Mistakes Happen
Today is a shoutout to the wisdom of Grant Fritchey (blog/twitter). Grant didn’t swoop in to solve my problems directly — I’ve never even met the guy in person, so don’t go thinking I’m some internet stalker. I just appreciate his blog and his takes on the relationship between DBAs, devs, IT, and the business. Sharp insights, consistently.
But today it’s not about SQL. It’s about the other half of the job.
With COVID-19 reshuffling workplace priorities like a deck of cards, the IT team has been under pressure to tackle tech and business challenges at pace — without much room to smooth out rough edges. That context matters for what happened next.
This week I lost sight of the bigger picture. My ego took the wheel during a SCRUM call. I ranted about cloud instance access and clunky tooling in a way that landed harder than I intended. Someone flagged that my frustration was coming across as hostility toward the IT team on the call. They were right.
Own It
Taking a page from both Jocko Willink and Grant’s playbook, I decided to own it. I spent 20 minutes writing an apology email — not a corporate non-apology, but a genuine one that acknowledged my part in the dynamic. I chose to apologize for any ego trips, intentional or not, and to actively work on building a better relationship between the IT and Data teams.
This isn’t a story about newfound empathy. It’s a reminder to myself to do better in public and internalize the lesson quickly rather than letting it fester.
How to Own a Mistake Professionally
If you find yourself in a similar spot, here’s what actually works:
- Act fast — the longer you wait, the more the other person has to fill in the silence with their own interpretation.
- Be specific — “I came across as hostile in this morning’s call” lands better than a vague “sorry if I offended anyone.”
- No conditions — don’t append “but here’s why I was frustrated.” That’s an explanation, not an apology.
- Follow through — the apology is just the start. Change the behavior that made it necessary.
Staying humble and approachable beats building walls around unspoken expectations that neither side ever agreed to. That’s the actual lesson.
Key Takeaways
- Owning mistakes quickly costs less than letting them compound into a damaged relationship.
- Frustration with process or tooling is legitimate — hostility toward the people trying to solve it isn’t.
- A 20-minute apology email can undo more damage than weeks of passive frustration would have caused.
- Do better in public. Internalize the lesson privately. Repeat.