Creating a culture where people take responsibility

“The man who complains about the way the ball bounces is likely to be the one who dropped it.”– Lou Holtz

Last time, we discussed how to create a culture of accountability. In our discussion of this subject, we’ve ranged from the baseline of personal accountability to a broader organizational culture of accountability, to the battle-tested power of after action reviews. So, if the power of an accountable organization is so obvious, why aren’t we all doing it?

In “The Oz Principle,” a book by Craig Hickman (recently reissued in a revised and updated edition 10 years after its original publication), the overgrown roots of a victimization mentality is chronicled as one of the most corrosive forces in American business. Mr. Hickman pulls no punches in deriding the plight of victimization that he believes has a stranglehold on American industry.

How many of these lines have you heard during your business career?

* “That’s the way we’ve always done it.”
* “That’s not my department.”
* “Someone should have told me not to do that.”
* “Why didn’t you ask me?”
* “Nobody’s followed up on this. It can’t be that important.”

It’s fodder for a Saturday Night Live skit, isn’t it? And yet these excuses are so inculcated into the fabric of business organizations that the “who-done-it” definition of accountability often reigns supreme. Careful observers will note that the “who-done-it” syndrome is but a bumbling stepchild of the “blame game,” a playbook that is most often seen when something goes wrong, usually at the expense of overlooking a solution.

In many ways, organizations have become more focused on explaining their results than actually achieving them. Instead of focusing on accountability as a tool to get things done with better results, we’ve asked people to account for what they’ve already done. As a result, we’ve fostered an “after-the-fact” mentality instead of a “before-it’s-too-late” application of accountability.

One of the subtle themes embedded in the “I’m a victim” mentality is that circumstances prevent people from realizing their dreams. The infamous f-word – it’s not “fair” – empowers frustrated employees to expect a certain standard of equity and creates a real barrier to achieving demonstrable results.

The Winter Olympic Games illustrated the peaks and valleys of the blame game. Some unsuccessful athletes blamed the weather, the start times, the course and the judges. Others, like Apolo Anton Ohno, were clear in accepting the volatility and unpredictability of short track, embracing the good and the bad that naturally beset that sport. While uncontrollable forces are legitimate distractions, blaming them for our lack of success deflects our focus from the commitment and perseverance required for success.

“The Oz Principle” encourages taking responsibility for our own actions … and accountability for the actions of the teams on which we serve. Below the accountability line are the many excuses we hear every day from victims who do not own up to their responsibilities, which Mr. Hickman organizes into six familiar categories:

* Cover Your Tail
* Finger Pointing
* Wait & See
* Ignore / Deny
* Confusion – Tell me what to do next
* It’s not my job

All of us will find ourselves below the accountability line from time to time, but when we recognize that we’re falling below it, we must take ownership of our actions. Mr. Hickman’s approach to get out and stay out of the blame game are summarized by See it – Own It – Do It – Solve It.

It’s inevitable that we’ll return to these themes periodically since they represent the most vexing challenge faced by business leaders today – how to eradicate the victim mentality in their organizations and install a culture of accountability that will not only help them avoid dropping the ball – but ensure that when it falls, everyone will be diving to catch it.

KBO
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The North Bay Business Journal, a publication of the New York Times, is a weekly business newspaper which I have served as a regular columnist for the last two years. The Business Journal covers the North Bay area of San Francisco – from the Golden Gate bridge north, including the Wine Country of Sonoma and Napa counties.

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Article published – March 8, 2010: The electronic version of this article, as published by the North Bay Business Journal, is identical to this post and may be found here.

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Any related materials or articles referenced in the published column, or otherwise applicable, are referenced in this digital version of the article.

Creating a Culture of Accountability

“Nine-tenths of life’s serious controversies come from  misunderstanding.”– Louis Brandeis

“When is it no longer my responsibility to get people to complete their assignments … and where does their responsibility to perform begin?” a North Bay CEO asked me recently.

“Your responsibility never ends … and neither does theirs,” I said. “Your job is to work tirelessly to build a culture of accountability so that your team understands that being held accountable is the cornerstone of a strong, successful organization. It is not punitive.”

In this column recently, we’ve discussed personal accountability as the “singular touchstone of professional success over which we have the greatest control.” We’ve also discussed the After Action Report, a valuable teaching tool that reinforces accountability and inspires a culture of continuous improvement. A culture of accountability might be seen as the thread that connects our personal accountability – walking the talk – and the After Action Report – talking the walk. But what is it, really?

In simple terms, accountability is a willingness to accept responsibility for our actions. It’s being reliable and making certain that the commitments we make, from the perspective of others, have been kept. For a culture of accountability to prevail, each of us must make certain that those commitments are honest – and honored.

At the core of a culture of accountability is the requirement to set clear expectations. It’s not enough to say, “we’re expecting you to do a good job,” or “we’re counting on you to deliver the results we need” because those declarations lack specificity. The accountability process must begin with clear expectations so that everyone knows what “good job” and “needed results” mean. If you’ve ever sat down with your boss (or your shareholders or directors) during your performance review, you’ve probably often wondered why the expectations he thinks you missed weren’t very clear in the first place.

One time-honored tool to keep in your pocket is the S.M.A.R.T. acronym – Specific, Measurable, Accountable, Realistic and Trackable. In a culture of accountability, it’s OK to say “After we agree on an outline not later than noon on Tuesday, I’ll need the final report on my desk by 4 p.m. on Thursday.” There’s no doubt about the objective, the timeline or the intended result and it’s clear who owns the assignment. Applying the S.M.A.R.T guideline to every objective ensures that your expectations are unequivocally clear.

One proven enemy of this culture is a victimization mentality. There seem to be mitigating circumstances in everything we do, but a culture of accountability stresses, “what else can I do” instead of rationalizing “why it can’t be done.” You’ll find the victim’s mentality wherever you find people justifying their actions, excusing their ineffectiveness or rationalizing poor performance. Be eternally vigilant about victim’s stories, how circumstances prevented them from achieving the objective. Look for those who always want to know, “what else can I do?”

When people don’t meet clear expectations, ask them what they meant when they said “they were going to get that done”, or “what should I expect the next time you say you’ll get something done?” If it continues, it’s OK to say, “I’m losing confidence because” to reinforce your dissatisfaction and to pronounce the accountability bargain as broken. Do it productively and in a positive manner, but in all cases, do it so that the expectations contract you have set is clear and unequivocal.

As for that line between expectation and performance? A bright line only exists when good leaders follow S.M.A.R.T guidelines and set clear expectations and timelines. Once you’ve done that successfully, you’ve established a baseline from which you can effectively deal with an individual who fails to meet these objectives. In a culture of accountability, you can easily differentiate unacceptable employee performance from a failure to set clear expectations, and confidently make appropriate adjustments.

This is an ongoing process that is essential to achieve an accountable organization that creates a culture of trust, integrity and focus … and gets things done.

KBO.

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The North Bay Business Journal, a publication of the New York Times, is a weekly business newspaper which I have served as a regular columnist for the last two years. The Business Journal covers the North Bay area of San Francisco – from the Golden Gate bridge north, including the Wine Country of Sonoma and Napa counties.

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Article published – February 22, 2010: The electronic version of this article, as published by the North Bay Business Journal, is identical to this post and may be found here.

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Any related materials or articles referenced in the published column, or otherwise applicable, are referenced in this digital version of the article.

Some of you will remember an earlier post in the GTD context about the value of checklists. Now comes the book, The Checklist Manifesto, inspired by issues found in operating rooms but expanded to the many areas where simple checklists are invaluable.

Checklists couldn’t be simpler. No real technology involved, anyone can create one for anything … but imagine that an operating room added a simple 5 step checklist and reduced the level of infection related to IV tubes in the operating room from 11% to -0-!

You don’t believe the list is a real “no-brainer”? Here it is:

1. Wash your hands with soap
2. Sterilize the patient’s skin
3. Put sterile drapes over the entire patient
4. Wear a mask, gown, and gloves
5. Put a sterile dressing over incisions.

Not exactly rocket surgery, huh? You and I could have prepared that list if we thought about it a bit … and we probably thought they were already doing that in the operating room anyway, right?

I mean it’s a no-brainer … isn’t it?

Building a Business: The power of the After Action Report

“Thankfully, perseverance is a good substitute for talent..”– Steve Martin

Many years ago when we lived in the Midwest, we became very good friends with a young couple down the street. He was a fellow fraternity brother, from another college, but I remember him as a very capable physician with a unique ability to describe complex medical subjects in layman’s language.

One day, he asked me if I’d like to go to work with him on Saturday. He’d show me around, we’d have lunch, hang out. He couldn’t leave for lunch, but he would bring along some homemade sandwiches, bologna with lots of ketchup, he said, and I could sit in his pathology lab as he performed an autopsy … and while he was cutting and sawing, we would enjoy our lunch together. It was when he started laughing that I realized why my vision of an overloaded bologna sandwich, dripping with ketchup alongside an autopsy table, was kicking up a firestorm in my gut.

I think that’s how many business executives view an After Action Report (AAR) — a gruesome business designed to relive the pain of failed projects. The AAR is, contrarily, an undernourished sibling of accountability that is a highly effective tool to help us learn from our past performance and create a state of continuous improvement.

The U.S. Army is one organization that’s committed to After Action Reports, which may be described as seizing the opportunity to learn. From a modest introduction in the mid-1970s, the AAR and has become a vital part of military culture. In many ways, it resembles the Chalk Talks that many of us have experienced in sports, an opportunity to diagnose what happened and learn from it to improve future performance. During the NFL season, professional football teams generate real-time images from elevated cameras and send them to printers behind the player’s bench to allow quarterbacks and others to immediately diagnose formations and play results so they can make adjustments on the very next set of downs.

The AAR is another way to reinforce accountability across the organization, and can be easily implemented:

1. What was your intention? This step is vital to ensure that everyone is clear about the expectations that were set and the standards of success to be applied. The U.S. Army thinks of it in three separate components:

a. What are the tasks to be performed?

b. What are the conditions under which they’re likely to be performed?

c. What are the acceptable standards of success and how are they measured?

2. What really happened? This is not as easy as it seems, as different individuals will have varying recollections or experiences based on their vantage point. For widely distributed organizations, it’s exponentially more difficult to synthesize variant viewpoints and consolidate the intelligence scattered throughout the organization. Input from every level of the organization, coupled with objective and measured results, is essential to an accurate finding of what happened.

Facilitation skills are essential here. Army doctrine suggests spending 25 percent of the AAR time on these first two questions. While it’s tempting to jump to the diagnosis, the military has learned that clarity about the intentions as well as the expected results is fundamental to an informed and dispositive discussion of how it can be improved.

3. Why did it happen? This diagnostic stage begins the unvarnished evaluation of why the results differed from plan expectations. If you’re not willing to be honest and forthcoming as a leader, this phase will quickly unravel. To encourage the best diagnosis, it is vital to promote a no-penalty environment in which people at all levels will honestly report their findings and observations.

4. How would we do it differently next time? This final step is really inseparable from the diagnosis and gets 50 percent of the AAR time in the Army protocol. In this phase, focus on the things you can control and don’t be distracted by uncontrollable forces. Be sure to also identify what worked well, and what efforts and activities should be sustained. While it’s more difficult to tease apart those steps that worked well, it’s equally important to sustain those activities that lead to success.

Prompt feedback, often immediately after the action itself, e.g., the NFL football example, is also critical to the success of an AAR process. The quicker you gather feedback, the quicker improvements can be implemented, so regular and frequent sessions are essential. Use these sessions as a learning tool to encourage candid feedback, greater accountability and continuous improvement.

The AAR is a powerful and compelling tool, inexpensive to implement and simple to apply with not much more than keen observation and a systematic process. Successful organizations embed this into their culture of accountability to gain agility and improve performance. You should start today.

KBO.

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The North Bay Business Journal, a publication of the New York Times, is a weekly business newspaper which I have served as a regular columnist for the last two years. The Business Journal covers the North Bay area of San Francisco – from the Golden Gate bridge north, including the Wine Country of Sonoma and Napa counties.

******************************

Article published – February 8, 2010: The electronic version of this article, as published by the North Bay Business Journal, is identical to this post and may be found here.

******************************

Any related materials or articles referenced in the published column, or otherwise applicable, are referenced in this digital version of the article.

While there is certain to be a lot of political fallout and spin doctors massaging the message, it’s hard to argue that the health care reform razzle-dazzle isn’t part of it. As I’ve said before, I doubt that there’s a single American, let alone a U.S. Senator, who could even tell you, clearly and plainly, what the bill looks like today.

You can find other articles in Sword Tips discussing some of these provisions, and the lack of cost-saving provisions. I think what Americans resent is the enormous resources devoted to an omnibus bill of gargantuan proportions, unread by virtually all, that has jumped ahead of job creation and economic stability for so many Americans. I think the current Administration has been plagued by trying to do too much and taking their eye off the ball with respect to the economic stimulus necessary for job growth. Without that, Americans aren’t going to be comfortable with much of anything and certainly not something that threatens to cobble up the health care of those currently covered at an enormous cost that is barely estimable.

Alas, another reminder. Sharpen your focus on “what’s now” …  the most important issue … if you want people to pay attention to “what’s next”.

In Sword Tips, we’ve often remarked on the dismal job done by so many Boards of Directors, falling short of their fiduciary and ethical responsibilities and failing to hold the company’s leaders accountable for their performance as well as their conduct.

So, it’s no surprise that John Gillespie and David Zweig, have written “Money for Nothing“: How the Failure of Corporate Boards is Ruining American Business and Costing us Trillions”. You can find a review of the book here.

My advice? If you have no meaningful expectations from your Board, don’t have one. Keep grandma and your sister on your board. Have a nice dinner, some wine and keep telling each other how wonderful you are. When you wake up one morning and discover that your business is in the tank, you won’t need to call them on it. Just stay in front of the mirror a little longer.

Building a Business: Thinking strategically more than just tactical details

“The most serious mistakes are not being made as a result of wrong answers. The truly dangerous thing is asking the wrong questions.”– Peter Drucker

I have been working recently with a young CEO-in-waiting who is eager to move into the top spot. He recognizes, however, that his struggle to “think strategically” may be keeping him back. On a tactical level, he is very efficient, discharging the assignments given to him, working his way through his daily action list and dispatching players to their intended destinations. He’s proud of his accomplishments, as he should be, but he “can’t see the lawn for the blades of grass,” and is constantly wrestling with how to develop a strategic perspective.

Ironically, many executives bear a subconscious fear about actually getting to that strategic level. After all, it’s a little harder to figure out what to do than to simply — do. It’s more demanding to establish the flight plan than to follow it. Creating the plan also demands more personal accountability, the conundrum that befuddles so many executives in the first place.

What does it mean to “think strategically?” Most executives seem to recognize when they’re not doing it, but don’t know how to attain that perspective. They get bogged down in the tactical details of their daily agenda, turning the dials but unsure about which ones belong on the dashboard. There are several approaches to this dilemma, but let me offer a handful of simple triggers, any one of which may ignite those strategic brainwaves.

Elevate and Extend. Write this phrase on your hand, and look at it whenever you feel like you’re slogging your way through the tactical quicksand. One goofy image that works for me is of a lawn sprinkler. You’re encamped among the blades of grass, sitting quietly, and suddenly you’re activated. What happens? Your head pops up, you begin to spread your tendrils, look out over the lawn and begin anointing your mates with those coveted drops of water. Now that you’re above ground level, you can see that you’re part of a lawn rather than a random assemblage of shoots. The lawn sprinkler, once barely noticeable, now has perspective over a wider domain and engages the world quite differently.

Control versus Perspective. Imagine that you’re the captain of a submarine. Most of your time is devoted to the critical functions of controlling your ship, maintaining healthy living conditions in very close quarters while pursuing a typically risky mission. Unless you “up periscope” regularly, your entire world will be squid, underwater terrain … and lots of water. A periscope provides perspective, a way to see where you are in relation to other objects, to see your role as part of a broader engagement and to remind you that there is a much bigger world with which you must remain familiar if you’re to successfully accomplish your mission.

The GTD methodology, to which I’ve frequently referred in this column, also includes a framework called the “horizons of focus,” each level of which elevates and extends to an even broader perspective over the preceding levels. Current actions representing a daily agenda become elements of larger projects, which in turn, fit into an even higher level of focus on areas of responsibility. As we ascend this ladder, we consider our goals, then our vision and, ultimately, our purpose in life, with each level offering a higher-level perspective

“Why” not “How.” Most of the time, tacticians are focused on how to get something done. They have their assignments, they know what they’re supposed to do, and they concentrate on how they’re going to “get ‘er done.” Asking “why” generates an entirely different set of questions that inspire the strategic synapses to consider the goals and objectives to which the tactical assignments apply. As a business leader, you need to set the agenda rather than follow it, so constantly asking “why” and “why not” will disengage you from a narrow adherence to a daily checklist.

Effectiveness versus. efficiency. Most of us pride ourselves on our efficiency — our ability to accomplish tasks with optimal time and effort. It’s a tactical focus on the means of achievement. Contrarily, effectiveness is focused on favorable results, with less attention on the “how” and more concentration on the desired outcome. To think more strategically, focus on becoming more effective rather than simply more efficient.

Thinking strategically doesn’t come easily to most executives, but you can make real progress if you work at it. Integrate your tactical agenda with a broader perspective to be sure your ladder is up against the right wall.

KBO.

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The North Bay Business Journal, a publication of the New York Times, is a weekly business newspaper which I have served as a regular columnist for the last two years. The Business Journal covers the North Bay area of San Francisco – from the Golden Gate bridge north, including the Wine Country of Sonoma and Napa counties.

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Article published – January 18, 2010: The electronic version of this article, as published by the North Bay Business Journal, is identical to this post and may be found here.

******************************

Any related materials or articles referenced in the published column, or otherwise applicable, are referenced in this digital version of the article.

Simple concept, Provocative Ideas. Free lemonade, anyone?

The NY Times recently published a story, The Psychology Behind Putting Off what can be Enjoyed Now“, referring to recent studies exploring our strange impulse to put off what can be enjoyed today to another day. Not a good habit of ours ….

The story concludes with a reminder of the advice given in the movie, Sideways, to Miles who has been holding onto a ‘61 Cheval Blanc so long it’s in danger of going bad. Of course, he ways he’s waiting for a special occasion but his friend Maya deftly responds: “The day you open a ‘61 Cheval Blanc? That’s the special occasion.”

Carpe diem, my friends. Now!

I did read The Power of Unwitting Workers recently, though, and thanks to so many of you for contributing … unwittingly … to energy conservation and other worthy, albeit clandestine, activities. Like the other side of the pillow, this article is pretty cool.

It describes several circumstances where employees, and others … unknown to them … contribute benefits of all kinds. Power Walking to take advantage of the piezoelectric effect (how about that 25¢ word?). Would you believe that all of the CAPTCHAs  we complete almost every day have helped to transcribe nearly 150,000 books a year (or that CAPTCHA stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”). Read the for more interesting stuff … and, students, if you’re planning to take the SAT anytime soon, thanks for working your butt off to figure out 10% of the questions that aren’t scored at all.

BTW, with the CAPTCHA acronym construct described above, it does gives all of us a chance to create any old acronym we want, doesn’t it? How about IBBSTWIFLI (“I’ll be back sometime tomorrow when I feel like it.”)