Bad news can become a fast track to success

If you are in business, you can expect to receive bad news. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but someday.

You can plan your work carefully. You can execute your plan flawlessly. You can do almost everything right.

Despite your best intentions, there will come a day when something will go horribly wrong.

An important shipment doesn’t arrive. Your best customer leaves you. Lightning strikes and your computers are destroyed.

You may want to close your ears and hope the bad news will simply go away. Instead, remember that this is a defining moment. It is the pivot point when you have an opportunity to solve the problem and emerge on the other side stronger than before.

Why? Because the lessons learned during a crisis will stay with you the remainder of your career. They become the foundation for growth, personal and professional.

If you think you have dealt with serious “bad news” in the past, consider what once happened to Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric and author of several business management books.

Early in his career as a plastics engineer, Jack literally blew up a factory where his laboratory was located – obliterating the roof and shattering all of the windows on the top floor of the building. Imagine the conversation when he went to explain his bad news to the boss.

Together, they developed ways to improve the laboratory so this kind of disaster would never happen again.

Managers here in Wichita say they meet unexpected challenges with quick thinking and a dose of flexibility. Ask Debbie Gann, vice president for corporate communications at Spirit AeroSystems Inc.

She helped lead the company’s efforts to keep employees and the public informed after a tornado hit the company’s Wichita plant in 2012.

Whether the bad news is man-made or caused by a natural disaster, the result is the same: Someone has to fix the mess.

Those who rise to the occasion will be noticed. Sometimes, they are placed on a fast track to a leadership role.

Even our least experienced employees can become superstars by solving problems. In our company, we train our young project managers to bring proposed solutions to the table at the same time they share bad news.

A printer can’t meet our deadline? What do you recommend we do about that? Pay a rush charge? Switch to a paper already in stock? Print a short-run on a digital press in time for the trade show?

Not every business problem wipes out a building. Some simply cause minor delays that inconvenience your customer, irritate your staff or impact your bottom line.

But every problem is an opportunity – to learn, to improve and to lead. Our goal as business managers should be to teach every staff member to be problem solvers.

When we empower them to bring us solutions and reward them for their efforts, everyone benefits.

This story was originally published April 27, 2016 at 7:38 PM with the headline "Bad news can become a fast track to success."