A pile of cash works to reduce errors.

This just in: we’re human. And as humans, we are subject to making mistakes. Sad, but true.

Fortunately, our team is very focused on ensuring errors in our client work are avoided at all costs…so they are rare occurrence. Still, they happen. And they are expensive in both profit lost and harm to client trust. Most mistakes, of course, are caused by trying to do too much to fast or skipping protocols because deadlines or some anomaly seems to require it. These we call “dumb errors.” Errors that don’t come from trying something new or innovative or challenging. We want to end those “dumb errors.”

That’s why one of our initiatives for 2010 is a renewed focus on avoid all errors. It’s a lofty goal (see sentence #1), but something work talking about directly — many companies don’t.

To that end, we launched a new program this week. We are setting aside $6,000 as a “dumb error” bonus. The cost of any dumb errors will be subtracted from this $6,000. Whatever is left and the end of the year (we hope it is all of it) is shared among team members.

Yes, we know that people aren’t primarily motivated by money. Dumb errors already rarely happen around here because of the simple fact that we care. Still, we thought the pile of cash was a fun, visual to reinforce the cost of errors to our shop.