The Biggest Professional Mistake I Ever Made

We’ve all made big mistakes during our careers. Not just the little “oops” moments like a late report or missed deadline, but the big mistake that you’re sure is going to derail your career and see you switch to becoming an insurance claims adjuster.

While I never switched my career, I did end up switching industries. But when you’re in leadership and manufacturing management, the industry is less important than the work.

The biggest mistake I ever made professionally was to take over a business in the lighting manufacturing business for Genlyte. When I was negotiating with the CEO of the organization, I said I wanted the business to be audited before I took it over.

I assumed that was agreed, and that was my big mistake.

I took it over, but there was no audit. So I started digging into the business and I found that they made a profit every month, but with the exception of December, when they always had a huge loss on the books.

This baffled me completely, and I couldn’t figure it out. So, I looked back at the history of the company for the last several years, and it happened every December. This consumed me for a few months as I dug and dug into the problem.

Then I figured out what they were doing.

What they were doing was purchasing finished goods and putting them into inventory at the full selling price, not the cost price. That is, they were “pre-selling” the products, saying we had that much revenue in inventory.

Normally, you would realize the profit on a product when you sell it, not when you buy it. But they were entering the products into inventory at the selling price.

This works great if you don’t have any inventory left over at the end of the year. But if you have inventory remaining, you screw yourself. That’s because you have to show that you didn’t sell that product but that you did, in fact, incur that cost.

Just after I figured that out, they fired me. They had been caught with their accounting irregularities, and they had to get rid of the guy who found it.

The mistake I made is that I should have insisted on an audit in the first place, but when you’ve worked with an organization for 17 years, you figure you can trust the people you’re talking to. But you apparently can’t, so here we are.

So, how did I fix it? I walked away and didn’t fight it. They were going to continue their shenanigans, and they didn’t like that they were called out on it.

Still, it all worked out in the end because I managed to switch industries and stay in a management role throughout my entire career.

If I had to give any advice from this particular career lesson, it’s the idea of trust, but verify the data you need to do your job. If you need that data to make a decision, don’t make the decision until you get it. And if the company doesn’t want to give it to you, then walk away because there’s a reason they don’t want you to have it.

I’ve been a manufacturing executive, as well as a sales and marketing professional, for a few decades. Now, I help companies turn around their own business, including pivoting within their industry. If you would like more information, please visit my website and connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

Photo credit: Tumisu (Pixabay, Creative Commons 0)