Beating the Blame Game (Pt. 1)

“Dear Consultant,

I try to hire the best employees. Once they’re on board, I work hard to motivate them applying what I learned in my management training. My employees don’t seem lazy, and they’re definitely smart enough to do the job, but for some reason things aren’t working. People keep making mistakes and our work is falling behind. What can I do?

Signed,

Seriously Cynical Supervisor”

Could you have written this letter? If so, you’re not alone.

One Seriously Cynical Supervisor—an accounting manager—swore he had really smart employees. The only reason they could be dropping the ball had to be because they didn’t take clients and the job seriously enough.

His first inclination was to deal with the problem by paying incentives for fewer mistakes, re-allocating work between staff, and replacing his worst employees as soon as he could. He didn’t consider that maybe his employees were doing all they could, and that the system was the culprit all along, that is, until he dug deeper. That’s when he realized his staff shouldn’t take all the blame.

The manager and staff asked for help discovering what caused their biggest headaches and found broken work systems were at least partly to blame. They grouped them into the three following problem areas.

Problem #1: Even when they thought they were on the same page each staff member had a different idea about who was going to do what. Staff members were shocked that fingers pointed to them when a project was dropped, a deadline was missed, or a critical call to a client wasn’t made.

Problem #2: When the manager and staff agreed to procedures, they didn’t account for the unexpected. So, exceptions piled up in the manager’s inbox waiting for the manager to decide what to do with them. Because they were buried in his pile, the manager often didn’t know about urgencies until clients squawked about them.

Problem #3: Sometimes a second or third accountant needed to help with a project. When that happened, whoever was handing it off to the next accountant tended to figuratively “throw it over the wall” and assume it was taken care of. Unfortunately, the other accountants often had no idea a project was waiting for them until clients asked where their data or reports were.

The team attacked these problems by looking for ways to fix their broken work processes and systems. Here’s how they did it.

First, the manager met with staff to prioritize services they provided according to resources required, ROI, and constituent needs. Since it would take a while to work through every process, they wanted to start with the most critical ones first. The manager charged staff members with most of the work so they would own improvements they came up with.

Second, staff members mapped their workflows. They looked for ways to streamline processes attacking both actual and potential process bottlenecks and redundancies. They tried to account for unusual and unexpected situations so in-process work would “hang” less often. They pared down misunderstandings about responsibilities by clarifying who would be accountable for each step and that everyone was accountable for the end result. Again, to support staff ownership, staff members drew each final process map and selected a process champion to coordinate future tweaks.

Third, staff created systems to regulate each process step and make sure everything went according to plan. They automated as much as possible using technology. When they couldn’t, they built in reminders and quality checks like alarms, checklists, and speech balloons that cut down on mistakes, missed steps, and missed deadlines.

Last, they reviewed each staff member’s roles and accountabilities including what each would do to make the changes, and they made sure any anticipated problems had well-planned responses.

It was a great plan developed from a reliable process. But, as they say, “The devil is in the details.” After creating their plan, they had to grapple with the hard work of personal change and successfully executing it. That’s when things can get tough. Over the next few months I’ll share their experiences so you can learn how they developed their processes and systems and find out how their plan turned out. A production team that followed a similar process boosted its productivity 21% in just a few months. We’ll see if the accountants can do better than that.

Kevin Herring is co-author of Practical Guide for Internal Consultants, and President of Ascent Management Consulting. Kevin can be contacted at kevinh@ascentmgt.com.

Ascent Management Consulting is found at www.ascentmgt.com and specializes in productivity improvement through performance turnarounds, leadership coaching, and appraisal-less performance management.