“He always has an excuse,” Rachel continued. “Every time I attempt to hold him accountable, whether it is to meet a deadline or turn in the work complete, he always has an excuse. Sometimes, I think he spends more time creating the excuse than completing the project.”

“Which excuses are the ones that you believe?” I ask.

“What do you mean. Sometimes they are excuses, sometimes they are reasons.”

“So, there is a difference between an excuse and a reason?”

“Well, sometimes there are circumstances beyond his control. Sometimes there are very real reasons for missing a deadline.”

“And those are the one you believe?”

“That’s not the point,” Rachel pushed back. “The question is, how can I hold someone accountable who ALWAYS has a legitimate reason for failure?”

“Rachel, the excuse you accept as a reason, is the one that you believe in the most. The more you, as a manager, believe in the excuse, the more it becomes a legitimate reason. It’s a puddle YOU jumped in off the high diving board. Does it matter whether its an excuse or a legitimate reason? You are still in the same place, with a missed deadline. At that point, what really matters, certainly not the excuse?”

“What matters is getting the project finished,” she flatly stated. “I need to know what the next action is, to get the project finished.”

“Then, if you are listening to excuses, or reasons for failure, you are listening for the wrong thing. You are asking the wrong question. If I tell you a project will be late, do you care why?”

“No, I want to know what it will take to deliver the project on time, in spite of the reason.”

“That’s a much better question. So, get off the high diving board. Don’t ask WHY? Ask, what’s your next action.”

“What do you mean – No surprises?” Rachel quizzed. “My team member must know that this conversation is coming. Everyone is constantly correcting his mistakes, making him do re-work.”

“So, you want to keep him guessing? You see, surprise works both ways. As his manager, you are surprised when he underperforms, fails to meet a deadline or turns in work with mistakes. What happens to your trust, when you, as a manager, are Surprised?”

“The trust level goes down,” Rachel replied. “It’s at the point now, where there is almost no trust at all.”

“So, as the manager, you are surprised when your team member fails to meet a deadline, and your team member is going to be surprised when you have an accountability conversation with him?”

Rachel nodded, silently, her eyes darting back in her brain. Finally, she spoke. “And we don’t trust each other. So, how do I prevent surprises when I go into this accountability conversation?”

“Pretty simple, really. No surprises, no ambushes. When you schedule the conversation, tell him the subject of the conversation will be about his current performance on the Phoenix project and the improvements we need going forward.”

The blood was draining from Rachel’s face. The truth does that, sometimes.

“And what if your team gets ahead of the production schedule during the day? Should that be part of the agreement you have with them?” I asked.

“Oh, they never get ahead,” Gail disagreed.

“Sure they do. When you post the production schedule, you allow for line changeovers, material inspection, and machine slowdowns. There are days when everything goes right, the stars line up. When they get ahead, what should your team do?”

Gail had never considered this. “I guess, it would be the same deal. If they get behind, or if they get ahead, they should come and find me.”

“Because, what decisions would you make, as a manager, if your team is ahead of schedule?”

“I could throw a pizza party,” Gail laughed. “Seriously, I could pull a couple of people over to another project, to machine maintenance, there are always secondary priorities.”

“And your team doesn’t know about these secondary priorities?”

“It’s not that I am hiding things from them, but we always have some design prototype we are working on. Short term, my team needs to get the daily production out, but if I can put a couple of people on a prototype for a half-hour, we might have a brand new product for our sales team. We have a management briefing every week from our R and D department where I find out about special projects.”

“And who decides these priorities on the floor?”

“I do,” Gail nodded. “It’s a critical part of my role, to coordinate both daily production and special projects. I have to use my best judgment.”

“That’s funny,” Gail laughed. “Usually, when I have the production meeting and I find out the team is behind, I yell at them. But if they find me, whenever we are five units behind, we can do something about it, in real time, this is different.”

“How so?” I asked.

“Well, I can fire up another workstation, bring in one more line person, or I can look at my overtime budget, maybe we can work a little more that day, or I can even look at the customer order. Some customers, we have an arrangement where we can short-ship.”

“So, you, as the manager, can make a decision, solve the problem?”

Gail was nodding. “Yes.”

“And just to be clear. Your team cannot make those decisions.”

“No. They are not in a position to know the priority of work through the floor. That is sometimes fluid depending on direction we get from the sales department. And my overtime budget is precious. I have to consider several factors before I touch that budget. And to make a decision to short-ship a customer is delicate. It has to be the right customer and the right circumstance. No, those are my decisions, as the manager.”

“It’s a contract,” I explained. “When your team gets behind, it is up to them to pick up the pace. That is why your feedback loop has to let them know how many units produced versus the target.”

“So, if they are only a couple of units behind, they can probably make that up. You see, usually, I don’t find out they are behind until it’s too late,” Gail described.

“Of course not. They don’t want to get yelled at. But you don’t have time to monitor the production rate, so when you find out, that’s why it’s too late. Your team, on the other hand, is always monitoring production rate. They are in the best position to know when they are behind, or ahead.”

“So, I strike a deal with them. Every time they get a certain number of units behind, and five units is the right number, that’s when things get out of hand. Every time they get five units behind, they have to find me.”

“That’s the contract. Now, what are you going to do when they find and tell you they are five units behind?” I asked.

I could tell Gail was uncomfortable.

“Do you trust your team?” I asked.

“Of course, I do,” Gail snapped without blinking.

“Then why don’t you turn your control system into a feedback loop so your team can see the production pace through the day?”

“But what if they really get behind and I don’t know about it,” she pushed back. “There will be hell to pay with my boss if something goes wrong and I don’t know about it.”

“Do you trust your team?” I asked again.

Gail was slower to respond this time. “Well, yes,” she nodded.

“Then strike an agreement with your team,” I replied. “You figure out the threshold of the pace, so if they get ten units behind or five units behind, whatever you are comfortable with, that your team is required to pull you in to make a decision.”

“And so if they are only four units behind?”

“Then, it is within the discretionary judgment of the team, to adjust their own pace to make up the four units. But if it slips to five units, they call you.”

The color was coming back into Gail’s face.

“I am in the best position to judge the pace and quality from our production team,” Gail explained. “My control system collects the data and I get that report.”

“And when you get that report, if the pace is behind, what can you do about it?” I asked.

“I can call a production meeting and stress how important it is that we stay on track.” Gail stopped. “It seems I have those meetings every couple of days.”

“Why don’t you stop? Stop the meetings?”

“I can’t do that,” she gasped. “All hell would break loose and the team would never know how behind they are.”

“I thought you said you had a control system that monitored production output? Why don’t you let your team monitor the control system, and not every couple of days, let them monitor it in real time?”

Gail was almost trembling. In her mind, she was losing control.

“Gail, who is in the best position to take immediate corrective action if we are behind schedule? The only thing you can do is call a meeting.”