Working with a new client, I sent their group of managers a survey through Google Forms. Google makes it easy, after all. The trouble is I have roughly 1.3 million Google accounts, each for one thing or another. Despite my thinking I checked and double-checked from which account I was sending the form, I didn’t use my thom-at-discoversendline-dot-com. A few days later, I got an email from one of them telling me they had found it in their spam folder. Oops.
This made me think: why don’t I just build a form on my website? Why, in other words, don’t I do something better?
Boom. Done. But only because I screwed up. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have asked that question. Making mistakes, duh, are what push me to not make them again. To be better.
As a manager, this was one of the toughest things I had to learn. To let those who called me their boss screw up. It’s the same with my kids. The lesson Google taught me this week was a good reminder of why.
