Say you messed up before I discover it

Daniele Catalanotto
Oct 11, 2022


A Service Design Principle to build trust.

A dad I admire tells me a rule he has with his kids:

The kids can break things and make terrible mistakes as long as they come forward and say they did it. If they do so, he won’t get angry. But if they hid the shit they did, and he finds out, they are in deep trouble.

That reminds me of a piece of research I discovered in the book The Organized Mind. It seems that the University of Michigan Hospital found a trick to reduce by half the number of medical malpractice lawsuits. So what’s the magical trick?

Doctors began to disclose their mistakes to patients openly. That’s it.

These two stories remind us of this obvious tip that we sadly often forget to put into action:

Let me know when you mess up.

So let me ask you this:

What are the mistakes that you usually hide? How can you let customers, team members or partners know about them?

Daniele’s personal notes

  • You just read the second draft of this Service Design Principle.
  • The length of this principle has been reduced by 19% compared to the first draft.
  • Once improved even more, this principle could be part of the book “Service Design Principles 201-300.”
  • As always, feel free to share comments, feedback or personal stories to improve this principle.
Like 1
Jochen Bergmann
Oct 24, 2022
I'd be even more straightforward: "Give me bad news as soon as possible".
Imagine you're manufacturing urgently-needed drugs for patients. They're just waiting for the lab to clear that batch. Now the deadline is long gone and you finally reach someone at the lab, who tells you"there's been an issue...", "we're not quite sure...", "cannot give you a clear solution"... Been there, so absolutely, if only to send a signal that you mean business, help your customer to deal with the results of your errors, missed deadline or other issues.
Daniele Catalanotto
Oct 30, 2022

The third draft of this Service Design Principle

A dad I admire tells me a rule he has with his kids:

The kids can break things and make terrible mistakes as long as they come forward and say they did it. If they do so, he won’t get angry. But if they hide the shit they did, and he finds out, they are in deep trouble.

The University of Michigan Hospital (1) uses a similar rule. Doctors disclose their mistakes to patients openly. And it has a big impact. It reduces by half the number of medical malpractice lawsuits (2). Wow!

So let me ask you this:

What are the mistakes that you usually hide? How can you let customers, team members or partners know about them?

Footnotes

(1) I first discovered this case study in the following book — Daniel J. Levitin (2015). The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload. Dutton. Available at https://extra.swissinnovation.academy/8Cwp accessed 20 October 2022.

(2) The Michigan Model: Medical Malpractice and Patient Safety at Michigan Medicine. University of Michigan Health. Available at https://extra.swissinnovation.academy/pHeh accessed 20 October 2022.

Daniele’s notes

  • This is the third draft of this principle.
  • I’ve reduced the length of this principle by 27 % compared to the previous draft.
  • I removed a lot of the repetitions