Shit happens at work, but what matters most is how well you handle situations that go horribly wrong. Work Mom shares her step-by-step approach for effectively addressing and solving workplace mishaps. Themes discussed in this episode Get the facts straight first (without emotion) Throw yourself at their mercy How one store failed to problem-solve and lost a customer in the process Collaboration is key when problem-solving Conduct a post-mortem Episode Highlights Timestamped inflection points from the show 1:00: Facts ONLY: First, do a factual audit of what happened, and calmly get all the facts without blaming anyone or being overly dramatic. During this stage, you’ll also identify the right person to manage the situation, whether that’s you, your boss, or a coworker. 2:00: Honestly is always the best policy: Once you have all the facts, admit what happened to the impacted party as soon as possible. Express your regret and move to a solution mindset. 4:00: Making good: Whenever you mess up, always work with the impacted party to figure out how to make it right. 5:30: Post-mortem: Once the situation has been resolved and everyone is calm, get the group together and go over what happened. Ask what happened, how we solved it, what we can do in the future to avoid a repeat, etc. Top Quotes 2:00:  In my experience, the best possible thing you can do is throw yourself at someone’s mercy. Own up to what happened as soon as you possibly can. Tell the truth in all of its gory detail.  4:30: You have to come up with a way to make good. When you mess something up, it’s best to work with the person on the receiving end of that problem, the one that was impacted, and work together to figure out what to do to fix it.  5:40: It will serve you on a personal level to follow those steps. It will serve you on a business level to follow those steps. You can be the leader in solving problems by being an honest, authentic, open, and apologetic person.  6:00: So when something really horrible happens, tell yourself right away, well, here’s my opportunity to practice how to handle difficult situations because you will experience many difficult situations in your career.  6:30: You go at it with a collaborative approach. armed with your intention to solve the problem and to prevent it from happening again, and you will be better off. Resources mentioned in this episode Connect with me on LinkedIn. Order my book! Transcript 00:00Hello, everyone. I’m Lori Jo Vest. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of Work Mom Says, Don’t Be an Idiot. Today, we are going to talk about what to do when things go horribly wrong, and they will. They may go horribly wrong in the context of you making a horrible mistake and having to own up to it and figure out how to solve it. They may go wrong in the context of one of your coworkers doing something that they made a big mistake and you’re the one that gets to deal with it with the customer. A delivery that was supposed to get to the company didn’t make it on time. Something got broken, somebody, you know, something got broadcast that maybe was inappropriate. Basically, shit happens, and you may get stuck in the firestorm of that shit. It happens at the office. It will happen to you. It happens to everybody. So accept that. And if it hasn’t happened to you yet, it will. So go ahead and accept the fact that it will happen and get to solving it. 01:00So when something goes horribly wrong, one of the first things I advise people to do is to take a serious review of what the current situation is with no emotions. What are the facts? What happened? And in a work environment, sometimes there are cultures where people like to blame each other. We don’t blame. What you want to do is you want to figure out what happened and maybe why. But quickly, whe