"Someone working on the project didn't check a box that would have set a daily limit on how much we would spend to advertise the new service on Google. This person was on a team that didn't usually use Google's ad product, and we ended up spending an extra $800,000 one month and got very little return."
"I try to teach people at Regal that it's OK to make new mistakes, as long as you don't repeat them, largely because of my past experience making a major one."
"I was responsible for checking the Google account, and I could have looked at the spending every day and figured it out, but I didn't. By the time I noticed, it was too late."
Alex Levin, CEO of Regal, an AI customer experience startup, learned a critical leadership lesson from a significant mistake made during his tenure at Handy. While launching a new service with a $1 million budget under time pressure, a team member failed to set a daily spending limit on a Google Ads campaign, resulting in an $800,000 overspend with minimal return. Levin took responsibility for not monitoring the account daily and immediately disclosed the error to leadership. This experience shaped his management philosophy: he now emphasizes that employees should feel safe making new mistakes without fear of punishment, as long as they don't repeat them. Levin credits his former boss with investing in his education through this costly lesson, and he applies this principle at Regal to encourage calculated risk-taking and innovation.
#leadership-and-management #mistake-recovery #risk-taking-culture #accountability #organizational-learning
Read at Business Insider
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