Invitation to Mistakes

Invite others to inspect your work

Eileen, Finance and Credit Manager for a Portland, OR auto dealership, told session two of the Leadership Development Lab,

"Almost 30 years ago, in addition to my full-time job, I had a part time job working in a bridal salon. I sold wedding dresses, wedding accessories, and invitations. One of my favorite things to do was help customers with their invitations. As you can imagine, no mistakes could be made on these momentous invitations. It was important to check and double check the order. Date, time, names, and spelling had to be perfect.

"During my employment at the bridal salon, I became engaged to be married. Being a bride-to-be and planning a wedding can be an exciting and stressful time. I was really fortunate to have access to all the latest and greatest wedding related items working in the Salon. I was so excited to go to work each day and plan my wedding.

"My fiancé and I decided we wanted to get married right away. I ordered my dress, bridesmaid's dresses, tuxedos, and invitations. The invitations were beautiful. Once they arrived, I couldn't wait to show them to my fiancé! Once he had a chance to see them, he said, 'That's not the date we're getting married.' I was so upset when I saw my unbelievable error. I had inserted the wrong date on our invitation order. Now, we were in a severe time crunch to get the invitations mailed. I had to re-order and pay for them a second time, plus I had to pay an extra fee for our 'rush order.'

"The invitations finally arrived and they were beautiful and perfect. We rushed to get them addressed and in the mail. Because of my date mistake we were now two weeks behind schedule mailing the invitations. There really wasn't anything we could do except to get them in the mail ASAP. With the invitations finally in the mail, we could focus on getting ready for the big day. Two days later the wedding invitations started coming back to us from the post office undelivered! You see, the invitations were slightly larger than standard size and required extra postage. Ugh!

"The good news is, we were married in a beautiful ceremony and everyone we wanted to attend was present. Twenty-nine years later my husband and I are still happily married.

"The lesson I learned is, just because I am an expert at something, I should never be too proud to ask for a second set of eyes to look over my work. If I had asked my fiancé to look at the invitations before they were printed, a lot of costs and embarrassment could have been avoided.

"The action I call you to take is never be too proud or in too big a hurry to ask for another person's opinion (Leadership Principle #8 Validate their ideas).

"The benefit you will gain is saved time, saved money, and saved face."