In life like in project management, stuff happens. People make mistakes. While some mistakes are stellar and go down in history, what most people remember about a mistake is how it was fixed.

You screwed up: admit it

In the end, the sooner you and your team can admit to screwing up, the faster you will get back on your feet. With a good strategy to correct the mistake and a plan to prevent it happening again, you are ready to get over the problem and move on.

...and get on with your life

When a problem occurs, one should react quickly and take control of the situation. One way to achieve this is to answer the questions below:

• What exactly happened? You should understand the sequence of events. If people are arguing over what happened, you need to come to an agreement before you can get to the next step.
• Why did it happen? This is not about blaming someone of something. It's about the cause. The cause is seldom a person. It's more often a action of decision or a failure to act.
• Could it have been prevented? Did you fail at communicating with your team? Is there anything that could have been done to avoid this problem?
• Could this problem happen again? This question is crucial. If the problem could happen again, you absolutely need to have a plan to prevent it from now on.
• How can you prevent this problem in the future? This is the opportunity for improving processes or creating new ones.
• Are apologies required? If you did something that affected your customers, your teammates or your organization, you should apologize for it. Recognizing a mistake will go a long way in improving your reputation and repairing the damage that was done.
• How do you correct the problem and reverse its consequences? This is the difficult question. Sometimes a mistake cannot be undone. If you annoyed your customers, you may want to give them a discount on their next purchase. If you slighted your teammates, you might want to treat them to a special snack or activity. By doing this, you are replacing the negative feeling you left in people's mind by a positive feeling that may stick longer than the memory of the problem.

The blame game: the best way not to fix the problem

You may have noticed "Who caused the problem?" is not in the list of questions. Finding out who's fault it is often a paralyzing endeavor. It seems, once we've found who made the mistake, everything stops. And often the correction is to avoid this person in the future. This is no productive, constructive way to deal with problems. If you do this with every problem you have, soon you won't have a team to work with. Understanding why the mistake was made will yield much better solutions than pointing the finger.