The Presence Lab Podcast · Season 5, Episode 296
When Your Company Screws Up: Own It, Fix It, Prevent It
A public mistake rarely begins when the public sees it. Here is how leaders can own what happened, fix the condition that allowed it, and build the judgment that helps prevent the next one.
A value that never costs you anything is really just a preference.
What should a company do after making a public mistake?
A credible response has three parts: own what actually happened, fix the condition that allowed it to happen, and prevent the same kind of judgment failure from happening again.
Crisis communication is usually treated as a response problem. Something goes wrong in public, and the scramble is about what to say. But the public response almost always comes after the decision that created the problem. By the time the statement goes out, the real failure already happened somewhere upstream.
Consider the Good Good and Callaway example. Good Good released an advertisement that drew widespread backlash. The company removed it. Callaway later acknowledged that it had approved the video before publication. Both organizations initially used more distancing language before later taking more direct responsibility.
It is worth being careful here. The public record does not establish what happened inside those rooms, so there is no point speculating about who objected or who stayed quiet. The useful leadership question is simpler and more uncomfortable: how many points existed along the way where better judgment might have stopped the decision before it ever reached the public?
Step one
1. Own It: Start with reality, not your intent
Own the impact before you rush to explain the intent.
When something goes wrong, the instinct is to explain what you meant. The problem is that people respond to what they experienced, not to what you intended. Leading with intent tells the audience you are still managing your own image while they are still sitting with the impact.
You can hear the difference in the language. Early statements often create distance from the event. Later statements, once the responsibility lands, tend to get more direct. In the Good Good and Callaway case, that shift from distancing language to plainer ownership is the whole story of whether people believed the response.
This is not generic apology advice. The first statement matters because it becomes evidence. People use it to decide whether they should trust what the organization says next. Get it wrong, and every later clarification reads as damage control. The issue is not tone. The issue is responsibility.
Step two
2. Fix It: Change the condition that allowed the mistake
Removing the visible problem is only the immediate corrective action. A real fix changes the condition that made the bad decision possible.
Here is the line worth keeping. An apology is a communication. A fix is a piece of evidence. One asks people to believe you. The other shows them something changed.
Callaway’s corrective actions are a useful example of what evidence looks like: an investigation into how the ad was approved, changes to its approval process, ending the Good Good partnership, internal corrective action, and a one million dollar pledge to organizations working to prevent violence against women.
But here is the more important leadership point. Simply adding another approval layer can create bureaucracy without improving judgment. A new sign-off box does not help if the same conditions that produced the first bad call are still in place. So the real work is diagnostic. Ask what actually happened on the way out the door:
- Did nobody see a problem?
- Did someone see it but decide the friction was not worth it?
- Was everyone moving too fast?
- Did responsibility become diffuse?
- What conditions made the decision feel normal on the way out the door?
The Meta settlement points at the same idea from a different angle. The settlement was reported at up to about eighteen billion dollars over ten years. Meta denied wrongdoing. Court approval was still required at the time of this episode. The agreement included operational changes affecting how teens use Facebook and Instagram.
The point is not that Meta is equivalent to Good Good. The point is that a meaningful fix changes how the system operates rather than merely changing the press release. Whatever you think of the company, operational change is a different category of response than a statement.
Step three
3. Prevent It: Turn stated values into operating values
A value printed on a wall cannot stop a bad decision. A value that people have practiced using might.
Years ago, Dale and his family worked out five values through ordinary conversations at the dinner table and in the car. Nothing corporate. Just language they used often enough that everyone knew it.
- Respect
- Gratitude
- Wisdom
- Initiative
- Don’t be a quitter
The point was not the list. It was that repeating those values out loud made them available later, as filters, when a real decision showed up. That is the whole difference for an organization too. When Good Good said the ad was inconsistent with its values, the more useful question is not whether the values are nice. It is this: where were those values when the decision was still being made?
Psychological safety is part of how values get used in real time. Research from Amy Edmondson and the organizational work that followed suggests that teams with greater psychological safety are more willing to report errors, raise concerns, and discuss problems. That does not mean psychological safety prevents all failures, and it is not the only characteristic of a strong team. But it changes what people are willing to say before a decision ships.
So here is the test for your own room. Would the most junior person in it believe they were allowed to say, "Hang on. I don’t think we should do this"?
How do you know whether your company values actually influence decisions?
Run the 30-Day Values Test. It is not an exercise for rewriting your values. It tests whether the values you already have actually operate.
Step 1
Pick one decision
Choose one real decision your leadership team made in the last 30 days. It should involve a genuine tradeoff, not an obvious or easy call.
Step 2
Name the value that shaped it
Ask which of your stated values actually influenced the call. Be specific. If none of them did, then "none" is a legitimate answer.
Step 3
Count the cost
Ask what honoring that value cost you: time, money, speed, convenience, a comfortable conversation, or a number you wanted to hit.
Read the result
- Operating value
- If you can name the cost, you probably have an operating value. Protect it.
- Stated value
- If you cannot point to how the value touched the decision, you have a stated value that has not yet become lived behavior.
- Look closer
- If honoring it never seems to cost anything, look more closely. A value that never costs you anything is really just a preference.
Run it again across three recent decisions. Three calls tell you far more than one.
Free Field Guide · Episode 296
Run the 30-Day Values Test with your leadership team
Use the two-page Episode 296 Field Guide to test one recent leadership decision against the values your organization says it operates by. It is designed to take about twenty minutes.
- The Own It, Fix It, Prevent It crisis playbook
- The 30-Day Values Test worksheet
- The decision, value, and cost columns
- Operating versus stated value read-out
- A run-it-again prompt for three recent calls
- The one line worth keeping on the wall
Free. No email required.
Field Guide · E296
The Crisis Playbook and the 30-Day Values Test
Two pages. Print it or work it on screen with your team.
Common questions
Owning, fixing, and preventing mistakes
What should a company do after making a public mistake?
Start by owning what actually happened and the impact it created. Then change the condition that allowed the mistake to occur and build systems, judgment, and practiced values that reduce the chance of a repeat.
What does "Own It, Fix It, Prevent It" mean?
It is Dale Dixon’s three-step crisis communication framework. Own It means taking responsibility for reality before explaining intent. Fix It means changing the underlying condition that enabled the problem. Prevent It means building the judgment and practiced values that help stop the next bad decision before it becomes public.
Why do corporate apologies often make a crisis worse?
An apology can make the situation worse when the language creates distance from what actually happened, minimizes responsibility, or focuses on the organization’s intent before acknowledging the audience’s experience.
What is the difference between fixing a mistake and preventing another one?
A fix addresses the condition that produced the current failure. Prevention builds the habits, judgment, values, and freedom to speak up that make similar bad decisions less likely in the future.
How can leaders tell whether company values are real?
Look at recent difficult decisions. Identify which stated value shaped the decision and what honoring that value actually cost in time, money, speed, convenience, comfort, or another meaningful tradeoff. A value that never affects a hard choice may be a stated preference rather than an operating value.
What is the 30-Day Values Test?
It is a twenty-minute leadership exercise from Episode 296 of The Presence Lab. Choose a meaningful decision from the last thirty days, identify the value that influenced it, determine what honoring that value cost, and repeat the exercise across several decisions.
Sources and research
What informed this episode
Good Good and Callaway
- CBS News: Callaway Golf CEO apologizes after Good Good ad showing male golfer shoving woman sparks backlash.
- Golf.com: “Mistakes were made” — Callaway and Good Good CEOs apologize for the controversial ad, and Kendrick owns the mistake.
- NBC News: Callaway severs ties with Good Good after the controversial ad, confirming it approved the spot.
Meta settlement
- TechCrunch: Meta settles for $18 billion in a lawsuit brought by 29 states over social media harms to children.
- Engadget: Meta denied wrongdoing and the settlement still requires court approval.
- Reuters (via The Daily Record): guaranteed and contingent payments, and the school-hours notification block.
Both stories were still developing at the time of recording. Figures and terms reflect reporting available then and may be updated as the settlement moves toward court approval.
Before you go
Keep going from here
Keep practicing
The Presence Lab Community is where leaders put these ideas to work, ask questions, and join Dale for live Q&A.
Watch the episode
Prefer video? Watch Episode 296 on YouTube.