Hint: they have a hard time accepting we are human

What started as an airline crisis unveiled something more terrifying: our lack of mistake tolerance.

Why did the United Airlines video go viral? Because what happened was bad? Or because it’s easier to criticize other’s mistakes than accepts ours?

Every person has become a reporter; every pocket now holds a high-definition camera. But we are not behaving like real reporters. We are not reporting the news; we are broadcasting our personal opinions and reactions.

What if we take United’s crisis as a warning light? To reflect on our ability (or not) to deal with mistakes in public. How will we behave if we were to face our “15 minutes of unwanted fame”?

Why Do We “Like” to Hate?

“Reacting is human, learning is both human and smart.”

It’s easy to criticize United airlines for what happened, once it happened. To speak from a position of perfectionism and rightfulness. We all suddenly became CEOs, crisis-management experts and high-level business consultants.

It’s easy to ask for someone to be fired. But, do we care about our own mistakes accountability?

The Roman Circus was the first to make the thumbs-up sign popular. The masses used it to decide the fate of a gladiator. Thumbs-up equaled to forgiveness, thumbs-down was a death sentence confirmation.

Many centuries later, Facebook rolled out the thumbs-up sign to a larger circus: Social Media. An emotional (and popular) reaction — at a larger scale- defines the fate of an individual.

Asking for a CEO’s “death sentence” won’t solve the issue. It might put most of us to rest, for sure. Then, we will forget –like we always do. But there’s something that will still be unaddressed: why we hate mistakes.

To clarify, I’m not anyhow connected with United. I’m not a fan either.

What United did was disrespectful, unfair and anti-human. Especially in the current political environment. It made our worst fears real.

Reacting is human, but not every human reaction is humane.

What I don’t like is the sudden need to bash United Airlines. Some people are enjoying it. Like promoting videos so people stop flying with United. It feels like an easy way out.

United is an organization with thousands of employees. Your social media knee-jerk reaction can put many people’s jobs in jeopardy. Not every United Airlines employee is responsible for what happened. So why should all of them be “punished”?

Let’s not over react. And avoid sounding pretentious, arrogant and inhuman too. We don’t want to behave like the police who dragged this poor passenger.

Reacting is human, learning is both human and smart.

Organizations Are Human, Mistakes Are Made by Human Beings

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work” –Thomas Alba Edison

I work with teams and organizations helping them create a culture of experimentation. Never in the history of humanity change has happened this fast. Becoming adaptive is a mandate. And that requires taking risks.

The “United moment” brought up an unspoken question: what’s our relationship with mistakes? Making mistakes is part of being human. Yet, especially at work, we have a hard time dealing with them.

And that’s because we don’t accept our own mistakes.

When failure is a stop -and not the final destination- you are learning, not failing. Most of the biggest discoveries in human history have always come after many –failed- attempts. That requires resilience. And to embrace failure as a friend, not as a crisis. Like Edison did.

In the past, mistakes weren’t as visible. Today, organizations are on the spot. Which is great. All those who follow my work, know how I always advocate for transparency.

The downside is: how can we encourage a culture of experimentation when mistakes will be scrutinized by everyone’s cameras?

Feeling afraid of becoming the next meme, can make people shy away from experimentation. And that’s not good.

I’m not saying what happened to United was an experiment. Yet real-life events are the best way to learn how to improve our behaviors. And that applies to both our professional and personal life.

The problem is not the crisis. Every company will face many. The problem is how we react to a crisis (or to our own mistakes).

How Does Your Organization Deal With Mistakes?

“Making mistakes is not critical. How you react to those mistakes is what really matters.”

Seven people died in 1982 from consuming Johnson & Johnson’s Tylenol capsules laced with cyanide. In 1992, a Harper’s article put Nike against the ropes: the company was paying its Indonesian workers less than the minimum wage, starting an uproar. After a huge ice storm hit the East Coast of the U.S. in 2007, Jet Blue’s operations collapsed, leading to 1,000 flight cancellations.

Johnson & Johnson immediately recalled more than 30 million bottles and then developed a tamper-proof packaging. Nike’s CEO increased wages to its global employees and started publishing a report that showcases the organizations’ effort to improve the quality of life of their global workforce.

JetBlue’s CEO never blamed the weather, he introduced the customer’s “bill of rights” and provided a concrete list of what the company would do to help all the affected passengers.

All these companies suffered from a much larger crisis than the one United experienced. And they survived. Because they lead rather than hiding behind corporate manuals. They took ownership. They behaved in a humane way.

Basically, they adapted and learned.

What about your own organization? If a mistake turns into your own “United Airlines moment”, how would your react?

Get Ready: Build an Adaptive Mindset

We are shifting from a workplace driven by answers to one driven by questions.

Traditionally, organizations used previous experiences to define best practices. Today, how you adapt to unexpected events, matters the most.

The “passenger-dragged-off-the-plane” crisis can happen to anyone at some point. United Airlines was simply the “flavor of the week”.

It’s impossible to have a corporate manual that includes, in advance, an answer for every potential crisis. Life events are always unexpected. Once you’ve captured best practices for a particular situation, a new one will emerge. One that lawyers or best-practices consultants have most probably missed.

Prepare for your own “United Airlines moment”. Start building an “adaptive mindset”:

– Prepare employees to manage the unexpected -especially mistakes- in a human way

– Promote common- sense decision-making over just following rules

– Train your team to make decisions considering customer’s best interest, not just corporate interests

– Empower teams to provide solutions on “the ground”. Delegate real authority- to make things happen. Like Zappos does.

– Provide a safe place for people to experiment and take risks. During a crisis, the worst mistake you can make is to act too safely.

Most corporate policies are anything but human-centered. The workplace and organizational cultures need to be challenged.

Stop preserving the way things used to be. Stretch your organizations’ behaviors. Learn to become more adaptive.

The Future of Work is Now

“In the future, everybody will be world-famous for 15 minutes” — Andy Warhol

The way we work is broken. That’s why consultants like to bash the “way we used to work”. And promote “the Future of Work” as the ideal to follow. Predicting the future has always been a good business for academics and consultants alike.

We all love to get a sense of what will happen long before it happens. It makes us feel in control. The problem is that, by spending our time discussing the future, we don’t do much to improve the present.

I’d like to invite you to focus on the “Present of Work”. We live in a pivoting moment. We are transitioning from how work used to be to how it will be. Don’t be a passive observant. Play an active role.

Help make organizations better. More human, more mature and more adaptive.

The United Airlines crisis is not simply a crisis. It shows the disconnect between leaders, lawyers/ regulators, employees and end-users.

United’s crisis is a symptom. Or, better indeed, a mirror.

Look at your organization in that mirror. How do you deal with mistakes? How can you improve the “Present of Work”?

Andy Warhol anticipated that everyone will have their “15 minutes of fame”, long before Social Media was created.

Are you ready for your unwanted “15 minutes of fame”?