I just overheard a conversation at my local cafe and it was very interesting as it mirrored something very important.
A cake was made on the wrong day and the two employees were discussing how this came to be. This isn’t just about cake.
I have worked with many teams where something like this blows up – there is defensiveness, ‘it wasn’t me’, aggressive tone and a whose fault was it becomes the focus.
It highlights something more than a mistake, it is about the culture, the lack of humanness and a fear of the consequences when something goes wrong.
In this situation they were chatting and getting curious about what happened to see if their processes need a tweak or was it just one of those human things where something was misread, written down differently to what was intended.
Hopefully someone got the benefit and had a extra fancy cake for a celebration or afternoon tea and what this highlights is that the way ‘mistakes’ and ‘little things’ are handled says a lot about team culture and psychological safety in the work place.
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