Admitting Failure Brings Some Level of Credibility
It is all too often seen in headlines. An employee or even a subset of the organization, normally related to the finance area, takes funds from the organization for other uses. Call it embezzlement. Call it stealing. Call it fraud. You can certainly call it illegal.
But how often do we see the organization lean into the negative story, own it, and demonstrate the ability to learn from it? Sadly, the answer is not all that often.
GiveDirectly, a New York nonprofit that provides resources to some of the poorest regions of the world, recently admitted, on its own website, that it had been defrauded of more than $1 million. The release of the information came from its own blog post. Also, the nonprofit shared the blog post with several nonprofit publications to ensure it was published in wider circles. In this case, the money that was being used overseas in a country or two was not used for the intended purposes the organization indicated or that donors gave to.
While the fraud is deplorable, I have to give the organization credit for owning up to the issue. It reminds me of what my parents always said about taking responsibility, admitting mistakes, learning from them, and growing.
When I was at the Nebraska Medical Center, a child was given an adult dosage of heparin, a blood thinner. The child tragically died. I remember our chief nursing officer, Rosanna Morris, indicating on multiple fronts that the organization and the nurses in particular were going to own the mistake, make changes, learn from it, and never let it happen again. I watched her in press conferences in front of the media indicate those exact sentiments. I watched our CEO comment that we don't run from our mistakes because we can't learn from them if we don't accept them. While the loss was beyond unacceptable and tragic, we honestly gained credibility for doing the right thing. The same is true with GiveDirectly.
I would add that if you make the same mistake over and over and over, I don't care how often you admit it, it's never going to build you any credibility or better relationships with the community.
However, the people you respect most in life generally are the ones who indicate either in acknowledgment that they don't know everything, or they are willing to admit they made a mistake when trying to either solve a problem or just do their job. In the end, all we have is our reputation and the trust we build with others and our community. While making a mistake is never good, hiding it only makes it worse.
