The Art of Buggering Stuff Up
I recently had the chance to speak at The Big Breakfast, hosted by Andy Butler and ABC consulting. The room was packed and I had been asked to talk to the room of assembled experts from my field about something I was an expert in, so I chose to explore the delicate art of buggering things up.
I chose to lead with a story of one of my most high-profile failures and how the people around me supported me:
It was 2014, and I found myself in a rather precarious situation. I’d been given the chance to design and build the fit-out of a very high-profile project. With only eight weeks to complete the job and a major international event on the day of completion, the stakes felt high.
In my wisdom—or perhaps lack thereof, I’d opted for metal-coloured plastic trims instead of real metal ones. A sensible decision given the time and budget constraints, or so I thought. But at 5am on event day, I received a call that still makes me wince. Over 70% of the trims had peeled off overnight and they were now scattered across the freshly waxed floor.
Has your world ever felt like it was imploding? That sinking feeling when you realise you've buggered something up so spectacularly that your job, reputation, and the standing of your employer now seem to hang in the balance?
As I sat, broken and embarrassed, a senior colleague turned to me and said, "You reckon that's bad?" He proceeded to tell me about fitting out a superyacht for a particularly unforgiving client. As he was smoothing the duvet in the master cabin, he leaned back onto a switch that opened the skylight. Perched on the glass were two pots of deck paint, which promptly plopped in, splattering the entire state room with waterproof white paint. He chuckled and explained how he fixed it with panic, prayers & baby wipes! It was exactly what I needed to hear.
The thing about failure is that it's relentlessly democratic. It happens to all of us, regardless of experience, intelligence, or preparation. In the world of high-end craft and luxury design, we often present a polished appearance, but behind every stunning project lies a tapestry of mistakes, corrections, and lessons learned. If fact its only really possible to push the boundaries by having a clear understanding of where they are.
Here's a sobering thought: if you're trying to secure new business and it takes four iterations to get a quote signed off, 75% of your work goes in the bin!. If you only win one in four of those projects, a staggering 94% of your work never sees the light of day. We need to get comfortable operating in a way where errors are a part of success. All of a sudden, it's how we choose to react to those failures that can define professional excellence. Don't sit there blaming everyone else, just dig in and focus on solutions.
At one of the previous companies I worked for, we instituted something rather unconventional called "F*** Up Friday"—a brief session each week where we'd gather to discuss things that had gone wrong in a light-hearted way. The intended consequences were bonding the team, sharing knowledge, group problem-solving, and identifying issues early enough to address them properly.
But something unexpected happened. Our junior team members began taking more risks. They assumed more accountability and showed greater initiative. Why? Because they recognised we had cultivated a culture that wouldn't punish people for mistakes but would celebrate the learning that came from them.
We effectively redefined the principle of seniority as being the people who had learnt more lessons along the way. Rather than focusing on the error or finding who was to blame, this approach fostered innovation and responsibility.
Networking events are often the worst! They tend to follow a predictable pattern: people wander about, casually mentioning their latest success or brilliant market position. It becomes an exercise in curated perfection. But sometimes, what you desperately need isn't another success story—it's someone to sit beside you and share their most catastrophic and, I hope, entertaining disasters.
Here's my request: share your stories of the most ridiculous and entertaining screw-ups you've experienced. Other readers may learn something or simply benefit from realising we are all human! In a world obsessed with curated success, perhaps the most valuable contribution we can make is to occasionally pull back the curtain and reveal the messy, imperfect reality of getting things wrong—and then try getting them right again.
As for my disaster project? We got it fixed with minutes to spare before the big event, and the help of an amazing and selfless team who were happy to give up their free time to support me. For which I am still grateful!
A massive thank-you to Andy Butler, ABC Consulting, and the room of excellent professionals who patiently listened to my presentation. Andy and his team are so good at assembling like-minded people to share and learn from one another’s experiences, and hopefully find ways of doing business together. Ironically, the audio was a little patchy, and we even got a few learning points from a presentation about getting things wrong.
linkedin.com/in/andy-butler-a6728214b
Thanks to Adam Simcox at Incubatorfilms.org for the great shots, too.