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Excuses happen because people don't want to be blamed. If your team had an excuses problem, it's a response to a blame problem: when a problem is identified, pe
by kerkeslager 10y ago
Excuses happen because people don't want to be blamed. If your team had an excuses problem, it's a response to a blame problem: when a problem is identified, people aren't looking for solutions, they're looking for someone to blame.
Saying "no excuses" and "we're holding people accountable" might fix the excuses problem, but it exacerbates the blame problem. "Holding people accountable" is just blaming people harder and hoping that will pressure then into perfection. It might work for a little while, but it's unsustainable. People will crack. This is especially bad in this story because it's literally coupled with a threat of termination.
The real solution, I think, is to not play the blame game. Instead of "whose fault is this" you can just operate in facts: "what happened", "how can we fix it", "how can we avoid it in the future". Sometimes the facts reflect badly on someone ("he showed up high and made the wrong decision") but more often there's no blame needed to address the problem ("he made the wrong decision because nobody trained him"). Instead of creating a culture where people turn against each other to "hold each other accountable" for problems, you want to create a culture where people team up to solve problems.
The story here is a success story, but I don't think it can be attributed to the "no excuses" rule--I've seen similar policies fail miserably. Instead, I'd attribute their success to their encouragement to identify problems early and ask for help. But that probably could have been done with less friction if they had addressed the blame problem.
- crooked-v 10y agoThe treatment of airplane crashes comes to mind here for me. Crash studies look for cultural and technical improvements that reduce the risk of the same thing happening again, as even "pilot error" ultimately points to some problem in education or work environment.
- m-j-fox 10y agoThat, and the pilot is rarely around to take any blame.
- baylisscg 10y agoBut there is the flight recorder which let's you both see the state of the plane and what the pilots were doing. Thinking about it many roles where people make major decisions independently have a concept of records being kept either automatically or as close to the event as possible for later forensic use.
- k2xl 10y agoI couldn't agree more with this comment - and maybe I have a case of confirmation bias, but it's precisely the way I manage my team. Putting blame on someone doesn't help make problems go away - I've found that it just makes people defensive and makes the problem worse. By setting a tone with questions like "What happened? How can we fix this problem from happening in future?" the team will end up finding solutions with technology or process. As a manager, I feel you're job is to try and get your team to problem solve - using their tools and knowledge to come up with solutions. In the example from the comment above, if someone is showing up high, or doing something really bad, then it's up to the manager to have the discussion about with the employee. Obviously if bad patterns repeat themselves then that's ground for termination.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]