My Favorite Mistake This Year: The Story of Abu Abbas

This post is a translation of the original Arabic article.

I decided to choose the best mistake I made this year and talk about it with full transparency...

My favorite mistake is hiring someone we'll call "Abu Abbas."

Abu Abbas is a good example to illustrate the difference between genuinely embracing values and merely claiming to have them. The story begins when we hired this person. We were in a hurry, and despite it being obvious that he lacked an innovative spirit, we told ourselves that adding someone now would help us finish our backlogged projects.

Our environment is high-performance and demands real effort to keep pace with the team. Abu Abbas could not cope with the pressure and began exploiting the freedom we enjoy in our workplace — we give employees a great deal of latitude, both in their working hours and in making decisions. I later discovered that he wasn't actually doing his day-to-day work. He would push tasks off until right before deadlines, then pull all-nighters to deliver on time, but always at poor quality. I began coaching and advising him intensively to help him understand our culture. Rather than changing for the better, he grew bitter about the whole thing and started spreading negative messages within the team. By the end of his probationary period, everyone hated working with Abu Abbas and felt he should leave.

Why I Consider This My Favorite Mistake

1. This situation showed us in practice the value of working in an environment free from people with toxic attitudes, and the impact such people have on the workplace.

2. If we say we embrace the value of "an innovative environment," then that value must be reflected in both hiring and letting people go. The cost of having the wrong person on a team is higher than the cost of a delayed project.

3. We discovered the value of reviewing our work in short cycles. We now review all our projects every two weeks in depth, and briefly every day. This allows us to detect poor performance in its early stages.

4. We saw firsthand how one person can exploit the freedoms of an entire team.

5. It became clear that we were missing something important in our hiring process: a practical test. After this incident, every one of our hiring processes now always includes a practical assessment.

That was my favorite mistake this year... What is your favorite mistake, and what did you learn from it? I'd love for you to share in the comments.