OSM: What to do when you realise you've made a mistake.

What's an OSM you may ask? It's a term I learnt from one of my all time favourite podcasts - She Did It Her Way. It refers to an "Oh sh1t moment".

No matter how experienced we are in our roles, most of us have had an OSM in our career. And, they can leave us feeling alllll the things from confusion, to shock to disappointment. Logically, we all know that mistakes happen. But in the moment, this logic may evade us.

So, what should you do? This is my approach:

1. Take accountability for the mistake. This would involve informing your stakeholders of the error, and apologising for the negative impact caused. I also suggest alerting your Line Manager of the situation so that they have a heads up.
2. Find a short-term solution. Think about how you can rectify the situation in the short term. This may involve repeating a process, sending out a communication to correct a message or having a quick meeting with your team to close the gaps created. Share your proposed solution with your impacted stakeholders & Line Manager, and once you have their buy-in, implement the solution immediately.
3. Reflect on what went wrong and WHY it went wrong. Now that the immediate challenges have been addressed, take some time to reflect on what went wrong and why it went wrong. Apply various thinking techniques such as brainstorming or the 5-WHY analysis to get to the root cause of the challenge. And if you are finding that you aren't gaining clarity, discuss the situation with a trusted colleague or your Line Manager to get their input.
4. Once you have determined the root cause, develop a process to avoid this moving forward. Once you have ascertained what the issue was, ask yourself what processes you can put in place to avoid this. Minor tweaks can make a big impact.
5. Close the loop with your stakeholders. Explain to your stakeholders what went wrong, what you identified to be the root cause and your proposed process for addressing this to avoid the error from recurring. Get their buy-in, and begin implementing the solution.
6. Review & Confirmation. After a few iterations of the new process being applied, review the process to check that it is indeed working as intended. Give your stakeholders feedback about your findings, and confirm the way forward.

Does it work?

I applied this process myself very recently. Firstly, YES, I made an error. And honestly, I was mortified. I kind of sat there for a while in disbelief at the truly basic oversight I had made. I was annoyed with myself and disappointed about letting my colleagues down.

Even though my very supportive Line Manager assured me that it was totally fine, and a workaround was easily able to be implemented... STILL, I felt like I let everyone down.

But, knowing this process, I got to work.

I took accountability for the mistake, and apologised for the error. I confirmed a short term solution with the relevant parties which I then implemented. From there, I gave some serious thought to what went wrong and why, and by Monday afternoon I had a new process in mind for how to avoid this in future. My colleagues were very supportive, and in two weeks I've review and confirm if it is working as I intended.

Applying this process, doesn't make the error go away. It still happened. BUT, by applying this process you are able to extract the learnings from the situation and will feel more confident in your approach moving forward.

Give this process a try, and let me know how it goes? Though honestly I genuinely hope you don't have to practice this skill any time soon :)

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