Someone once said that when asking people about their greatest fears, public speaking came first, and death, a close second. Which is fairly funny to think that people attending a funeral, would prefer being inside the coffin than reciting a funeral oration. (Thankfully for us, Pericles didn’t have the same issues and thus ended up giving us what is probably the greatest funeral oration of all time. “A eulogy of Athens itself…” as David Cartwright describes it.)
As the world is becoming increasingly connected however, it appears that fears are also changing. Increased connectivity means that achievements and failures are getting increasingly hard to remain hidden for long. (Have you ever tried “googling” yourself? The amount of information that is freely available on most people online, is staggering.) I won’t comment on the “achievements” side of things here (although what people consider as “achievements” never ceases to amaze me!) because it is not relevant to the point that I am trying to make.
The point that I am trying to make, is related to the fear of failure. Indeed, because of the much greater ease with which any sort of failure may become known to the public, many people are becoming more and more reluctant to deliver work. In the old times, public speaking was the largest exposure one could have: Being exposed to a large, local audience. So in many ways, fear of failure is none other than the grandkid of fear of public speaking: In an age when nearly every interaction of yours with others, leaves a permanent mark on the web, any sort of failure related to your product, or service, will effectively equate to messing up during a public speech in the old times.
The point is however, that we have much greater control over those “marks on the web” than most people realize.
The first thing you could do is redefine what you regard as “failure”. I know people who regard as a failure one typo in a 50-page report. Last month I had this conversation with someone, the reasoning of whom was “Well if I miss a simple typo the client will immediately think that I might have missed dozens of other things”. Thank God we don’t work together and have to deal with this masochistic reasoning. Here’s the truth: No one cares about this kind of simple omissions and this is something coming from someone who reads a lot and knows full well that typos are annoying – but nothing more than that. If the client has reason to believe that you may have “missed dozens of other things” you have much more serious issues to deal with than a simple typo.
Secondly, when you realize that you have messed up (but the client hasn’t) you immediately acknowledge it and let them know. I have had the bad luck of working with many grown up children, who think they’ll starve to death if they ever accept a mistake. I was once forced to lock myself in a room, for hours on end, with three other high-ranking individuals from major public accountancy and law practices, who tried to come up with a “defense scenario” should the client realize that they had messed up in their provided level of service. I was wondering what sort of a malfunction these people were suffering from (as it seemed obvious to me that letting the client know that you made a mistake instead of preparing your defense should the client find out, was the obvious thing to do) but I didn’t ask out of respect to their medical privacy.
Finally, propose remedial solutions, even if you have already disengaged from the client.
Although the above don’t apply to everyone (an airline pilot isn’t allowed to go to work in anything less than excellent physical and mental condition, every time) it does apply to most of us and it probably does apply to all readers of this blog.
So yes, you will mess up eventually when you deliver work, but so long as you don’t kill anyone, this is perfectly manageable. What’s not manageable however, is hiding behind a closed office door, constantly reviewing the same work and building up defenses, instead of producing, delivering and contributing to your clients’ betterment.