In an advertising campaign around the end of 2009, Domino’s featured its customers’ complaints. One said the crust tasted like cardboard. The company publicly admitted past mistakes and introduced a new recipe, with a garlic-seasoned crust and a blend of mozzarella and provolone.
The company asked customers to try again. Patrick Doyle, who became CEO as the campaign began, knew the risk. “If people tried (the pizza) again and they had a bad experience, we’d be done.”
In 2018 two Black men in a Philadelphia Starbucks were arrested for trespassing. They were released without charges. CEO Kevin Johnson apologized to them personally and spent days “learning what we did wrong and the steps we need to take to fix it.”
On the afternoon of May 29, Starbucks closed more than 8,000 U.S. stores and its corporate offices for racial-bias education.
On February 14, 2007, a storm grounded JetBlue at New York’s JFK airport. Some passengers waited for as long as six hours on planes before they could return to a gate. CEO David Neeleman wrote to customers: “We are sorry and embarrassed. But most of all, we are deeply sorry.”
He also apologized on YouTube, and on February 21 JetBlue issued a Customer Bill of Rights with fixed compensation for delays. By general consensus, the company came out of it stronger. Neeleman did not. About three months later he stepped down as CEO at the board’s recommendation.
In the fall of 1982 seven people in the Chicago area died after taking poisoned Tylenol capsules. Johnson & Johnson recalled 31 million bottles, worth about $100 million. Tylenol’s share of the market fell to under a tenth.
On November 11, 1982, the company introduced triple-sealed, tamper-resistant packaging. The bottles had plastic seals over their caps and foil seals over their mouths. Within about a year Tylenol had regained most of its market.
The capsules had apparently been tampered with after they reached the shelves. Johnson & Johnson repaired the trust anyway.
Alcoholics Anonymous writes the repair of a breach as a sequence of steps. Step 8: “Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.”
Step 9: “Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.” Step 10: “Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.”
On a Sunday night in April 2017, a passenger, David Dao, was dragged off a full United Airlines flight from Chicago to Louisville. The first statement from CEO Oscar Munoz apologized for “having to re-accommodate these customers.” A second described the passenger as “disruptive and belligerent.”
Munoz then called the event “truly horrific” and said United would “take full responsibility.” The airline promised a review “to fix what’s broken.” It stopped removing seated passengers except for safety or security, raised the payment for giving up a seat voluntarily to as much as $10,000 and settled with Dao.
On August 17, 1998, Bill Clinton admitted a relationship with Monica Lewinsky that “was not appropriate.” In the same speech he attacked the investigation: “It is time to stop the pursuit of personal destruction …”
On September 11, at a breakfast with religious leaders, he agreed that his first remarks had been “not contrite enough.” “I don’t think there is a fancy way to say that I have sinned.” He spoke of “genuine repentance — a determination to change and to repair breaches of my own making.”
In November 1986 Ronald Reagan said he had not traded arms for hostages. His approval fell from 67% to 46%, the largest single drop for any president. On March 4, 1987, he spoke from the Oval Office: “My heart and my best intentions still tell me that’s true; but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.”
“There are reasons why it happened, but no excuses. It was a mistake. I take full responsibility for my own actions and for those of my Administration.” He named a new national security adviser, a new chief of staff and a nominee for CIA director. His approval recovered.
In 2018 Pennsylvania passed the country’s first Clean Slate law. A year later it became the first state to seal criminal records automatically for everyone who qualifies, without an application.
At launch the state expected about 2.5 million cases to be sealed in the first month.
Venture capitalists do not rely only on the references a founder provides. They make what they call back-channel references, “the unofficial calls VCs make to people who know a founder but weren’t listed as references.”
Founders check investors the same way. One venture firm suggests founders ask an investor’s past founders: “Would you take this investor’s money again?”