Making mistakes is part of the game, even in the consultancy profession. It is often the fuck-ups that provide the most valuable lessons. Why? Because you won't notice why certain routines work until you experience what happens when you deviate from them. In this article, Dolf L'Ortye and Paul van Bekkum, co-founders of Summiteers, share anecdotes about times when things went wrong and how it contributed to their craftsmanship.

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Why making mistakes is valuable

Dolf: “A fuck-up, as it were, magnifies dormant issues. It confronts you with the blind spots in your approach and that's what makes it so educational. That's also why the fuck-up has a place in our corporate culture. The 'Fuck-up of the month' is presented every month, Paul wrote about that. a blog. During our monthly team meeting, everyone gets to share a lesson with the team. It's about times when something didn't work as you'd hoped. It is often funny, sometimes embarrassing, but above all valuable. So we don't do it to burn each other down, but rather to discuss mistakes and take their lessons with us.”

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How pace and preparation can kill you

In the rush to get started, you can forget to dwell on the essentials. Dolf: “Paul and I were recently in the middle of preparing for a workshop. We had already discussed all kinds of ideas, scenarios and insights. But while we were talking, we suddenly realized: wait a minute, what exactly is the problem here? Why are we sitting here? This is such a typical mistake that occurs often, but is still so easy to prevent. You want to get off to the starting blocks so much that you forget to take a moment to reflect on the core. What is the goal? What do we need to solve? Take the time to reflect and fully understand what the real challenge is before continuing. This prevents unnecessary work and keeps you sharp. In this case, that meant going back to the customer first. We needed to better understand the 'why' behind this part of their business before we could move on to the scenarios, and that reflection proved crucial to make a real impact.”

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Small mistakes, big lessons

Paul: “Of course, there are also the more quantifiable fuck-ups. Like sending the wrong document to the customer. Fortunately, that rarely happens here, but we are not perfect either. It has really happened that we send version 0.9 to the customer instead of version 1.0, including spelling errors. Of course, that really sucks you. But that's just how it works sometimes and you can only intend to be more focused on that in the future.”

“You may still be forgiven for a misspelling,” Paul continues. “But I remember one time when I had an error in an Excel sheet during an important strategic conversation about the future of a business unit. Of course, the whole discussion came to a standstill. As soon as there is one mistake in such a sheet, everyone asks themselves: what other errors are there? The trust is then immediately gone, which debilitates the dynamic in such a conversation. I had no choice but to apologize and reschedule the call.”

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Sit out in the parking lot

Dolf laughs: “Fortunately, that never happened to me. Although I have to admit that I once sprawled out in a customer's car park, right in front of the entrance. It was really slippery, an ice rink, and I literally slipped out of my car. There I lay, flat on my back, right outside the door. Anyway, that's not really a typical consultant dumb fuck-up.”

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A hat trick of fuck-ups

Dolf says: “But I do have one of them. In fact, it was a hat trick of fuck-ups. Remember, Paul, when we were in Belgium? We met a company's board of directors. There were three of us in the car, and I sat in the back. That was fuck-up number one. You drove, Paul, that was fuck-up number two, haha. And we were also in a big hurry. That was fuck-up number three. We got there, and it was up to me to say a few smart things during that meeting. That car ride made me so sick that I literally couldn't say a word. I sat there at the table with a glass of water in front of me and was happy to breathe. It didn't catch up either. So if you need to go somewhere, make sure you're on time and don't sit in the back of the car, especially with Paul, if you get motion sickness easily.”

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Take your time

Paul explains: “We had a similar experience with the same customer. I had to be there, with a colleague, and we had an appointment at nine in the morning. The customer was in Belgium and to avoid the morning rush hour, we went the night before. We booked a hotel, drank only one beer and lay in bed at eleven o'clock. At seven o'clock we were having breakfast, eight o'clock we were in the car with a ten-minute ride ahead. What could go wrong? And yet... I was incorrectly pre-sorted at the exit. I had to go to the right but stood on the left. An old lady in a car didn't leave me there, so I had no choice but to get back on the highway. Full of traffic. In the end, we arrived twenty minutes late. The lesson? How important it is to take plenty of time. Even with the best planning, things can still go wrong.”

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The danger of assumptions

Assumptions can also play tricks on you. Dolf explains: “This really happened and I'm still amazed about it. It was during a major program for business customers at a bank. This is where you are dealing with facilities, note credit facilities: agreements where companies can borrow an amount that they can use flexibly for various financial products. A major consultancy firm had presented itself there as the solution for everything. During an appointment with their 'facilities' team, an employee proudly said that she had already made an inventory of everything: all desks, chairs and docking stations were neatly mapped out. I thought: this must be a joke. So I asked, “Fine, but how did you deal with the complexity of X, Y and Z?” At that moment, I saw the advisor leaving white. It turned out to be no joke. This team had identified workplace facilities while the project was about bank credit facilities. I haven't seen that team since then.”

Not checking assumptions is really a fuck-up. Listen carefully, ask the right questions, and test yourself over and over again. This is the only way to add real value.

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Making mistakes is okay if you learn from them

“Consultancy is a profession that you can't fully capture in manuals,” Paul concludes. “It's a combination of experience and a keen sense of what's going on. A good consultant has a certain radar. As soon as you notice that something is running smoothly or does not feel smooth, that is a signal. An invitation to investigate with your team — and with the customer — exactly what is not going well. Those moments of friction are valuable. These are opportunities to reflect and make adjustments. What if you don't take that opportunity? Well, maybe that in itself is a kind of fuck-up.”

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