Brainstorms

Get Your Staff Competing to be the Biggest Screw-Up

Reward confessions (and the lessons learned) with a stuffed toy.

Published

2 years ago

May 24, 2021

INSTORE Staff Instore June 2021 Issue

To make the most of your staff’s screw-ups, reward them — ideally with a goofy prize like a stuffed monkey, says Kim Scott, a former top Google executive, in her book Radical Candor: Be A Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity. Bring the monkey to an all-store meeting and tell the group that whoever confesses to the biggest screw-up in the previous month or week or whenever wins the prize. On top of a stuffed toy, “they get instant forgiveness and — this is most important — they get to teach everyone how not to screw up,” says Scott, adding that before long, you’ll have people competing to tell of their biggest mistakes. “It totally changes the tenor of the meeting — admitting failure becomes safe to do, and it is a surprisingly effective way to foster a cultivation of innovation,” she says.

Time to Do What You've Always Wanted? Time to Call Wilkerson.

It was time. Teri Allen and her brother, Nick Pavlich, Jr., had been at the helm of Dearborn Jewelers of Plymouth in Plymouth, Mich., for decades. Their father, Nick Pavlich, Sr., had founded the store in 1950, but after so many wonderful years helping families around Michigan celebrate their most important moments, it was time to get some “moments” of their own. Teri says Wilkerson was the logical choice to run their retirement sale. “They’re the only company that specializes in closing jewelry stores,” she says. During the sale, Teri says a highlight was seeing so many generations of customers who wanted to buy “that one last piece of jewelry from us.” Would she recommend Wilkerson? Absolutely. “There is no way that I would have been able to do this by myself.”