Sometimes your biggest leadership lessons come from your own mistakes.
“We’ve already sent the staff home.”
Seven words that taught me more about leadership than fixing the machine ever could.
Early in one of my first leadership roles, I started an afternoon shift with an ongoing vacuum problem on a production line.
The diagnosis handed over to me was that the vacuum pump and blocks needed refurbishing.
Estimated downtime?
Several hours.
Twenty minutes after the morning shift left, the phone rang.
“We’re still having vacuum issues on Line 1.”
Wanting to get ahead of it, I went straight to the Production Manager.
“I need the line down. It’ll be a few hours.”
The line was handed over to engineering and, because it was mainly staffed by agency workers, the team was sent home.
My engineers gathered their tools.
I removed the vacuum head.
And within minutes, I found the real problem.
A small piece of plastic had completely blocked the vacuum pipe.
I removed it, refitted the head and tested the machine.
Perfect.
A several-hour breakdown solved in minutes.
Except now I had to tell the Production Manager.
His response has stayed with me ever since.
“We’ve already sent the staff home.”
That was the moment the real lesson landed.
I’d accepted the diagnosis I’d been given without taking a few extra minutes to prove it myself.
And my decision had consequences beyond downtime.
People had lost a shift’s pay because of it.
My engineering team and I spent the rest of the shift packing product, stopping only to attend breakdowns.
We’d contributed to the problem.
We were going to contribute to the recovery.
That experience changed how I thought about leadership.
Your decisions don’t stop at the machine.
They ripple through production, planning, customers — and sometimes straight into someone else’s pocket.
Lesson #14: Before making a decision that affects others, take a few extra minutes to make sure you’re solving the right problem.
Have you ever made a technically reasonable decision that taught you a much bigger leadership lesson?
BEFORE YOU MAKE THE CALL — 5 Lessons in Better Engineering Decisions.