philippines, Pia Wurtzbach. 

 Although Steve apologized that announcement, there was no turning back anymore and he will probably be remembered for a long time for this mistake, hoping faithfully that people will forget it completely and nevertheless hire him to host other huge audience events - maybe he′ll host the Academy Awards next year - as some Beatle′s fans would remind us .... Tomorrow Never Knows. 

When you find your path, you must not be afraid. You need to have sufficient courage to make mistakes. Disappointment, defeat, and despair are the tools God uses to show us the way.

Paulo Coelho, Brida

The importance of mistakes and errors in our learning process

I agree totally that committing mistakes plays an important role in our learning, or moreover is an important trigger for innovation and to survival itself, since adaptation is delivered by our attempts and failure. On their article on Harvard Business Review called "The Self-Tuning Organization " (june 2015), Martin Reeves, Ming Zeng and Amin Venjara explained that self tuning is related to the concepts like agility (rapid adjustment) and adaptation, which is learning by trial and error. Therefore, the success of companies on a or dynamic world (read my article on V.U.C.A and the new leaders competencies here) also depend on their employees trying new approaches, adjusting rapidly to environmental shifts and trends and innovate with less stress.

Although I definitely encourage my team on trying new approaches and I assist them on surpassing the main obstacles they may face, there are always some of those moments that if you fail, it may cause you enormous damage, as we can see on many situations like the final of miss universe contest, or on a major product launch, as it happened with Microsoft′s Surface, a few years ago. 

The customers′ "Moments of truth"

I remember when I first heard the expression "Customer′s moments of truth" during my Master′s degree on Marketing . To understand the concept, those are the moments when a new or existing client will demand something on you and, if you don′t at least meet his or her expectation, you may have problems like bad reputation posts on social media, reports to the companies hotlines or even being sued. But which are these moments? 

The author Heidi Cohen (https://heidicohen.com/) defined the moments of truth as follows:

On all these moments, the customers are charged with emotions, which could turn them out to be evangelists of your brand, help you voluntarily selling your products to many people with zero costs of advertising, but if you fail, like when  someone from your Customer Service′s team is not polite enough, your product breaks on the third day of usage or even if it does not deliver a promised feature, which led the person choose your service or product among others... uhhmmm, this mistake might be never forgiven or forgotten. 

How to avoid big mistakes on moments of truth

On my latest book FLAPS!, I share a few tactics to avoid commiting big mistakes on the moments of truth with your team or a client, since it would impact directly on the level of trust other deposits on you, and therefore, you might miss your influence on them. Let me share three of these tactics: 

1. Rehearse! Then... rehearse! I remember when my former boss and current friend Mike Cardenas wrote on a sheet of paper three times only one word and pasted it to the wall. It was written, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse! Of course I never forgot that and today, since I have to deliver 5 to 10 public keynote speeches a month, I always try to rehearse alone or with a small internal group, so I can fix a few mistakes and become more fluent on what I would deliver. It takes a few minutes, but it really pays back! 

2. Envolve the client or team on the solution of the "might go wrong" moments BEFORE they happen - envolve your public on the issues may happen, they can also help you out on solving those problems. We have an expression in Brazil which is "O que é combinado, n?o é caro", something like  "What is agreed is not expensive". I used this concept way many times in my life with success, since if you share with your public that there might happen something on critical moment and ask for their support, feedback and comprehension, this is a powerful influence tactic to make them feel part of the solution as well. Who mastered this technique was Steve Jobs, watch on the third scene how he agrees with the public to turn off the private networks and place ipads, ipods, laptops to the ground... but he also throws a camera (literally) on other person :/ (it is highly not recommended to do this at home or work) 

3. Walk the talk. If there is something you are not sure you can deliver, just don′t promise it. If you use it as a tool to gain more clients, you may definitely loose all of them in the near future, because they may feel betrayed, and this is not good, on a world where people is connected and customer reviews play a very important part on other client′s decision making, this is definitely vital to walk what you talk!

How about you? Would you like to share a few experiences with us that you had to surpass difficult moments of truth or do you have more techniques to avoid them? Then please leave us a comment or share this article. Help more and more people on growing their career!

Merry Xmas everyone! Warm Regards, J.M. Furlan

*** 

J. M. Furlan is an Author, Coach and the CEO of Enora Leaders.