Imagine a perfect world. If you could change one aspect of human nature what would it be? I can remember asking an old, wise Roman Catholic Priest this question when I was about 14 years old. His answer shocked me. I thought he'd say "make people less greedy". But what he actually said was "I'd make people want to apologise when they had made mistakes". He explained that in his career the worst things happened when people made mistakes and couldn't bring themselves to apologise. Often what they did was concoct a whole tissue of lies to justify something they knew was wrong. This always troubled me. I couldn't understand how a man who knew so much had come to such a conclusion. I thought that there were many aspects of human behaviour that were far more worthy of addressing. But I have come to realise his wisdom. To some extent, we are all greedy. It only becomes a problem when our greed negatively impacts another person. I want my studio to be better, turn over more money, and make me a bit richer. I'd love a nice holiday with the proceeds. But that aspiration doesn't hurt anyone. If I went and burned down my competitors, that would and I'd have committed a heinous crime. As I am not a psychopathic narcissist, it is not how I operate. But people do do such things and they do hope they get away with it. When they are caught, as stupid people usually are, they come up with lame excuses. Sadly friends and family are often taken in.
In recent weeks, I have seen some terrible behaviour from someone I know and who I, until recently, had a lot of respect for. They have got themselves in a very difficult position, all because they didn't simply apologise when their bad behaviour was initially called out. I can't really say any more, but life would be so much more simple and so much less frustrating if people could simply put their hands up and say "Sorry I got that call wrong". In most situations in life, no one is 100% right or wrong. Recognising that in difficult situations, we have handled things badly and so we hold out an olive branch and say " I will accept I got this wrong, lets try and resolve this amicably" is a strength not a weakness.
Many years ago, I worked in IT and I was working on an ATM system for a major bank. There was a problem that was causing the system to crash every week during the peak ATM usage time. We were having fraught meetings. I knew what the issue was, but the manager of the department responsible would not agree. He made a huge issue claiming it was our departments responsibility. I made the statement "well, I am prepared to accept that we have issues on our side, but we need to work together to resolve it". He aggressively replied "Well I do not accept that we have any issues at all, so now you have admitted you own the problem, I expect you to resolve it". I was shocked, my attempt to hold out an olive branch had been totally rebuffed. The issue was costing the organisation millions of pounds and also reputational damage and I realised I'd put myself in the the crosshairs. It was an unpleasant situation. I went back, checked everything and returned to the meeting. I produced the details of the way our end of the connection was set up. Their tech boys, who were good guys took this, then checked their end. They immediately realised that they had made a mistake on the setup, that only impacted at times of peak volume. When it became clear that much time had been lost by the manager denying all responsibility for the problems, he looked extremely stupid.
Given the high profile nature of the situation the overall boss was also present. He suggested that the guy apologise for his stance. He stunned everyone by saying "I have nothing to apologise for, it was his comments claiming they had problems that mislead us all". Within a couple of months, he was managed out of the role. It was a lesson for me, I realised that my stance had gone down well and I was seen to be a team player. Sadly I have seen the same scenario play out many times since. It never ends well.
