Dear Trebuchet Group,
While we’re doing better than some companies - good pipeline, lots of orders - every time we get close to on-time delivery, some completely avoidable mistakes cause us to miss our targets. There’s a shared financial bonus for everyone if we meet customer needs, so our efforts should be aligned. Yet everyone seems to point fingers instead of taking responsibility for results. It’s like people would rather blame instead of win.
- Can’t Stop Shaking My Head
Dear Shaking My Head,
I get it. You have a system that is built to encourage people to be successful together, and yet people seem more concerned about not being at fault for what’s holding the company back.
A few phrases we hear often when working with clients are like “If people just weren’t so peopley…” - followed by:
“…we could get some work done around here”
or “…my job would be so much easier”
or “…I could sleep better at night.”
Lots of leaders reading along are likely nodding their heads in sympathetic agreement.
The Blame Game
When my team and I see this in clients (psst…this happens more than most people realize) blame has somehow been woven into the culture. Rarely intentional, blame cultures often kindle in reaction to a problem or failure, beginning with a leader who says: “We need to know who did this so we can help them know not to do it again.” And it often ends up with so many people protecting themselves that collective results suffer.
My guess is conversations at your business around problems may start with “Who” more than “What.”
As in, “Who did this? Who didn’t stop this?” versus “What happened here?”
As a engineer trained to ask “Why?” five times to determine the real root cause of a problem, it could seem the quickest and best way to solve problems is pointing out where people are making mistakes and asking “Why can’t you/we do things right?”
On its surface, that question is a completely reasonable request for improvement. Yet most humans don’t want to be the problem. So we’ll pass the hot potato to another person to take the focus off ourselves.
One way to start shifting this common behavior is counter-intuitive: focus on what’s going well first.
What You Pay Attention to Grows
Mushy, toxic positively will get you nowhere. What I’m talking about is shining your attention on what’s working well first with real, earnest compliments to then have the goodwill and energy to get better.
Most people think this is a compliment: “Hey, thanks for the great job yesterday. It helps us all and I appreciate it.”
An real, earnest compliment is different, and includes the following:
A very specific (recent) helpful behavior
The real impact on the business and/or the team
The real impact on you personally
Here’s an example:
“Thank you for finding out what was getting in the way of yesterday’s shipment to XYZ customer so it made it out on the truck. You’re helping our team hit our goal of 100% on-time shipments, and that will help everyone in the company earn our bonus. I really want our company to win together, and you’re making it more likely that will happen.”
When you give an earnest compliment like this, it literally rewires pathways in people’s brains to make that behavior more likely.
If you’re able to shine your attention on what’s working more often, people will begin doing more of the behaviors you and the rest of the team want and need.
Eventually, you can rewire the culture to seek success together, instead of avoiding blame.
But What About the Things That Are Going Wrong?
When things are going wrong and something needs to change, it’s critical for you to speak up.
First make sure you understand what’s really happening.
Avoid questions that start with “Why” or “Who” or can be answered with a “Yes” or “No”. Instead ask questions that start with “What”, “How”, or “How Much”.
“What the ___ were you thinking?” type questions are also out. ;o)
Next, use the same three elements of an earnest compliment (above), share factual negative information, and then ask “What do you think we should do next so this doesn’t happen again?”
So this sounds something like: “Yesterday fifteen faulty components were received at customer ABC, and those components were logged as passing our quality control process. When we ship bad product to our customers, not only will they stop ordering what we’ve contracted to provide them, they’ll stop doing business with us at all. That can lead to you and me not having roles here at the company. What do you think we should do next so this doesn’t happen again?”
It’s Not Easy, And It Works
If you’re looking to shift your company culture from individual blame to shared success:
Focus on what’s really going well first, and then
Deal with the things (what, not who) that aren’t going like they need to
You may be surprised that people have been waiting for the opportunity to contribute in a more helpful way.
If your team culture is more about blaming and you want to shift towards more shared success, let’s have a conversation.
I wish you the best.
