“You will take risks, and you will have failures. But it’s what happens afterward that is defining. A failure often does not have to be a failure at all… It’s all about mastery of rescue.”
Atul Gawande MD: “Failure and Rescue” in The New Yorker, June 4, 2012
In the article quoted above Dr. Gawande, who is a surgeon, says that problems are inevitable in any surgical procedure, and the skill of the surgeon is as much about rescuing a situation gone bad as it is preventing that failure in the first place. Again, anything can look like a failure in the middle. That is where the leader, as with the surgeon, is called upon to shine.
In business, the most loyal customers are often those who had a bad experience in which the company went above and beyond the call of duty to make it right. I once purchased a back-up power supply on Amazon.com. It failed almost immediately and I posted a negative review. Within several hours I got an email from the manufacturer asking me to return the device for a replacement. This arrived several days later, having been shipped out before the defective unit was returned. A week later I got an email asking how the replacement unit was working (it was fine) and offering to send me a free cable for my new iPhone (which I didn’t need). I went back to Amazon.com and amended my review from one to five stars, and wrote that if I could I would have given the company six stars for customer service.
Conversely, a failure to make good on a problem can result in unhappy ex-customers who go out of their way to tell others about their bad experience.
Contrast the customer service excellence I experienced with a defective power supply with the atrocious treatment I received at the hands of the eye clinic where I had Lasik surgery. After Lasik left me with serious double vision, impaired visual acuity, chronic eye pain, and a host of other problems, the clinic that performed the surgery dropped me like a hot potato. Trying to get them to help me cope with the damage they had caused was about as productive as trying to carry on an intelligent conversation with a dead bug.
Had I been treated half as well by the clinic that mangled my eyes as I was by the manufacturer that sold me a defective power supply I would have let it drop there. But in the frustrating trial-and-error process of trying to navigate the medical system to find ways to cope with the damage done to my eyes I learned that there are thousands of Lasik casualties and that far too many Lasik surgeons (including those at the clinic where I had mine done) have compromised their integrity by putting their financial interests ahead of patient welfare.
Had the eye clinic made a reasonable effort to “rescue their failure” by helping me cope with the damage they caused, it would not have turned me into a raving fan but it would have prevented me becoming an activist trying to warn others, especially young people, about the potential dangers of Lasik that too many financially-conflicted doctors try to minimize, and from posting a series of videos and documents, including a complete record of the almost-exclusively one-way correspondence between me and them and a copy of a malpractice lawsuit filed against them by a patient who suffered injuries far more catastrophic than mine.
By the way, if you or someone you love is considering Lasik eye surgery, please do your homework. The scientist who was head of the FDA ophthalmic division when Lasik was approved is now trying to get the procedure banned because the industry submitted fraudulent data to gain the approval and continues to cover up bad outcomes to prevent the procedure from being banned. I have good reason to believe the clinic that mangled my eyes failed to report the adverse outcome to the FDA, which they are legally required to do, and settled the catastrophic lawsuit out-of-court to keep it out of the public eye.
These videos and documents are posted at www.BadLasik.org.
- Staying on Top When Your World's Upside Down
- Introduction
- The Laws of Adversity
- The Great Divide – defining moments in adversity
- Carve the statue of you
- The four ways to handle brick walls
- Embrace the 4 personal freedoms
- Get clear about your values
- Align your goals with your values
- Have the courage to pursue your highest goal
- Thank God Ahead of Time (TGAoT) for whatever happens
- Use adversity as a platform for change
- Fear of failure is really fear of humiliation
- Congratulate yourself on being rejected and on failing
- You must overcome your fear of success
- Leadership is most important when the world is upside down
- The flip side of love is loss
- In grief seek comfort - and give comfort
- Imagine your organization as a support group
- Grieve – then move on
- There’s no such thing as false hope
- Practice a healthy humility
- Go off alone somewhere
- In the trials of adversity work on character strength
- Identify the problem behind the problem
- Change your questions
- Make the most of midlife crisis
- Stop doing what isn’t working and try something new
- When you put the pieces back together make the vessel stronger
- Stop thinking about yourself
- Stop ruminating
- Train your doubt
- When one door closes, push open another
- Ignore the nattering nabobs of negativity
- Utilize your gifts
- Hang tough!
- Don’t give in to apparent failure in the middle
- Rescue your failures
- There is no free lunch
- Raise your expectations
- Live into your potential
- You don’t need OPA
- Use DDQs to redirect your actions
- Use EDQs to redirect your moods
- Do good for others
- Practice Rafe’s Law
- Work until your mission is finished
- Bigger problems = better life
- The difference between courageous and crazy is often
- Escape prisons you’ve made yourself
- It’s not personal, permanent or pervasive
- Develop emotional power
- Get real by integrating ego and soul
- Do something!
- Get more sleep and practice Neuro-Attitudinal
- Practice strategic laziness
- Break your addiction to negative thinking
- Transform negative self-talk into positive affirmation
- Erase the graffiti of negative self-talk
- Pay attention to the metaphors by which you create your perception of reality
- Direct your dreams in a positive way
- Interpret dreams to your benefit
- Distinguish between problems and predicaments
- Create rituals
- Playing it safe can be a dangerous game
- Use the 6-A Formula to Create Memories of the Future
- Face the granddaddy of all fears
- Ignore the chatter of the world
- Stop whining
- The Pickle Pledge – a simple promise that will change your life
- Take The Pickle Challenge
- Build up your stamina
- Don’t pick fights you don’t need
- The steepest hills are in your mind
- Turn off the tragi-tainment
- Build upon The Pyramid of Self-Belief
- Act confident to earn confidence
- Stop waiting for someone else to “empower” you
- Take to heart The Self-Empowerment Pledge
- Monday’s Promise: Responsibility
- Tuesday’s Promise: Accountability
- Wednesday’s Promise: Determination
- Thursday’s Promise: Contribution
- Friday’s Promise: Resilience
- Saturday’s Promise: Perspective
- Sunday’s Promise: Faith
- Keep a personal journal
- Pay attention to the patterns in your life
- Overcome your own laziness
- Transform despair into determination
- Enthusiasm is the master value
- Stop awfulizing
- Adopt the Nedlog Rule
- Practice mutuality
- Say Yes to what matters by saying No to what doesn’t
- Write a poem
- Train your brain
- Replace anguish with hope
- Combine ignorant bliss with unearned confidence
- You can be a victim or a visionary but not both
- Work fast
- Caring is the root of courage
- See the world as it really is
- Fear can make you stupid
- Maintain your momentum
- The most important choice you ever make
- Illuminate the darkness
- Get out of stuck
- You cannot change the past but you can rewrite your memory of it
- Turn bad news into the best thing ever
- Write your own horoscope – a Youroscope
- Don’t hit the brakes when you hit the gravel
- Dealing with the energy vampires
- Be productive
- Your trajectory is more important than where you are at any point in time
- Forgive
- Even when the last thing you want to do is to forgive
- Forgive 360
- Stop abusing your imagination with delusions of grandeur and delusions of disaster
- Stop procrastinating
- Create something knowing there are no guarantees
- Get started
- Lost causes are only really lost when you stop fighting for them
- What doesn’t kill you…
- Expect a miracle