Leaders Need No Scapegoats

Does this sound familiar? Have you or your team blamed the weakest member of the team when disaster strikes?

Performance Failures

We're talking about failure to deliver, whether a missed deadline, a fault in product quality, a service interruption, a missed goal, or any other event where a team of people fail to deliver what was expected. Unless your operation is literally perfect in every way (and I'm pretty sure no one is able to maintain that level for very long), it will happen to you. It will happen and has happened to every other team on the planet.

Focusing on the Point of Failure

It is human nature, whenever something goes wrong, to find a reason and to fix it. That's universal. We crave solutions. It doesn't matter if it's your team or just someone you read about, everybody craves the answer, the resolution to a perceived problem.

Who dunnit.

When bad things happen, most of us want to attribute it to a person. Blaming circumstance is not as desirable because you cannot control it. You don't want to be seen as the person making lame excuses everytime something goes wrong. A circumstance can be anticipated, prepared for and mitigated, and you feel stupid missing that risk. On the other and, if the ship crashes while someone is at the helm, then you're much more likely to blame that person than the rocks on which you crash. Or if you're all working together on a project, and one worker is not as strong as the others or may be stuck on some impediment, attention may be drawn to them. We cast blame on that person and say, "Well, they had it coming. They've been underperforming for months." Is this you? Do you or your team blame the weakest member of the team when disaster strikes?

True agile teams find value in team members on all levels.

But this is not AGILE. As in the book, "The Goal", every machine on the factory floor has value and can contribute profitably, so long as their cost of operation is commensurate with their ability to produce. In other words, it's okay to have team members on different levels of productivity, so long as their compensation is on par with their ability.

Why did you set him up for failure?

YEAH, BUT...you can argue that one individual made poor choices that held up or pulled down the entire team. I believe you. It is very conceivable, even common for a single citizen to drag down the whole community by their actions. But it begs the question, who was really in charge when that happened?

Why the Leader Bears Responsibility

If John Doe is busily hammering square pegs into round holes, and the leader doesn't do anything about it, that's a problem. How often does the leader stand over him, seething with anger and wishing he'd never hired the guy in the first place? Someone in this situation needs to be disciplined, or even fired, and it isn't John Doe.

Unless John Doe has somehow been put in charge, then his supervisor is entirely responsible for his poor performance. A responsible leader would have noted John wasting time and either trained him to do better or taken him off the task. Better yet, a good leader might have anticipated that John's capabilities were not up to the task in the first place.

CONCLUSION

It's a sad commentary whenever a leader of any kind uses as an excuse the failings of an employee. I would hope that more leaders, managers, supervisors, leads, and mentors will recognize their own culpability in these situations and hold themselves accountable to prevent problems or to own their own shortcomings in leadership.

-Tom/*