Owning a small mistake early builds the trust you’ll need the day you make a big one.

Trust gets built in cheap moments so that it can be spent in expensive ones. Saying you broke the thing or forgot the order, before anybody has found out, shows people what your reporting looks like when nothing much is at stake. Then one day something large goes wrong, the first question is whether your account can be relied on, and the answer is already on file.

The next thing you get wrong this week, say it yourself within the hour, along with what you intend to do about it. Skip the long explanation. One sentence of ownership carries further than a paragraph of context.