The Slow Fix: Solve Problems, Work Smarter and Live Better in a Fast World. Carl Honore

issued a full-blown mea culpa. In documentary-style television commercials, Patrick Doyle, the company’s CEO, admitted the chain had lost its way in the kitchen and promised to deliver better pizzas in the future. Domino’s then went back to the drawing board, giving its pies a complete makeover with new dough, sauce and cheese.

      Its Pizza Turnaround campaign worked a treat. Year-on-year sales surged 14.3 per cent, the biggest jump in the history of the fast-food industry. Two years after the apology the company’s stock price was up 233 per cent. Of course, the new pizza recipes helped, but the starting-point was Domino’s doing what RAF air crews and Exxon employees are now expected to do as a matter of course: acknowledging the error of its ways. This allowed the firm to learn exactly where it was going wrong so it could fix it. It also cleared the air. These days, so many companies trumpet ‘new and improved’ products that the net effect is a whirlwind of white noise that leaves consumers cold. The very act of owning up to its mistakes allowed Domino’s to cut through the din and reboot its relationship with customers.

      PR experts agree that the best way for a company to handle a mistake is to apologise and explain what it will do to put things right. This accords with my own experience. The other day a payment into my bank account went astray. After 20 minutes of evasion from the call centre, my voice began to rise as my blood reached boiling point. And then a manager came on the line and said: ‘Mr Honoré, I’m very sorry. We made a mistake with this payment.’ As she explained how the money would be retrieved, my fury drained away and we ended up bantering about the weather and our summer holidays.

      Public apologies can have a similarly soothing effect. When a customer filmed a FedEx driver tossing a package containing a computer monitor over a six-foot fence in the run-up to Christmas 2011, the video went viral and threatened to annihilate sales during the busiest time of year. Rather than stonewall, though, the company apologised right away. In a blog post entitled ‘Absolutely, Positively Unacceptable’, FedEx’s senior vice-president for US operations announced he was ‘upset, embarrassed, and very sorry’ for the episode. The company also gave the customer a new monitor and disciplined the driver. As a result, FedEx weathered the storm.

      Even when we squander other people’s money, owning up in order to learn from the error is often the best policy. In 2011, Engineers Without Borders (EWB) Canada set up a website called AdmittingFailure.com, where aid workers can post their mistakes as cautionary tales. ‘Opening up like that is completely the opposite of the norm in the sector, so it was a huge risk,’ says Ashley Good, Venture Leader at EWB. But it paid off. No longer afraid of being pilloried for messing up, EWB staff became more willing to take the sort of risks that are often the stepping stone to creative breakthroughs. ‘People now feel they have the freedom to experiment, push themselves, take chances because they know they won’t be blamed if they don’t get it right on the first try,’ says Good. ‘And when you push boundaries like that, you get more creative solutions to problems.’ One example: after much trial and error, EWB has devised a system that improves water and sanitation services in Malawi by mobilising district governments, the private sector and communities all at the same time. Workers from across the development sector now post their own stories on AdmittingFailure.com. EWB’s donors love the new regime, too. Instead of dashing for the exit, they welcomed the eagerness to learn from mistakes. Says Good: ‘We’ve found that being open and honest actually builds a stronger bond and higher trust with our donors.’

      The same holds true in personal relationships. A first step towards rebuilding bridges after falling out with a partner, friend, parent or child is for all parties to take their share of the blame. Admitting mistakes can ease the guilt and shame gnawing at the wrongdoer and help the victim overcome the anger that often stands in the way of forgiveness. Marianne Bertrand sees the magic of the mea culpa every week in her job as a family therapist in Paris. ‘Many people sit in my office and cannot even begin to address their problems because they are stuck in the rage and resentment for what went wrong,’ she says. ‘But when they finally accept and apologise sincerely for their mistakes, and hear the other person doing the same, you can really feel the atmosphere in the room change, the tension subside, and then we can start working on reconciliation.’

      Even doctors are warming to the mea culpa. Study after study shows that what many patients want after being the victim of a medical mistake is not a lump sum payment or the physician’s head on a plate. What they really crave is what FedEx delivered in the wake of that package-tossing incident: a sincere apology, a full explanation of how the error occurred and a clear plan to ensure the same thing will not happen again. Among patients who file a suit for medical malpractice in the United States, nearly 40 per cent say they might not have done so had the attending physician explained and apologised for the mishap. The trouble is, many in the medical profession are too proud or too scared to say sorry.

      Those that do so reap the benefits. In the late 1980s the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Lexington, Kentucky became the first hospital in the United States to tap the power of the mea culpa. It informs patients and their families when any member of staff makes a mistake that causes harm, even if the victims are unaware of the error. If the attending physician is found to be at fault, he or she must deliver a clear, compassionate apology to the patient. The hospital also explains the steps it will take to ensure that the error does not happen again, and may offer some form of restitution. But the cornerstone of the new regime is the simple act of saying sorry. This scores well with patients and their families. ‘We believe we spend much less time and money on malpractice lawsuits these days as a result,’ says Joseph Pellecchia, the hospital’s Chief of Staff.

      Apologising also helps deliver better healthcare. When medical workers can deal openly with the emotional fallout that comes from making a mistake, they are less stressed and more able to learn from their errors. ‘Physicians are not gods, they are human beings, and that means they make mistakes,’ says Pellecchia. ‘There’s been an incredible change here where we’ve gone from a punitive environment to a learning environment where a physician can ask, “What happened here?” “What went wrong?” “Was it a systems problem?” “Was it me?” – and learn from their mistakes to deliver better care.’ Other hospitals around the world have followed suit. In the same vein, state and provincial governments across the US and Canada have enacted what are known as ‘sorry laws’, which bar litigants from using a physician’s apology as proof of guilt. Everywhere the net effect is the same: happier doctors, happier patients and less litigation.

      The truth is that any Slow Fix worthy of the name usually starts with a mea culpa. Whether at work or in relationships, most of us tend to drift along pretending that all is well – remember the status-quo bias and the legacy problem. Admitting there is a problem, and accepting our share of the blame, can jolt us out of that rut. In the Twelve-Step Programme invented by Alcoholic Anonymous and now used in the battle against many other addictions, Step 1 is to admit you have lost control of your own behaviour. ‘Hello, my name is Carl, and I am addicted to the quick fix.’

      To overcome our natural aversion to admitting mistakes, especially in the workplace, removing the stick of punishment is often just the first step. It also helps to dangle a carrot to encourage or even reward us for owning up. Remember the Employee of the Quarter accolade bestowed on that young engineer at ExxonMobil. As well as Flight Safety Awards, the RAF pays a cash bonus to anyone who highlights an error that later saves the Air Force money. In the aid world, organisations can win Brilliant Failure Awards for sharing mistakes made in development projects. At SurePayroll, an online payroll company, staff nominate themselves for a Best New Mistakes competition. At a light-hearted annual meeting, they listen to tales of colleagues messing up and what everyone can learn from their blunders. Those who own up to the most useful mistakes win a cash prize.

      Even in education, where botching a single question on an exam paper can torpedo your chances of attending a top-tier university, moves are afoot to reward students for embracing mistakes. Worried that its high-achieving pupils had lost their appetite for taking intellectual risks, a top London girls’ school held a Failure Week in 2012. With the help of teachers and parents, and through assemblies, tutorials and other activities, students at Wimbledon High explored the benefits of being wrong. ‘Successful people learn from failure, pick themselves up and move