Hi Mark, Raven here. It's been a while.
I'm gonna try to do more lean blog audio episodes here.
This is number three, nineteen. It's a blog post that I
published recently, June 28th 2022.
It's titled, isn't it? Ironic mistakes that interrupted
my webinar about mistakes. So you can read the post, you
can find links to the webinar the video of it and more by
going to lean blog dot org, slash audio.
So a contractor unplugged, my Wi-Fi router or was there more
to it than that, you know, instead of blaming somebody
else, what mistakes did I make that led to the Q&A section of
my webinar being knocked off line?
You know, recently I presented a webinar that was part of the
connexxus continuous Improvement, webinar series.
It was focused on the lessons and themes from my podcast.
My favorite mistake, I hope you'll check that out wherever
you listening to this podcast. Do a search.
Search for my favorite mistake podcast and I hope you enjoy it.
So that webinar was titled. My favorite mistake, your
favorite mistake learning from mistakes as individuals, and
organizations. And about 50 minutes in is I was
answering the first question. I disappeared from the screens
of the audience leaving dead air and unfortunately, leaving our
host for the session Morgan, right from Connexus.
She was left to try to pick up the pieces in the wrap things
up. I felt really bad for And and it
turned out, it wasn't one of those.
Momentary things resume cut out. In reconnected immediately, my
internet was down long enough that the session was essentially
over. So, as I tacked on a message to
the end of the webinar recording, you know, that says
I'm going to do a separate queue a recording from the audience
questions, it will share with attendees in those who
registered. Again, you can you can watch the
webinar for what it was online. You can find it on the connexxus
you Tube channel or again go to lean blog dot org, slash audio
319. So what I feared.
So what went wrong? Ironically enough in webinar
about making mistakes. Well, first off, I want to share
a few of the key points that I had shared in the webinar one.
We all make mistakes to how we react to mistakes.
Either mistakes that we make our mistakes of others.
Make that matters a lot, you know, try to show some Grace
what matters is learning from our mistakes.
Diggs and reflecting on what happened and what we would do
differently next time can lead to Improvement and growth.
So, as I mentioned, at the end of the webinar, before the Q&A,
I had some trepidation about doing a webinar on not just on
this topic. But at any webinar here at, what
was the end of June? Why was that my wife?
And I are still in the process and it's a process of
relocating, most of the way across the United States because
of her new New job and I've been pretty fully consumed the past
two weeks by managing that move the first week of getting packed
up and moved out of our old place.
The second week was dominated by the movers then arriving at the
new place, a number of different deliveries and contractors who
were in our home at the new location that help us make small
improvements and to start settling in.
So, like I said, in the session, I was worried.
I almost had a premonition that there would be some distraction
that was likely to happen on June 27th.
I just didn't know what it would be and because of that, I almost
thought. Well no, let's let's just let's
wait, let's find, let's work harder to find another
presenter. So of those distractions
distraction number one, so that day before the webinar, I had
some painters back at our place to finish up a few touch-ups and
punch list items. No big deal.
They weren't going to be done by 12:45 Eastern when Morgan and I
would have to get on the webinar platform in advance of starting,
but the painters were prepared to wrap up and let themselves
out soon after so that would be fine.
So about 10 minutes into the webinar as I'm presenting, I
heard the doorbell and then Heard a knock on the door and I
thought, oh no, you know, I thought maybe the painters had
left something important behind like a phone or a wallet.
So I thought I had no choice. I mean, actually, I did have a
choice. I made the choice to excuse
myself, to go quickly. Open the door, interrupting the
webinar briefly. When I open the door and learned
it was not the painters coming back, it was actually someone
else. It was the guy who had been
there the week before to hang TVs on the walls and a few rooms
and and he was back to finish a few things up.
No, I knew he was going to be coming back and I had even asked
his boss if Monday would be okay.
But he he showed up unannounced and I certainly wasn't expecting
that. So, one mistake I made I didn't
say in advance. Please come Monday except for
the time between 12:45 and 2 p.m.
So I let a man, I told him I was in the middle of a meeting, but
he could come in, you had his teenage son who Working with
them over the summer. They could do what they needed
to do. Since this was all going to be
in other rooms, it was going to be quiet to his credit.
This guy. Chris had tried calling and
texting me to say basically hey I'm here but my iPhone and my
MacBook Pro were both in Do Not Disturb mode so that prevented
the mistake of being interrupted but that led to the mistake of
me not seeing his texture his call which then when he knocked
and rang the doorbell. So you know I saw another
mistake I think he Made a mistake though and not checking
in to see that I would be home or available.
I mean had I seen a text? There would have been a
momentary distraction but maybe I could have just texted back.
Please come back at 2:05 p.m. That's that's something I
probably should have done. Distraction number two.
So maybe 20 minutes later webinar, still going Chris
thought he had the he thought that he had to finish up some
work on the TV, that's on the wall in my office.
I mean, that TV actually required no follow-up work.
So there's a mistake here. His mistake was to just barge
in. I don't think, I don't remember,
I don't think he even knocked. I had to turn around distracted
again to wave him off. So he's basically saying, get
out another mistake, though. I was in advance, I wasn't
Crystal. Here with Chris's boss about
which TVs required the final follow-up work.
I mean, that wouldn't have been necessary for me to communicate
in advance. If Chris had come at a time,
that was actually good for me. Another mistake.
My mistake might have been not telling him when I let him in to
say something longer and more more specific.
I could have said, hey I'm presenting a webinar right now
which means I can't be interrupted.
By the way, the TV in that office.
That's fine. Please just work on the other
rooms. But when I first saw them in, I
was in a rush to get back to the webinar, it might have been
better. If I had taken 30 seconds longer
to explain the situation more fully, So what happened with the
Q&A? We got to the Q&A portion of the
webinar Morgan. Had just asked me the first
question from the audience and I was answering that question.
I could tell there was an internet problem.
Is, I could see Morgan's video, just it just froze.
Now, I didn't know, right away. If the problem was hurrying or
never mind, so I kept talking and about a minute later, I
could tell that Zoom had disconnected me from the webinar
and again this wasn't just momentary I gave up and I
realized again Even our was just over.
I mean, I could do some Q&A. In a future separate recording.
We can send that out to people. So, I left the office to go,
talk to Chris, and the check on his work.
Finalizing. The TV is now I was doing my
best. I was doing my best to stay,
calm, and to show some Grace, with him.
As I had literally just been talking about in the webinar.
There's a slide. And there were some stories in
there actually, about previous Connexus webinars.
The slide literally says lesson show Grace, Mistakes are made.
There's an opportunity for me to practice this so I did try to
explain to Chris as calmly as I could like that.
It wasn't ideal that he just showed up without advance.
Notice I appreciated that he was they're following up on these
final details but the timing was really, really bad.
Now, he was very apologetic for that and for coming into my
office without asking, he kept apologizing, he didn't mean to
interrupt my webinar. That was an important thing to
keep in mind. I saw, you know, as we were
talking, he was continuing to work on the cabling.
The wiring for my living room TV, including their DirecTV
receiver. I saw he was working near my
internet Wi-Fi router and I blurted out.
Oh no, did you unplug my router? So there's a mistake.
That's why my internet went down, that's why the webinar was
ended early, it wasn't an outage or a glitch with the internet
provider. Chris had indeed unplugged the
router. So, thinking back again, to the
lessons that I talked about. In terms of learning from
mistakes one, he didn't intentionally kill my internet
to. He wasn't trying to interrupt
the webinar and three, he didn't know from first glance that the
device Was a Wi-Fi router I mean you know.
So there's a picture in the blog post at lean blog dot org, slash
audio 319. You know, it's a round circular
thing with a bit of a thin on top.
It's designed to not look like an ugly typical function first
router. Now, he probably should have
noticed that there was an ethernet cable.
Going into it but you know, that's that's not his specialty.
So I mean, at that point in a very quickly, got to the point
where I could really only chuckle it, you know, about the
irony of a mistake, a series of mistakes, interrupting my
webinar about mistakes. So again, when he realized this,
Chris felt horrible, About unplugging the web, the the
internet. So again, that's one of the
points that I made in the webinar.
People feel bad enough when they realize they've made a mistake.
So what's the point of me getting upset or piling on or
yelling? I mean, it would have been a
mistake for me to get mad or to be disrespectful to Chris.
I'm quite certain that Chris will learn from these mistakes,
you know, I hope I do too. I hope Chris is boss, learns
from the feedback. I gave him.
So I bet he won't repeat these mistakes if he learns from them,
you know, life goes on the better onward and upward with
all of this but you know I was reminded and this is actually
something I shared in the webinar, my podcast, guest a
friend of mine, from San Antonio, Lenny walls, he's a
retired NFL cornerback. He said this as a player,
especially on defense in professional football, he said
we were taught to have Short-term memory.
It taught me a lot about bouncing back from failures and
then I love this. He said failures are Stepping
Stones toward women. That's brilliant.
Something to remember. So, to wrap up here, what will I
do differently in the future and the spirit of improvement and
with the aim of not repeating mistakes, what should I do?
What will I do differently? You know, it's very likely that
my wife and I will be moving again for her career.
I should listen to my gut and this is probably generally true,
listen to my gut and not take on something like this.
When there's the risk of distraction or interruption or
just being mentally. Loaded.
I've been saying, thanks. No, thanks to quite a few offers
and requests recently. I probably shouldn't have signed
up for this webinar at this time now.
I mean, again, I signed myself up for it so quite possibly my
mistake. The next time we move, I should
probably just block off a whole month, as a no new commitments
Zone and hold myself to it. I'll try not to feel pressured.
And again this is just pressure, I place on myself, I won't feel
pressured to have a chi Nexus webinar each and every month
just because that's been the habit and the history of it, if
it doesn't work out one month. So be it.
You know, I stepped up as stepped in to offer to give this
talk because my attempts at following up with some other
potential presenters, it didn't pan out, you know, they had
they'd agreed conceptually in general that, they would do a
webinar, but it's tough sometimes.
In the summer time again, maybe others are better at saying no
to things and I am if I'm faced with a distraction during a
webinar. Going forward, I should really
just do my best to ignore it. I shouldn't have gone and opened
the door even if it had been one of the painters who had left,
let's say their phone or wallet behind.
They could have waited till 2 p.m. since leaving something
behind would have been their mistake.
I didn't need to turn it into mistakes of my own to compound
that, I mean I think Even though I meant well, and I was trying
to think of others and their needs, I probably should have
been more selfish but maybe doing so for the benefit of that
webinar audience so I will keep reflecting about this.
I invite you to go check out the webinar.
It's relatively new talk it's a presentation I gave in person at
the connexxus user conference back in May you can find all of
that. Again by going to lean blog dot
org, slash audio 319 or you can look for the look for a link.
Link in the show notes wherever you're listening to this
podcast?