I'm old now. Almost ooooooold but certainly getting on a bit.
Delivering some training last week I went through a few "and there was THIS time..." stories. But stories always go down well and stick in peoples minds.
Anyway, it got me thinking. "What was your biggest f*** up?"
Mine was the situation around releasing something which had low risk but it undermined me. We had some known contamination, I convinced myself based on facts and data that there was no food safety risk. I still agree with that assessment now. There was a small risk of 1-2 complaints (which we never received) but they would not have been harmful.
But we knew the product had been contaminated and we knew we'd had an issue.
It was one of those situations as well where there had been about 10 previous mistakes which then put me in that situation of not being able to make a decision which would be seen as ethical even if I thought it was. I can't go into detail here but some of those mistakes were from my team, the same team members who were then (under the radar) critical that I'd let it go.
I fronted into the criticism and what's funny is while I'm long gone, one of the team members who was most frustrated (and had made a mistake himself that led to the situation) has apparently now been promoted so I often wonder how he now deals with these grey area situations.
But what I'd do if I went back is not make a different decision but communicate it better and force the team into a very quick and robust RCA with me leading it (I'd asked for it but it was half arsed what came back). Then I'd get everyone to front up into their part of the whole sh** show.
It still rankles now that they pushed all that onto me. But it rankles me more that I accepted it. I suppose I knew in the moment it was an 80/20 call which I thought was defensible but their doubt poked at the 20% of doubt in me. But that's what you get paid for at senior level right? We've all had to make those calls sometimes.
25 years in the food industry though and I'm surprised that sticks in my craw so much. Especially when I've lived through public recalls, micro incidents, food defence issues etc.
So what's your moment? Relax on Dr GMO's therapy couch and get it off your chest....
