Recently, the stars have been unaligned for me in a number of situations. In today’s business pressure cooker, no one… not me, not anyone wants to be assigned blame or be responsible for failure.

When things go sideways, I have been employing a new strategy: SLOW DOWN AND THINK! Under unnecessary urgency, tempers tend to flare, people don’t think clearly before speaking, and people hit the reply-button way too quickly. Circumstances are never simple when one looks at them from multiple points of view.

Friday morning, I was having an animated phone call with a good friend who was raging mad at me. The phone call was like a high-power tennis match with neither player winning a point. Then, my friend had to take a VIP phone call. We agreed to continue the discussion later. We haven’t had that second conversation just yet (as of the time of writing this post).

In the couple of hours since the call, I had some time to mull over the situation, and decided that I and one other person were both to blame, equally, for a ‘mistake of omission.’ It wasn’t a communication problem. It was a non-communication problem. A failure to double check something simple.

Put another way, we both ASSUMED. Who got hurt? The client.

I crafted a letter taking this middle view and owning my equal share of the problem. Hopefully, my friend and former client will agree with me and be forgiving. Maybe not. And that would be a shame.

The situation reminded me of a great philosophical line from the moving, Rising Sun, delivered by Sean Connery’s character.

John Connor: The Japanese have a saying, “Fix the problem, not the blame.” Find out what’s f**ked up and fix it. Nobody gets blamed. We’re always after who fucked up. Their way is better.

Relationships are important. Wish me luck on this one.

Andy Ebon
The Wedding Marketing Authority

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