Good strategy focuses on improving our positions in the minds of others. Over time, we want to improve the opinions that others have of us. We want to earn their trust. We use excuses because we are trying to save face, that is, make ourselves look better than our performance. Does that work?

Well, let me ask you. Do you like to hear other people’s excuses? I don’t. They all sound to me like the classic, “The dog ate my homework.” But because unexpected things happen, we all fall short in honoring our promises to others. Of course, we also fall short because we screw up. When we screw up, most of us like to blame the things that happened. “The dog ate my homework.”

But is there a good alternative strategy to offering excuses for our messes? Yes, an absolutely brilliant one. I learned this method by observing it in action. Let me tell you a story about a person I knew who continually made mistakes that disappointed people, but who was able, through psychological jujitsu, to impress the people he disappointed by how he dealt with those errors. His failures consistently won him more supporters, not less.

The Dave Method

I should begin this story with a warning. The man from whom I learned this approach, whose first name was Dave, ended up committing suicide in prison, and his fate was not undeserved. The danger of knowing how to come out of screwups smelling like a rose is that your success can tempt you into greater screwups. No one ever gets away with anything in this life. Initial success in small crimes leads to the temptation to attempt greater ones. In the end, Dave’s crimes were among the worst. So use this method with caution.

The time was the late Seventies, after the introduction of small, affordable personal computers. This was the time of the earliest Apples and TRS-80s. Dave was my boss when I first got into computers. He was not a foolish man. He had sales skills and computer knowledge, having worked previously for a traditional computer company. He was either great at hiring or lucky. He hired me, my future wife (we met working for him), and many other talented people who would become part of our software company, which became one of the fastest-growing companies in America. Perhaps it was the time: small computers were new and they attracted many good people. However, he had his flaws. I am only going to discuss the ones we knew about at the time, not the ones that were hidden and eventually led him to prison.

At the time, we sold more of our computers to hobbyists, but our biggest sales were to small businesses. Dave was a good salesperson and an adequate manager, but he tended to overpromise. He overpromised what he could deliver to customers. He overpromised what he could do for employees. I don’t think he meant to mislead people. He was just too optimistic. Optimism is generally a good thing, but overpromising inevitably creates disappointment. Dave would often fall short. Sometimes it was because he expected too much of others, such as how soon new software would be available. Other times, it would be because he screwed up. He was a somewhat sloppy manager and, given all the promises he made, he often lost track of his obligations.

So he had a lot of opportunities to make excuses, but he never offered an excuse. Instead, he perfected the art of apology. He not only accepted blame, he invited it. He turned the standard process of making excuses on its head. He took all the elements of a standard excuse, listing them, but he handled them very differently than most of us. He listed what went wrong. Then, using hindsight, he described what he should have done to prevent it. It didn’t matter who else screwed up or what unexpected events occurred. He focused on what he should have done, whether he could have done it or not.

The Reaction to Dave’s Method

I always say that what we do strategically is not as important as the reaction of others to our moves. Our moves must create a reaction that improves our position in the minds of others. Making up excuses always hurts our position. How did people react to Dave’s apologies?

Dave was so hard on himself, that the person he was apologizing to argued against him. They would often explain why he couldn’t do what he felt he should have done. In other words, they would make excuses for him.

He would refuse those excuses. The best way I can describe his response is to say that he would humble himself. He would praise those who others might have blamed. He would cite his own weaknesses, his over-promising, his poor memory, his sloppy management style, and so on. Instead of hiding his flaws, he would magnify them. He would also magnify the hurt that he had caused others, always making it bigger than the damaged party felt that it was. So much so that the other person would want to argue against him, minimizing the damage he suffered.

Then, Dave would ask for forgiveness. He would promise the aggrieved party, that, if he or she would forgive him, he would do better the next time. Now, logically, such a promise didn’t make sense. His weakness was overpromising, but here he was, offering a new promise after failing to keep an earlier one. Logically, the injured person should have realized that this promise could not be trusted. But we to not decide on logic. We decide based upon emotion.

Emotionally, this method works like magic. The people he was apologizing to would feel that they hadn’t been hurt at all. They would also feel that Dave had done his best and could be trusted again. Dave might go on to fail someone again and again, but his reaction to each failure would make him more likable and trustworthy not less.

Conclusions

If you find yourself making excuses to others, stop it. It doesn’t work. Even if others are to blame, do not blame them. You save your reputation by humbling yourself in the face of failure, not finding excuses. It is not what you do, but how others react. If you provide excuses, others react by thinking of what you should have done instead. If you blame yourself and explain in detail how you could have done better, people react by thinking of excuses for you.

Humility works strategically where pride fails. If you are proud, others want to drag you down. If you are humble, people want to raise you up. This is a very old lesson, but we have failed to learn it. We, humans, are contrary creatures. That is the fun of being alive.

Practical Strategy Based on Sun Tzu's Art of War

Excuses - Part 2 - What Works Better than…