Here’s the question. If somebody has wronged you and they apologise as soon as they know they have made the mistake what is your reaction? You will probably forgive fairly quickly, especially if it was a minor transgression.

If that person, however, takes a long time before they admit to their mistake and apologises you could take a fair while longer before you accept the white flag. You might even terminate the friendship.

Now before you roll your eyes and click off this article thinking:- yugh one of those new age articles, let me quickly reassure you otherwise and give you an example that you might be able to relate to.

The headline that caught my eye today was in the New York Times and it said that ‘Toyota has pattern of slow response on safety issues’. The immediate reaction could be that of course this is so. After all Toyota is a Japanese company and Asia doesn’t like to admit to mistakes.

This is not because Asian companies are necessarily evil. It’s because as head of the organisation you just cannot afford to make a mistake. If it’s a serious mistake you could even be expected to commit suicide. At the least you need to resign. You can see that this is not exactly an incentive to confessing to having made a mistake.

Going back to the opening question what could this mean to Toyota if it is a company that doesn’t like to admit to mistakes? The worst possible scenario probably.  It could mean losing customers. In Germany sales are already down by 20%. In the USA Ford and Chevrolet are celebrating an unexpected bonus.

Having now made this big deal about Asian CEO’s being reluctant to admit to mistakes, let’s have a look at what happens in the West. Well actually almost the same in some cases.

Cast your mind back to Arthur Anderson in their time one of the biggest accounting firms in the world. They got caught with their fingers in a rather messy scenario. Instead of immediately apologising and making a huge showing of how they are fixing the situation, they went into denial mode. Even got sued.

End of Arthur Anderson. It took about 8 months for one of the biggest firms to die. Could Lehman Brothers have survived if they had admitted to having problems instead of denying all rumours up to the day before they closed their doors.

Could Toyota die a horrible death? Unlikely. The sticky gas pedal is not a company killer. But if they had reacted sooner to the problems of the gas pedal, which it appears has been around for a while, the cost and damage to the company would have been far less serious.

There have been great examples of companies weathering serious knocks because they stood up and admitted to their mistakes really quickly. And the quicker they reacted, the sooner the story went away.

So lesson of the day, react quickly. Whether you make a mistake dealing with a friend or as a business owner even big company executive. The quicker you react, shout mea culpa and make every effort to make good the sooner you are out of trouble.

It’s difficult though. Sometimes the option of keeping quiet in the hope that all will go away seems such an easier one to take. Beware, it could end up being a lot more dangerous though!