All leaders and all organizations make mistakes and will continue to make mistakes. However, what differentiates them is how they react after the mistake has been made. If a mistake (whatever it may be, a security breach, performance or stability issues…) is made by you or your organization as a whole, own it, apologize, fix it and learn from that entire process so that it doesn’t happen again. It’s important not to blame others for your shortcomings and even more important not to be dismissive of the impact that mistake has had on your community of users, clients or partners.
Two recent examples I have mentioned are about Snapchat‘s CEO where Snapchat CEO Thought It Had ‘Done Enough’ To Protect Against Hack, Won’t Apologize and conversely Evernote‘s CEO where Evernote CEO Admits Stability Problems, Promises a Simpler Design. Two very different approaches to somewhat similar user experience disruption concerns.
UPDATE: January 9, 2014 – Snapchat just apologized via their blog (while it wasn’t their CEO, it’s still the right move)