The hardest thing is NOT admitting a mistake. The hardest thing is learning from a mistake and improving.
Companies make mistakes all the time. What gets all the press is how they dodge admitting it is a mistake. Either they hope it goes away or they come out and admit they were wrong and are trying to improve. Most recently you see AIG not admitting how they handled the bonuses being a mistake. After congressional hearings and a lot of press uproar it has pretty much died down.
When I worked for Texas Instruments, they had a process for learning from mistakes. Essentially, we would first discuss the problem and the short term solution. Then, we would look to see if it was systemic and if a long term solution was needed. We would implement that long term solution, and finally, we would come back later and determine if it was corrected.
Unfortunately a lot of companies do not get beyond step 1: discuss the problem. The put in a bandaid fix (maybe) and then say that they cannot fix it because either its too big, not that important, or its our culture and so you should give up.
Those companies eventually fail.
TI is going to be around for a while. Once, a customer told me that the reason they bought from TI and paid premium prices (some of the highest in the business) was that we were consistently on time with the quality they needed.
Next time someone does not want to fix it in the long term ask them if it keeping customers who pay good prices is big enough, important enough, or part of the company culture.
