Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody expects of you. Never excuse yourself. ~Henry Ward Beecher
Have you ever worked on a project with a group of people, and one of them drops the ball and makes you look bad even though you did everything that was expected of you? Recently there have been some difficulties at Perfomancing Ads because of the negligence of one person. Articles are being written calling the program a scam because payments are somewhat delayed, and attacking the whole group of people who participated in the launch of the service, including me because I did the design, though I haven’t been involved with the project since the design was complete several months ago.
Performancing Ads is a great concept and there has been a hitch in the startup because one person hasn’t followed through with their responsibilities. Does that make it a scam? Of course not. I know all the people involved in the project and they are some of the best people I’ve ever worked with. Even the “ball dropper” was pretty good to work with. Performancing is taking measures to get the situation rectified and I’m confident payments will be sent as soon as possible and in fact, I believe at this point, payments have gone out.
What’s my point?
I’m not writing this post because I’m concerned about my reputation. Anyone who knows me and has worked with me knows that when I say I’m going to do something, I do it, and that I’ll go above and beyond to make sure those I do business with are completely satisfied and happy with the results. My main thoughts about this are that working in an online environment poses some very difficult challenges. When people are hired to work on a project, it is far too easy for them to flake out and leave others holding the bag. The relative anonymity of the online world means that people end up doing things that they would likely not do if they were working a regular day job and had to face people in the office every day.
Just a minute, let me step up onto my soapbox
If you say you’re going to do something, just do it. If you break it, fix it. If you screw up, make it right.
We all fall short of this at times in whatever business we’re in- I’ve certainly done my fair share, but you always have to keep in mind that when you drop the ball you’re not the only person it affects. Through your negligence you can damage someone else’s reputation and that’s much worse than damaging your own.
