My thoughts on critical cultural shift that every Organization must go through. I believe this Article would lead to some constructive debates within your teams and organization going forward but also be ready for tough arguments when the points were not taken positively.
How many of you have heard the following statement in your workplace “We don’t finger point each other or get into blame game”? Probably you had also thought that this is the great culture. Let’s see the following example and how most of us would react to such situation.
What would you do when your Team failed to deliver what it had promised in the last quarterly release? May be the reason is no single but multiple factors. Most of the Teams today would immediately call for a Retrospection meeting between various stakeholders and discuss the situation over half a day meeting and come up with the list of lessons learned. Needless to mention about the fancy colorful sticky notes, whiteboard drawings, so called “brainstorming” moments, etc.
Wait! What’s wrong about this!!
Well, there is nothing wrong but certainly there is some important puzzle piece missing or being ignored. Let’s be honest and ask ourselves a few questions.
How many retrospective meetings that we had during the last years? Do we really remember every lesson learned? Did we really identify the one root cause of the delay or every such failure?
Most importantly did we ever notice ‘one person’ who felt responsible for the entire situation and nominated himself/herself to ensure that we won’t end up in the same state again??
Let me tell me you something — The team who thinks they are nicer to each other at the time of failures is basically preparing to cause an even bigger damage to each other in a long run by poor results. It’s not a damage done just to this particular team but to an entire Organization as every individual team result is important for the overall revenue and success of an Organization.
The idea is certainly not to punish failures. I fully appreciate the cultural shift that Industries going through by not finger pointing on the course of failure, but the point is How often one of your employees felt confident, responsible and bold enough to claim accountable for such failures. It doesn’t matter how many lessons you had learned without letting one strongly feel responsible and accountable.
We have achieved only one side of the cultural shift, until we see more and more of us come forward and take accountability on the failures, the circle is not complete yet.
So now you know that this cultural shift is good, but that’s not complete yet. Most of the organization which seems like avoiding finger pointing or blaming is still in fact making an unconscious mistake of moving away from Accountability and the nature of strong responsibility. This needs to be fixed.
Here is my proposal. The following cannot be achieved without the support from Management and the commitment from Employees. Both are important and they should go hand in hand. The Management should strongly advocate the Employees to have accountability on the execution, show them that the work environment is safe enough for them to be vulnerable and accept their failures. Ensure no retrospection meeting is complete until one of your Employees claim accountable with reasonable update (share of consequences), nominate himself/herself for the failure and start working towards fixing it. Rewards need to be created for every accountable Employee irrespective of their results. Special Trainings should be arranged to support the accountable Employee to improve his/her performance. ‘An Employee who feels Accountable for every action and consciously work towards fixing his/her failures is clearly a Leader in the making’.
A warning hint for every Leader: In the course of Failure when you realize that nobody from your Team claimed accountable, it’s a clear sign that nobody cared for success in the first place.
Now as an Employee, first you need to build the strong sense of what it means to be accountable and understand the consequences of your work towards the results of your own, your team and on your overall Organization. Remember it never stops at acknowledging your mistakes alone, you must show your actions on fixing them. Start with the habit of acknowledging your failures in every possible instance and show your Team and your Management the measures that you have taken to ensure that the same mistake never repeats again. Be honest and seek help from your Management when you need time, training and exercises to prepare yourself for the next challenge.
A warning hint for every Employee: If your management or organization punishes you for your failure, that’s a sign they don’t need you anymore either because they don’t embrace Failure culture, or you have committed the same mistake for the second time.
Hope I have provoked some interesting thoughts on your mind. Let me know what you feel otherwise It’s high time that you schedule a discussion with your team to take your thoughts in to an action. I am curiously looking forward to learning how your organization handles these kinds of situations, feel free to write below your opinion / experiences.
#organizationculture #accountability #managementlessons
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.
