Change...the Right Way

More years ago than I care to remember, a friend and I were on an extended trip in an old clunker of a car I had. Motoring along one minute thinking only of how nice an air conditioner would feel right about then, we suddenly found ourselves in a very silent automobile that was coming to a halt for a reason or reasons unknown. Our first thought was, of course, "how can I blame this on him?"

After several minutes of finger pointing about who had bought the last tank of gas, and who usually drove the car when it needed gas, right on up and down the scale to who had the nicer girl friend who had once put gas in the tank, it became quite evident that we were getting nowhere...literally. I wouldn't say that we were in the exact middle of nowhere, but I wouldn't want to bet money that a reliable GPS would have found us anywhere else. After figuring out the problem was the fuel pump, we sat for two or three hours trying to figure out how to make the fuel pump once again carry out its intended purpose, all the while trying to find a way to pin it on someone or something else. Just about the time we'd decided to bed down in the old heap for the night, the thought hit us both simultaneously that we needed to consider the problem differently. (This was, of course, the product of our own brilliance, and had nothing at all to do with the growing cacophony of coyotes and wolves beginning to howl in the distance.)

After considering the situation carefully, we pulled out the toolbox and were on our way again in just over 20 minutes. Here's what we did:

We took the hood off the car and put it in the back seat. We then pulled some gas out of the tank and put it in a glass soda bottle (I know I just dated myself). I put a rolled-up blanket on the firewall vents where the windshield wipers are located, and sat there slowly dripping gas into the carburetor while my buddy drove us the remaining 45 miles into town. It wasn't the elegant solution that one would wish for, but it got the job done. Plus, we learned a lesson about getting from point A to point C when point B is nowhere near the middle. What we did, simply put, is solve the problem at hand by looking for a solution and not thinking about what had gone wrong.

Fast forward (many years) to a few days ago. A problem at work had come up, and the supervisor came up with that time-honored traditional line, "Who did that?" It's a phrase we've all heard hundreds of times, but it is also a phrase that poisons the business climate more than you know. On this particular day, I knew right up front that it wasn't anyone's fault. The process in question had broken down for a variety of reasons up to an including those old favorites of "We've always done it that way," and "No one's come up with a better way yet."

In fact, the process in question didn't work anymore because the organization had outgrown it, times have changed, and it just got to be outmoded. But here we were, with the same question we'd always heard..."Who Can We Blame?"

So, here's the short and simple fact about this question. If you want to develop processes that work, the culture of blame has to go away. Not hung on the wall in a place of honor, or placed lovingly in a drawer somewhere to be pulled out with the pitchforks and torches when it's convenient, but G-O-N-E.

The reason to get rid of this little tidbit of human nature is quite simple. No one, but no one, is ever going to tell you the truth about a bad idea or something that has gone awry as long as there is an atmosphere of blame in your organization. As a matter of fact, they won't help you develop new processes or change old habits as long as they think that someone, somewhere, will be disciplined or terminated if something goes wrong. And that is the real shame, because there are probably groundbreaking ideas and processes just under the surface in your organization inherent in the individual talents of the people you already have on the payroll. Remember, most of your employees did something else before they got to you. If you can tap into that hidden resource, you can come up with solutions to every problem facing your organization.

If you'd like to test that theory, try this sometime. Go out among your skilled workers and ask them what they did before they came to work for you. Even better, ask them what they did before they entered their current line of work. I've done it for clients in desperate need of talents they had no idea they already possessed. There they were, asking me to hunt down some new executive, when they already had the talent on the payroll. Here are some examples of subsurface talents that will startle you:

1. An attorney in west Texas who is without a doubt the single best arc-welder I've ever met. He's one of those guys that can weld a beer can together without frying the whole thing. His firm was looking for someone who was an expert welder to inspect a failed joint on a machine.

2. A surgeon who worked as a cowboy to put himself through college, and can still rope and hogtie a calf in under 15 seconds. That hospital had been looking for someone who knew something about sports injuries to help triage patients.

3. An auto mechanic who can identify any phrase from Shakespeare, with the play, the act, and the scene. He can also speak 6 languages (7 if you count Klingon...lol, what a nerd). A non-profit was looking for someone who could assist them with rehearsals as well as help with scenery and props. He was an extra on the cast of nearly every production they'd done for over 5 years.

4. A professional electric guitar player who is also a CPA. The band's business manager was looking for one.

5. A retired drama teacher who, in his youth, walked the high iron in New York City, building skyscrapers. The school he had retired from was looking for someone to come in twice a week and help the counsellors with a project to assist seniors with job placement.

6. A blind piano tuner who memorized the whole of Plato's "Republic" before his vision finally failed him, and who will recite any part of it for you if you ask (and are willing to buy him a beer). He now tutors at the college level, helping students understand this huge text.

7. A Registered Nurse who can resurrect almost any garden plant from the dead, and can teach a housecat to do things you never thought possible. A doctor was looking for someone who would be willing, part-time to help his wife (a veterinarian) with some of the general needs for her practice.

The untapped potential in any organization is mind-boggling, and could be used so readily once the culture of blame is swept away.

Improve your thinking, and don't be afraid to change. Once you teach your middle management personnel to put aside the habit of looking for blame, and instead seek solutions, your organization will relax, and the improvement in morale will be palpable. When they are encouraged, people will stand up with you when they know you're wanting to do what's right, instead of looking for someone to blame.

Put another way, it could be said like this:

The first question when something fails should always be "How do we fix it?" Don't worry about WHY it failed, seek out a solution. You'll spend a lot less time dealing with a problem that way, and you'll be much more productive in the end.