Organizational excellence is tough to achieve. At the forefront must be a great leader and a savvy executive team and At the core must be accountability. Accountability is a word, like responsibility, that everyone says is a great idea; but in the end, too many executives suffer from a head in the sand approach.
The essence of accountability is personal responsibility: what can I do to make it happen? No matter what the circumstance, no matter who is not stepping up, the mindset must be I will do what I can to make it happen.
The culture of blame and complain is insidious. Even the sharpest leaders and teams can fall into the trap of accepting reasons why something cannot be achieved. Excuses and a victim mindset can get the best of us. I have sat in many executive team meetings where the conversations lasted for hours with content of those conversations loaded with phrases such as:
- I don’t understand why (sales, operations, etc) department can’t get it together. Every month they repeat the same mistakes as last month. (poor oversight)
- We can’t make our numbers as long as she leads the team. (victim mentality)
- I think we should wait a bit and see if there is change. (denial)
- It’s not this team’s fault that we’re not achieving the goals. (more denial)
- I don’t have time to mentor that person — I didn’t have anyone mentor me, and I am doing just fine. (ego, hubris)
- I send them email after email and I never get a response. (poor communication skills)
- I find that the one behavior that does the most damage is when a leader knows that a particular team member simply refuses to change rigid and defensive posturing; and, the leader responds:
- “I know he/she is the problem – they’ve always been that way.”
- This reluctance to address the real problem results in the leader’s loss of credibility with the rest of the team as the leader ‘makes allowances for one person.’ This is seen by others in the organization and the message is: it’s ok to not to hold others accountable. Eventually, you see it happening throughout the rest of the organization.
Once a team is made aware of the vocabulary they have been using, the members can see that they unknowingly have created a limiting set of attitudes. A smart team will immediately self-correct, and the return of energy and can-do attitude is immediate and almost palpable.
In adverse times, bad economies, health crises, etc, companies can fail as they look at outward circumstances that excuse poor performance. And, yes, there are times where circumstance are beyond our control; but, the key is to find out what we can do. Successful companies that survive will be the ones with disciplined thinking that result in problem-solving actions.
Are you hearing more ‘blame and complain’ or ‘I’ll do it’?
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