Why You Need a Weekly ‘Failure Review’

Most wholesale businesses review what went well each week.

But the best ones also review what went wrong—and more importantly, why.

A weekly ‘Failure Review’ doesn’t mean finger-pointing or blame. It means building a culture where problems are surfaced early, learned from, and fixed fast.

Here’s what to do:

Once a week, ask your team:

• What went wrong last week?
• What caused it?
• How can we stop it from happening again?

It could be a mispick, a late dispatch, a customer complaint, or an issue with receiving. Whatever it is, talk through it. Identify the root cause. Document it. Then agree on the fix—whether it’s retraining, changing a process, or adjusting how something’s stored.

The goal isn’t perfection. The goal is progress.

Most operational issues aren’t one-off events—they’re patterns waiting to be spotted. And if you don’t actively review failures, they’ll quietly repeat week after week, draining your time, money, and morale.

By making failure reviews routine, you normalise continuous improvement—and give your team permission to speak up when something breaks.

Ignore your failures, and they’ll keep costing you.
Learn from them, and they’ll fuel your growth.