Sui Generis

Small Mistakes

Sep 28, 2008 Random

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There’s been a lot of controversy over whether McCain cussed during the debate last night. I’m not fully sure about it, but that’s not the point.

Here’s what I want to ask. How many of you noticed it when watching the live debate? I, for one, didn’t. I didn’t even notice it at all until reading about it online.

And that’s the thing about the web today. Practically everything is - or can be - documented online. And once it’s online, it’s there forever, and it can be re-read and analyzed over and over.

Any mistake, any small slip, now has the potential to be magnified to a much greater extent. We can no longer hide and hope that nobody sees our mistakes. Chances are, any mistakes we make will be discovered.

What can we do? 2 things. Firstly, be careful about what we say and do - as individuals, as brands, as companies. And secondly, when we slip up (we are all human after all), work on the response. That’s more important than ever now - how you respond when called on your mistake.

Because you can be sure that someone, somewhere, will definitely call you on it.

How do you respond to mistakes?

Tags: Barack Obama, debate, John McCain, mistakes, web