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.