Category Archives: Accountability

The Practice of Competence

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“When you are in the hunt for a new team member,” I asked, “what are you looking for? You have a whole pool of people from which to choose. What are you looking for?”

“Experience,” Leo said. “The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.”

I waited. “And what if that past behavior was incompetent?”

“Well, that’s different,” he replied. “I need someone whose past behavior was competent.”

“So, how do you tell?” I wanted to know.

“There is always skill,” Leo nodded. “If they have the skill, that would make them a good team member.”

“Have you ever known a candidate who talked a good game, but in the thick of battle became mercilessly useless?”

“Oh, yeah,” he agreed. “They have to be able to do more than talk. More than technical know-how. They have to be more than enthusiastic. They have to be able to do the work.”

“The best measure of performance is always performance,” I said. “So, what creates performance? Technical knowledge plays a role, it’s necessary, but not sufficient.”

“The best people on the team not only understand the technical part, but more importantly they practice. Day in and day out, until it becomes a routine grooved behavior.” Leo began to rock back and forth.

“So, when you ask about skills, you have to ask for more than technical knowledge. You have to ask about practice. What is your frequency of practice? What is your duration of practice? What is your depth of practice? What is your accuracy in practice? Because if you don’t practice a skill, what happens to competence?”

Life Happens or Does It?

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“I can’t believe what just happened,” Cora explained. “We have been waiting for six weeks for a special material. Today, it landed on our loading dock, and it’s the wrong material.”

“And?” I asked.

“It’s got a six week lead time. We’re two weeks beyond deadline already,” she lamented. “The customer calls me twice a day. Yesterday, I told them the material would be here today. And, now it’s going to be another six weeks. I checked the SKU number and saw the mistake we made in ordering.”

“It seems like this is happening a lot, lately?” I made a question out of a statement.

“I just don’t know what it happening to us. Bad luck, I guess.” Cora looked disoriented.

“Is that the way life is? A series of things that happen to you?” I wanted to know.

“Yes, isn’t that just the way life is?”

“Depends on the way you see things,” I nodded. “If you see life as a series of things that happen to you, things will continue to happen to you. If you see things as a series of accomplishments, you will behave differently.”

“How so?” Cora looked at the ceiling, then back to me.

“If this project is just something that happens to you, then the project will take its own twists and turns before it ends eight weeks late. If this project is a series of accomplishments that you personally drive, what changes?”

“You mean, we might double-check SKU numbers?” she smiled.

“Double-check SKU numbers, create a project schedule that accommodates real lead times on materials, call the customer before they call you to manage expectations. It’s all in the way you see the world and how you participate.”

Permission and Competence

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“That makes sense,” Nadia agreed. “I have been guilty of empowering my team to do things they did not have the capability to do. Didn’t turn out so well.”

“Yes, that weasel word of empowerment has very little to do with granting permission,” I replied. “Empowerment, or rather authority to make a specific decision has more to do with competence. It is competence that creates authority, not permission.”

Authority and Competence

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“So, accountability and authority go together?” Nadia asked.

“You cannot have the accountability for an outcome, unless you have the authority to make the decision that goes with it,” I nodded. “You cannot have the authority to make the decision without the accountability for the outcome. So, yes, they go together. One more element, however. Do not give someone the authority to make a decision for which they do not have the competence to make.”

“What do you mean,” she asked.

“Do not give a shipping clerk the authority to make the decision on an engineering spec for a raw material. The shipping clerk may receive it from a vendor, but it is likely the competence to determine the correct specification for the part lies with someone else. Be careful who you delegate authority to.”

Permission?

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“But, I want to empower my team,” Nadia explained. “They shouldn’t have to ask permission for every little thing they do.”

“Do you think empowerment is all about permission?” I asked. “Empowerment is such a weasel word. What are you really trying to accomplish?”

“I just want them to know that I trust them, that I have good intentions toward them,” she replied.

“That you trust them in general? Or that you trust them with something specific?” I pressed.

“Trust them in general I guess,” Nadia shook her head. “To trust them with something specific, I would have to know what the specific thing was.”

“Now, you have clarity,” I chuckled. “Trusting someone in general is what makes empowerment such a weasel word. It is only operative under specific circumstances. I would rather replace the word empowerment with two other words, authority and accountability. Under a specific circumstance, you, as a manager and at your discretion, delegate the authority to make a decision. When you delegate the authority, you also delegate the accountability that goes with the decison. You can’t have one without the other.”

A Zone of Judgement

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“I tried it,” Bowen shook his head. “I got stuffed. The team resisted. They told me everything was fine, that I was worried about nothing. They said, if my manager wasn’t happy with the team’s output, that was their problem. If my manager didn’t like it, he could just fire the whole team. They thought that was funny, knowing we would never just fire the whole team.”

“Okay,” I nodded. “So, what does that tell you about comfort zones?”

Bowen thought. “Comfort zones infect the way we think. It’s like a habit, so grooved that anything out of the zone must be wrong. The comfort zone looks like a position of judgement, self protecting the way we have always done things.”

“So, while habits help us routinize a process,” I said, “that habit lulls us into a sense of comfort that prevents us from seeing obstacles on the periphery. We ignore those obstacles until they become front and center. So comfortable is our zone, we may continue to deny the obstacle, call it unimportant, maybe not fair.”

Bowen looked straight at me. “I run a fine line. I want to create habits to ensure a consistency of output, that we are doing things the best way, efficiently. But, we also have to watch out that our comfort zone doesn’t cause us to deny new problems or circumstances that require a new response outside of our habit.”

I smiled. “And, how do you imagine getting your team to that point?”

Comfort Zones

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“I call it constructive discontent,” I nodded.

“What do you mean?” Bowen asked.

“You wonder why things don’t improve around your team, you seem to always fall just short of expectations, and you can never figure out why.”

“But, I have a very experienced team,” he said. “They know how things are done around here. There just always seems to be some curve ball that throws us off our game.”

“Sounds like things are comfortable, maybe too easy. Until you get the curve ball? Why do you think the curve ball throws you off your game?”

“It’s unexpected, out of the ordinary, a variance in our routine. When it happens, and it happens regularly, we get off balance, like a deer in the headlights.”

“And, you are not happy about this?” I smiled.

“No,” Bowen frowned. “Most of the time, things run really smooth, but these hiccups in our process seem to constantly put us behind.”

“Perhaps, it is your comfort zone, the comfort zone for the team that prevents an appropriate response to the hiccup. Perhaps, you should create some artificial hiccups, change the pace, increase a quality spec, move the deadline, so your team could practice being out of their comfort zone. Have your team create a stress test exercise, and then, practice. Practice being out of your comfort zone.”

What’s the Problem?

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“You have a look of consternation on your face,” I said.

“Correct,” Adriana replied. “I just got back our survey results on my customer service team. Not so good.”

“What do you understand from the survey?” I wanted to know.

“I know we have the best trained team in the company,” she started. “We constantly go over the process, the rules, the disclaimers. We role play situations to make sure we are following the training. The team does great. They do exactly what they are supposed to do.”

“Where’s the rub?” I asked.

“One of the survey questions asked ‘Did we solve the problem?’ We only solved the problem 23% of the time. So 77% of the time, the customer said no.”

“So, you have very strict guidelines, and your customer service team follows those guidelines with a high level of compliance. Tell me, do you think the guidelines were created to solve customer problems? Let’s look at the first two steps. First, smile when taking a call. Second, use the customer’s first name.”

“Yes, those are important,” Adriana defended. “We want the conversation to be friendly. We want the customer to feel like they are talking to a real person.”

“But, just because I am friendly and know the customer’s first name does not mean I have a solution to their problem.”

Who Is Driving This Bus?

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“I’m frustrated,” Pauline pouted.

“How so?” I asked.

“I can’t seem to get my team to see things the way I see them,” she nodded.

“Tell me more,” I smiled.

“The team’s priorities seem a bit misguided,” she replied. “I can’t figure out what drives them. They are casual about showing up for work, they knock off early for lunch, they live for the afternoon break and race out at 5p even if we are in the middle of a run.”

“It sounds like what drives you and what drives the team are different,” I said. “So, tell me, what drives you?”

“I’m not really sure,” Pauline wondered out loud. “Definitely different, but I’m not sure I can tell you what drives me.”

“If you cannot figure out what drives you, how can you expect to figure out what drives another person?”

More Control or Less

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“It is very difficult to cede my power as a CEO,” Suzanne shook her head from side to side. “It’s my company, my accountability.”

“You are still accountable. All crumbs lead to the CEO,” I said. “And, what changes when you see your company, not as a hierarchy of power, but, a hierarchy of competence?”

“First of all, I cannot promote people into positions because of their seniority, their loyalty or their current position of power,” she was thinking out loud, knowing I was listening.

“Promote people to a position of what?” I asked.

“A position of authority,” Suzanne replied.

“Authority to do what?” I pressed.

“Authority to make decisions,” she relented.

“Now, we are getting somewhere,” I smiled. “You begin to see your organization through the lens of competence. You cannot promote someone to a position of authority, to make decisions, unless they are competent to make those decisions. If they are competent to make those decisions, are you, as the CEO in more control or less control?”