Many leaders fear that admitting a miss will destroy a client relationship. Craig Andrews argues that delaying the truth is often far more damaging. Delivering bad news early gives customers options, reduces downstream harm, and creates an opportunity to demonstrate integrity when it matters most.

Craig shares a four-part framework for handling failure: state and own the bad news, explain what broke, describe how recurrence will be prevented, and present a concrete plan for narrowing the gap between what was promised and what will be delivered. He later put this approach into practice by opening a client presentation with the words, “We screwed up,” before walking through the cause, prevention, and recovery.

The lesson began with Siemens, where Craig’s boss knowingly overpromised and left Craig to deliver the bad news. Because Craig disclosed the problem early, Siemens was able to move costly factory time—and thanked the team for giving them the chance to adjust. Later, a Siemens engineer trusted Craig with a personal crisis, which Craig sees as evidence that honesty can deepen trust even when delivery falls short.

That trust-building discipline also shaped how Craig led his employees. Instead of shielding them from difficult conversations, he coached them to own mistakes and repair the damage. During Craig’s 2021 coma, one of those employees told clients that Craig might die, kept the business running, and lost only one client—a powerful payoff from preparing people to lead with candor before a crisis arrives.

Key Points with Timestamps

• 00:00:53 — Craig Andrews introduces a leadership lesson about how delivering bad news with integrity can strengthen trust.
• 00:01:39 — Craig recalls working with Siemens and being assigned to deliver bad news after his boss overpromised.
• 00:03:06 — The four-part framework: own the miss, explain what broke, prevent recurrence, and narrow the delivery gap.
• 00:04:07 — Why telling Siemens early allowed the customer to reschedule expensive factory time.
• 00:04:46 — A Siemens engineer’s personal call showed Craig that candor had created trust beyond the business transaction.
• 00:06:01 — Craig applies the framework to his own company after a website-to-HubSpot integration repeatedly failed.
• 00:06:47 — Craig opens the client presentation with “We screwed up” and walks through cause, prevention, and recovery.
• 00:08:11 — Integrity, honesty, and concrete repair plans turn mistakes into opportunities to reinforce relationships.
• 00:08:38 — Why employees should own difficult client conversations with coaching instead of being shielded from them.
• 00:09:33 — How that preparation paid off during Craig’s 2021 coma, when an employee kept clients informed and the business running.
• 00:11:51 — How to reach Craig: LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/craig-andrews/ and allies4me at https://allies4me.com/.

Connect with Craig Andrews on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/craig-andrews/.

Think you'd be a great guest on the show? Apply at https://pod.allies4me.com/podcast-guest/.

Want to learn more about Craig Andrews' work at allies4me? Check out his website at https://allies4me.com/.

Transcript

[00:00:00 - 00:00:53] Craig Andrews: I was in a coma for six weeks while the doctors told my wife I was going to die. When I woke up, she told me the most fantastic story. My team kept running the business without me. Freelancers reached out to my team and said, “We will do whatever it takes as long as Craig’s in the hospital.” I consider that the greatest accomplishment in my career. My name is Craig Andrews, and this is the Leaders & Legacies podcast, where we talk to leaders creating an impact beyond themselves. At the end of today’s episode, I’ll tell you how you can be the next leader featured on this show.

[00:00:53 - 00:01:01] Craig Andrews: Hey, this is going to be a short episode this week on leaders and legacies, but there's

[00:01:01 - 00:01:07] Craig Andrews: a short can also be impactful and there's a lesson I learned years ago about delivering

[00:01:07 - 00:01:13] Craig Andrews: bad news that has worked really, really well for me over the years.

[00:01:13 - 00:01:19] Craig Andrews: And a lot of times you'll face a time where you have to go back to your client and you

[00:01:19 - 00:01:23] Craig Andrews: have to tell them something you don't want to tell or your customer.

[00:01:23 - 00:01:26] Craig Andrews: And the fear is that this is going to ruin everything.

[00:01:26 - 00:01:32] Craig Andrews: And I would argue it can actually be a time that strengthens everything.

[00:01:32 - 00:01:35] Craig Andrews: And so let me tell you how this played out in my world and then I'll share the formula

[00:01:35 - 00:01:36] Craig Andrews: with you.

[00:01:36 - 00:01:40] Craig Andrews: It's real simple and you can use it in any situation.

[00:01:40 - 00:01:47] Craig Andrews: But I used to work in semiconductors for mobile phones and one of our customers was Siemens.

[00:01:47 - 00:01:51] Craig Andrews: At the time Siemens was the number two GSM mobile phone maker in the world, only behind

[00:01:51 - 00:01:52] Craig Andrews: Nokia.

[00:01:52 - 00:01:58] Craig Andrews: Obviously this is a period ago because neither of them are in the mobile phone business anymore.

[00:01:58 - 00:02:04] Craig Andrews: But I worked for a guy who would make promises to the Germans that he knew we couldn't keep

[00:02:04 - 00:02:06] Craig Andrews: when he made the promise.

[00:02:06 - 00:02:10] Craig Andrews: As a matter of fact, there was one call where the instructions were anything we asked for,

[00:02:10 - 00:02:12] Craig Andrews: we're going to say yes.

[00:02:12 - 00:02:15] Craig Andrews: And I found the way of getting myself out of that call because I didn't want any part

[00:02:15 - 00:02:16] Craig Andrews: of that.

[00:02:16 - 00:02:19] Craig Andrews: And that's not how I work.

[00:02:19 - 00:02:24] Craig Andrews: And I told him, I said, look, I think you all have everything covered.

[00:02:24 - 00:02:26] Craig Andrews: I'm going to go back to my office.

[00:02:26 - 00:02:27] Craig Andrews: I'm just a few doors down.

[00:02:27 - 00:02:30] Craig Andrews: If you need me for anything, please call me in.

[00:02:30 - 00:02:35] Craig Andrews: And they didn't because they were just going to say yes to everything.

[00:02:35 - 00:02:41] Craig Andrews: And so sure enough, the time came when it became abundantly clear we wouldn't be able

[00:02:41 - 00:02:45] Craig Andrews: to do what Siemens had asked and we had promised to do.

[00:02:45 - 00:02:48] Craig Andrews: So my boss would make the promises.

[00:02:48 - 00:02:53] Craig Andrews: My job was to go tell the Germans the bad news.

[00:02:53 - 00:02:58] Craig Andrews: And so I ended up getting really good at it.

[00:02:58 - 00:03:03] Craig Andrews: And we did it again.

[00:03:03 - 00:03:04] Craig Andrews: And then we did it again.

[00:03:04 - 00:03:07] Craig Andrews: We kept doing it to him and it was just insane.

[00:03:07 - 00:03:12] Craig Andrews: But what I realized was there's four steps.

[00:03:12 - 00:03:18] Craig Andrews: And if you follow these four simple steps, you can deliver all sorts of bad news and it

[00:03:18 - 00:03:20] Craig Andrews: won't blow up on you.

[00:03:20 - 00:03:26] Craig Andrews: So step one, just come out and say, hey, I have some bad news.

[00:03:26 - 00:03:33] Craig Andrews: We, you know, we're not going to be able to deliver what we promised to you.

[00:03:33 - 00:03:36] Craig Andrews: Step two, tell them what broke.

[00:03:36 - 00:03:41] Craig Andrews: Tell them what happened that caused the failure.

[00:03:41 - 00:03:47] Craig Andrews: Step three, what are you doing to fix that in the future?

[00:03:47 - 00:03:52] Craig Andrews: And step four is here's what we're doing to narrow the gap between what we promised we

[00:03:52 - 00:03:56] Craig Andrews: would do and what we're actually doing.

[00:03:56 - 00:04:02] Craig Andrews: And so sadly, my boss gave me a lot of opportunities to practice that with Siemens.

[00:04:02 - 00:04:07] Craig Andrews: And there was even one time where I had a manager, senior manager at Siemens thanked me

[00:04:07 - 00:04:08] Craig Andrews: at the end of this.

[00:04:08 - 00:04:13] Craig Andrews: And one of the reasons was it became clear to me, we were going to miss a commitment.

[00:04:13 - 00:04:15] Craig Andrews: And so I started lobbying within my company.

[00:04:15 - 00:04:18] Craig Andrews: I said, we need to tell them now.

[00:04:18 - 00:04:23] Craig Andrews: We know now we need to tell them now this will not get better with time.

[00:04:23 - 00:04:29] Craig Andrews: And so the reason Siemens was thanking me was we had told them early enough that they could

[00:04:29 - 00:04:30] Craig Andrews: make adjustments.

[00:04:30 - 00:04:34] Craig Andrews: They were scheduling time in the factory, and that's expensive.

[00:04:34 - 00:04:41] Craig Andrews: And so they were able to move the schedule for the factory time so that because we'd

[00:04:41 - 00:04:45] Craig Andrews: given them enough notice to do that, and they thanked us for it.

[00:04:45 - 00:04:51] Craig Andrews: We had a great relationship with them, I'd still baffled by it.

[00:04:51 - 00:04:58] Craig Andrews: But the thing that was most meaningful to me in that entire exchange was one day my

[00:04:58 - 00:05:04] Craig Andrews: phone rang and I could see it was a German country code and picked up the phone.

[00:05:04 - 00:05:08] Craig Andrews: And it was one of the engineers from Siemens that I'd been working with.

[00:05:08 - 00:05:16] Craig Andrews: And he said, Craig, she left me and he starts telling me about how his wife left him, took

[00:05:16 - 00:05:19] Craig Andrews: his daughter and filed for divorce.

[00:05:19 - 00:05:22] Craig Andrews: He was absolutely heartbroken.

[00:05:22 - 00:05:28] Craig Andrews: And it shocked me of like, right now, of all the people in the world, I didn't say this,

[00:05:28 - 00:05:33] Craig Andrews: but of all the people in the world that you could call, you call the guy who constantly

[00:05:33 - 00:05:40] Craig Andrews: was delivering bad news that we weren't going to do what we promised we would do.

[00:05:40 - 00:05:44] Craig Andrews: But somewhere in there, he saw some might he could trust.

[00:05:44 - 00:05:48] Craig Andrews: And with one of the most important things that happened in his life, he chose to share

[00:05:48 - 00:05:58] Craig Andrews: it with me and that's why I mean when you follow this formula, you can deliver bad news

[00:05:58 - 00:06:02] Craig Andrews: and it can actually strengthen the relationship.

[00:06:02 - 00:06:04] Craig Andrews: Of course, I'm not perfect.

[00:06:04 - 00:06:05] Craig Andrews: I've made more mistakes.

[00:06:05 - 00:06:10] Craig Andrews: I now have my own company and so I don't have to explain what my boss did wrongly.

[00:06:10 - 00:06:16] Craig Andrews: I have to explain what I did wrongly and there was a time we we hadn't been delivering what

[00:06:16 - 00:06:18] Craig Andrews: we promised.

[00:06:18 - 00:06:19] Craig Andrews: We've been making mistakes.

[00:06:19 - 00:06:25] Craig Andrews: We delivered something new website and and it's supposed to have some connection to their

[00:06:25 - 00:06:31] Craig Andrews: HubSpot and it kept breaking and this has been going on for a while.

[00:06:31 - 00:06:36] Craig Andrews: It made me really, really uncomfortable and obviously on my team, it was one of my subcontractors

[00:06:36 - 00:06:44] Craig Andrews: that was causing that and it took me a while to figure out what was happening and once

[00:06:44 - 00:06:48] Craig Andrews: I figured out what happened, I immediately made a presentation.

[00:06:48 - 00:06:53] Craig Andrews: I went to the client and on the first slide in the biggest letters, biggest font, I could

[00:06:53 - 00:06:55] Craig Andrews: fit on that side.

[00:06:55 - 00:07:01] Craig Andrews: It said we screwed up and obviously I wasn't sharing anything that everybody didn't know

[00:07:01 - 00:07:04] Craig Andrews: already but I just owned it.

[00:07:04 - 00:07:06] Craig Andrews: Step one, own the problem.

[00:07:06 - 00:07:12] Craig Andrews: Step two, I explained, you know what, when my subcontractors pulled an indie and developer

[00:07:12 - 00:07:20] Craig Andrews: in without telling them and they kept making some mistakes.

[00:07:20 - 00:07:23] Craig Andrews: Step two, here's how the problem happened.

[00:07:23 - 00:07:31] Craig Andrews: Step three, why I told my client, I said we, I said I've now taken over the development

[00:07:31 - 00:07:38] Craig Andrews: of that and I'm meeting with them daily until we have this fixed and we're breaking down

[00:07:38 - 00:07:44] Craig Andrews: the problem and we're fixing it bit by bit and I will make sure that this gets fixed.

[00:07:44 - 00:07:50] Craig Andrews: So that was actually step three and well, step three was what, you know, how we identified

[00:07:50 - 00:07:51] Craig Andrews: the problem.

[00:07:51 - 00:07:55] Craig Andrews: We're not going to be doing that again and in step four, here's how we're narrowing the

[00:07:55 - 00:08:00] Craig Andrews: gap between what we promised and what we delivered and at the end of the meeting, my client was

[00:08:00 - 00:08:04] Craig Andrews: smiling from ear to ear.

[00:08:04 - 00:08:14] Craig Andrews: And so that's the formula and it's rooted in integrity and the beauty is there's no perfect

[00:08:14 - 00:08:15] Craig Andrews: company.

[00:08:15 - 00:08:22] Craig Andrews: Everybody makes mistakes and the best strategy is just be honest, come clean, let them know

[00:08:22 - 00:08:26] Craig Andrews: how it happened, let them know what you're doing to make sure it doesn't happen in the

[00:08:26 - 00:08:31] Craig Andrews: future and then tell them how you're going to narrow the gap between what you promised

[00:08:31 - 00:08:34] Craig Andrews: and what you've delivered.

[00:08:34 - 00:08:35] Craig Andrews: So that's it.

[00:08:35 - 00:08:36] Craig Andrews: I hope you all have a good day.

[00:08:36 - 00:08:41] Craig Andrews: I hope that's a good leadership lesson and when you're, let me take one step further when

[00:08:41 - 00:08:48] Craig Andrews: your employees make mistakes and sometimes maybe they tell a client something they shouldn't

[00:08:48 - 00:08:51] Craig Andrews: make them own the fix.

[00:08:51 - 00:08:55] Craig Andrews: You're not doing this because you're trying to be punitive.

[00:08:55 - 00:09:01] Craig Andrews: You're doing this because you want them to earn what they do, but you also want them to

[00:09:01 - 00:09:05] Craig Andrews: be able to clean things up when they made a mistake.

[00:09:05 - 00:09:11] Craig Andrews: And I had a client or I had an employee who used to promise things to clients that we

[00:09:11 - 00:09:17] Craig Andrews: couldn't keep and I told her, you need to fix this and it was very uncomfortable.

[00:09:17 - 00:09:22] Craig Andrews: She didn't want to and I understand and it made me uncomfortable because I could see

[00:09:22 - 00:09:27] Craig Andrews: the pain in her and I don't like seeing people in pain, but I told her, I said, I'll coach

[00:09:27 - 00:09:32] Craig Andrews: you through this, but you have to do it and it's going to be okay.

[00:09:32 - 00:09:33] Craig Andrews: It's going to work out fine.

[00:09:33 - 00:09:43] Craig Andrews: Well, you know my story in 2021, in August of 2021, I went into a coma and they expected

[00:09:43 - 00:09:44] Craig Andrews: me to die.

[00:09:44 - 00:09:46] Craig Andrews: Nobody expected me to live.

[00:09:46 - 00:09:52] Craig Andrews: There's about six people spread across the United States that believe that was going

[00:09:52 - 00:09:53] Craig Andrews: to make it.

[00:09:53 - 00:09:57] Craig Andrews: Most of them don't even know each other, but everybody else, including the doctors and

[00:09:57 - 00:10:02] Craig Andrews: including my family, every one of them thought I was going to die.

[00:10:02 - 00:10:07] Craig Andrews: That same employee that didn't want to have the hard conversations with clients, she went

[00:10:07 - 00:10:14] Craig Andrews: out and had the hardest conversation that she ever had with a client.

[00:10:14 - 00:10:18] Craig Andrews: And so in late August of 2021, she approached our clients and said, I need to tell you what's

[00:10:18 - 00:10:26] Craig Andrews: going on with Craig, he's in a coma and they're not expecting us expecting him to live.

[00:10:26 - 00:10:36] Craig Andrews: She ran my business when I was in my coma and during that time, we only lost one client.

[00:10:36 - 00:10:38] Craig Andrews: We did the hard work in advance.

[00:10:38 - 00:10:48] Craig Andrews: We practiced honesty, we practiced delivering hard messages as result she performed spectacularly.

[00:10:48 - 00:10:49] Craig Andrews: Have a good day.

[00:10:54 - 00:11:59] Craig Andrews: This is Craig Andrews. I want to thank you for listening to the Leaders & Legacies podcast. We’re looking for leaders to share how they’re making an impact beyond themselves. If that’s you, please go to allies4me.com/guest and sign up there. If you got something out of this episode, we would love you to share this episode on social media. Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone who would be a great guest, tag them on social media and let them know about the show, including the hashtag Leaders and Legacies. I love seeing your posts and suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don’t miss anything, please go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up, ratings, and reviews go a long way to help promote the show. It means a lot to me. It means a lot to my team. If you want to know more, please go to allies4me.com or follow me on LinkedIn. Thanks for listening. See you next time.