The Phone Call That Taught Me to Respond, Not React

In this series, professionals reflect on their inevitable career mistakes. Follow the stories here and write your own (please include #BestMistake in your post).

My best mistake was both a specific incident, and an awakening. The incident I detail, so that others can learn from it. The awakening I share because I learned from it.

My awakening was realizing that you seldom actually make any real mistakes in life. Most mistakes are opportunities to actually learn something, to become stronger, better, wiser. To grow as a person. Rainbows, after storms.

When you are a leader, you are a decision maker. When you are a decision maker, you will find that some of your decisions didn't work out so well. And in time, you learn — that’s OK.

Life is 10 percent what life does to you, and 90 percent how you choose to respond to it. What’s your response to life going to be?

As a leader, you are by definition a decision maker. Your job is to make decisions, and simple math says you will have some crappy ones. It is how you respond to decisions made — by you and by others for you — that will define almost everything else in your life.

My best advice — learn to respond, not react. A response may be thoughtful, but a reaction will be emotional.

Let me share with you an example of one of my most critical leadership responses when I felt like reacting.

My Best Mistake

I remember precisely where I was when I received the call. It was a Friday night late in 2013, around 7 p.m., and I was turning onto the street of my home when "the call" came in. The call was not good. One of those reality-bending, life altering moments professionally.

One of my biggest financial backers at the time for Operation HOPE, the organization I founded, was pulling out of a decade-plus long, otherwise very successful partnership. This partnership had achieved their previously stated objectives, and supported two of our East Coast HOPE Financial Centers.

At $2 million a year, this was a big deal, and the decision that my partner made was effective immediately. But what hit me instantly was not anger, nor the terror of what happens next, nor what do I do now, or even the "loss" of a substantial financial backer. I was not overtaken by my own fears. I knew who I was. I just had to make sure we knew what we were doing. That our business plan was strong and continually relevant.

"Fear is nothing but a punk. Look right through it, and find your lesson."

Lucky for me, I was clearheaded enough to see through my fear of the moment, and to recognize the mistake that got me here. Instantly I realized that I had designed, developed and allowed to flourish — a failed business plan. What once worked wasn't working anymore. And as a result, while I had to solve the immediate problem, I also realized that a bad decision made by someone else, actually helped me to make a good decision for myself; and ultimately the future of the organization I was leading.

 

“The wrong decision is the right one that didn’t work…"

My Second Decision

I realized my Best Mistake on that fateful Friday evening, and even more so over what became a "working weekend." Even as my senior team freaked out a bit, they ultimately became calm and centered on the future — because their leader was calm, centered, and focused on the future. I acknowledged the screw-up to them. I claimed it, I took responsibility, and then said what everyone needed to hear now: We needed to focus on turning the corner.

And what came next was extraordinary, as it caused us to do an organization-wide audit of what was actually working, and what was not.

And then we found our real answer was sitting right underneath our noses. It was a HOPE Inside location, operating within and in active partnership with a Bank of the West branch in Oakland, California.

The new model was perfect. In the new model, we didn’t pay leases, rents, taxes, utilities nor janitorial services. The new model allowed my team to focus on executing on our work, as a non-profit intellectual property rights and software company, not managing real estate.

The new model is now part of Operation HOPE’s Project 5117, and we announced 100 new Operation HOPE locations nationwide in 2014 alone! One hundred completely self-sustainable locations.

In 2015, we have commitments and pledges for 100+ additional locations. But here is the most rewarding thing coming from my Best Mistake. Last week we received a letter from Charity Navigator, the nation’s premier nonprofit watchdog organization, recognized Operation HOPE as a four-star organization for accountability and transparency, or basically best-in-class organization for the nation. Four stars is the top designation for a public, non-profit organization.

All of this, after my Best Mistake.

The Lesson

The lesson here is there is no perfect, at least on this earth, and we should never allow the "perfect to be the death of the good." It is always best to do something now — upgrading your human software later on as you learn and know better, so you can do better — than to wait for the perfect, and thus doing nothing.

Or to quote the LinkedIn founder, “If you are not slightly embarrassed by your 1.0 software release, you released too late."

Hank Aaron not only had the record for the most home runs, but the most strike outs too. You will miss 100 percent of the shots you do not take.

Do something. Stay flexible. Don’t beat up on yourself. Recognize that fear is a punk. But most of all keep it moving. It is hard to hit a moving target.

Success is its own image remodeling program. You will mess up. Just remember to get up.

Let's go.

John Hope Bryant, Influencer