Team Communication Beats Individual Accountability

However, the point of this story is not the efficiency of the work associated with what I had observed, but the need that I clearly saw to increase team communication and debrief the events that had led to this lack of production. So, back to my meeting with the supervisor. It is certainly refreshing to encounter a leader who said, when asked, “It’s on me!” Unfortunately, I had trouble getting him to understand that while I was thrilled that he was accountable, it would be more effective to ask the questions in a debrief:

• What was the actual result of this event? Understanding the actual result in terms of time wasted and money lost helps us understand how much effort we should put into solving this problem.
• How did this happen? We need to look back into the process and understand where this mission broke down. At this point I don’t completely know. But, as a minimum it started with a poorly defined Mission Objective: “Valve doesn’t work” is not clear, measurable and achievable.
• Why did this happen? The root cause to a failure in scheduled work is not: “It’s on me!” or “Next time get the right part.” Don’t get me wrong, it could be simply a break down in discipline and the failure of an individual person to do what they were supposed to do. However, work should be planned in such a way that one individual is unlikely to make a mistake that results in a large nonproductive-time event. We need to look back at the planning as a root cause.
• Finally, what is the actual Lesson Learned? What are we going to do to fix this, who is responsible for the follow through, and when will it be accomplished? If we don’t get to this step then we have failed our responsibility to be a learning organization. If we don’t do this step, even with great ownership and accountability, we have failed the organization. If we don’t do this step, we have simply conducted, at best, a review of what happened without the needed steps to improve future performance.

This event needs to focus on two important questions:

1. Was the planning process sufficient to ensure that this work could have been accomplished in a planned and efficient manner?
2. Was it the correct decision to allow a problem in planned work for one craft to escalate this job to an Emergency status and disrupt the planned work for 3 other crafts?

In summary, ownership and accountability are wonderful … but let’s not think that the attitude of “I own it, and I won’t let that happen again” is sufficient to improve future performance. Communication is what builds successful teams.