It happens…
Some times it all goes a bit Pete Tong. (An explanation for any American readers).
Things don’t go according to plan:
- Your deliveries are too slow
- Your operation costs too much
- Your customer service is too… Well it is rubbish.
How do you respond?
There are two ways:
When it goes belly up there are two questions you could ask:
- Why did this happen?
- What could we do to fix it?
They aren’t so different
On the face of it the two questions are similar. They are two sides of the same coin.
They are both trying to understand what happened and then resolve it so it doesn’t happen again.
But semantics are important, these two questions have vastly different meanings.
Why did this happen?
Means: What did you do that caused this mess? What on God’s good Earth were you thinking?
Accusations fly and the defensive barriers are thrown up. People hunker down and point the finger when you ask “Why did this happen?”
What can we do to fix this?
Means: Help me work out what to do next; I value your opinion.
Ideas abound, the creative juices start to flow. People respond to the challenge and offer up their best suggestions when you ask “What can we do to fix this?”
Improvement isn’t about technology
It isn’t about systems or tools or techniques.
It isn’t about initiatives or projects or programmes.
How do you express yours?
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Image by Pilar Castro
Hi James,
I couldn’t agree more. But, don’t we also need to acknowledge what went wrong to the people that it affects, especially customers?
Adrian
Absolutely Adrian, my favourite quote is
Having no problems is the biggest problem of all ~ Taiichi Ohno
I think the issue is how you respond to the problems.
Thanks for the comment
Hello James,
I was brought in by one company to take over and turn around a failing/troubled Ecommerce implementation. This was no ordinary project – the future and wellbeing of the company implementing this technology depended on this project being a success.
How did I go about dealing with the challenge? Certainly not by looking backwards and asking the question how did we get here and who is responsible. Nor by asking how can we improve. No. Instead, I outlined the game we were playing: a successful implementation, every on the team coming of a winner, I outlined the key milestones and why they were important. Once everyone on the team from various organisations got this – there was some time spent on questions and answers, I moved on to this question: What will it take for us to be play this NEW game? What is it that we need to keep and safeguard? What is it that we need to give up / abandon? What is missing that we need to introduce into this game if we are going to be successful at it.
When folks got that I was not interested in the past. Nor blame. Only on the future – a future in everyone turns out to be winner, then that which needed to happen happened. The project delivered in three months what it had failed to deliver twice (two critical deadlines missed) over the last nine months. A project that was $1m in the red, stopped bleeding, a potential lawsuit was halted, and strong relationships were built.
In life one has a choice: to focus on the future or the past; to look for who is to blame or to seek out who we need to be and what needs to flow from that (actions, behaviour, mindset) in order to create our desired outcomes/future. I have found the road less travelled to be the more interesting road to travel.
All the best
maz
Blame is possibly the most caustic thing I see in Management. Politicians have a lovely line on it as well.
Thanks for making the point.