Don't Agonize...Apologize!

All of us are humans so doing perfect work is impossible. The best we can strive for is excellence. There will always be a gap somewhere in our work where we let people down. The key is watch for the imperfections, identify them, apologize to those who were negatively impacted, make the correction, and keep moving down the road of life!

I personally had two incidents of imperfection in our business last week. The first major glitch was this very Ezine, Mark's Trust Assets. It is scheduled for creation and distribution every second Thursday. Neither I nor my IT guru, Jeff, caught it. Now keep in mind that Jeff works like a Timex watch. Imagine that…one of our key marketing tools used to communicate with our business and professional peers and friends was totally over-looked!

The second major glitch was the delivery of a proposal in my consulting business. It was scheduled for Friday, 1-11-08 at 4:30 p.m. Please recognize that this is the first time in my business career --- during which I have literally made thousands upon thousands of sales calls --- that I had a request from a highly qualified prospect to deliver their proposal on a Friday afternoon. They are in their "harvest season" and need to interact with their customers/clients from 7:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. daily, so that is why they requested their proposal during their "down-time" of 4:30 – 5:30 p.m. on Friday.

When did I realize these two errors? They were discovered during my preparation of this week's Action Plan last night. Yes, for over three decades I have invested time on Sunday to finalize my WPOA (Weekly Plan of Action) for the next week. Those two errors sounded like a freight train horn when I found them! I was frozen on the railroad tracks and the train was bearing down on me, full throttle. How would I react?

I automatically thought of my parents and grandparents and their sage words of wisdom --- "honesty is the best policy." I added a new gem last night: Don't Agonize…Apologize!!!

So please allow me to apologize for missing my every second Thursday broadcast of the Mark's Trust Assets Ezine.

Obviously you receive value from our Ezine or you would not invest the time to read it! Same thing with this blog. Somehow while converting my 100% paper based, 30-year old habit of using a Monthly Master Calendar and Weekly fold-up sheet to Microsoft Outlook with a daily fold-up sheet, I failed to add this bi-weekly Ezine to my task list! The bad news is that I fell off the wagon while learning a new productivity enhancement tool. The good news is that I bounced off the ground and ran mightily to jump back on the wagon of productivity and re-building trust. My IT guru will build an alarm into his scheduler every second Wednesday to remind him to call me and ask for tomorrow's Ezine!

Regarding the missed proposal delivery, I emailed an apology late last night to my prospect. To make amends for our error, he also received a dinner offer for delivery after 6:30 p.m. so he can eat while Dynamic Consulting delivers his customized proposal of solutions. You will hear the rest of that story next week!