Case in Point
I recently had the opportunity to facilitate team building sessions for a supply chain team in the consumer products industry. The supply chain team had the impossible task of forecasting which brand of soft drinks (of the many dozens the company produces) must be on the shelf of every major retailer on Monday mornings.
The forecasting input came from sales and marketing, who would send their sales numbers to the supply chain team. Those sales numbers would then become the production orders, which translated into hundreds of thousands of soft drinks being bottled in production facilities.
Perceived Problem: Monday morning orders could change five times in five days, as sales worked with remaining inventory, actual sales, and a host of other unpredictable changes. Do you think supply chain was happy? Who do you think they blamed? Sales and marketing, of course—they were the ones who promised the moon to the customer, after all!
Real Problem: We discovered during the team building sessions that the real problem was not the myriad of changes that they received, the communication from sales and marketing, or even the forecasting tools or software. The problem was that everyone had the mindset: “It wasn't my fault.” You could see it in the pointed finger or the voiced frustrations, "Sales just changed their numbers AGAIN!" Sometimes, blame was more subtle.
The result of blame was that many workers dreaded coming to work during peak production times when changes abound or dragged their feet when it came time to comply with new orders. Or worse, sometimes, sabotage was the result.
Solution: Looking from afar, we can see how silly the “blame game” seems, but those in the thick of it had a hard time seeing it. However, taking a step back and observing exactly what happens when someone points the finger can be an enlightening exercise. For instance, when the supply chain group began to identify what they could control and what they could not control, challenges started to fall into the proper context.
Likewise, the teams began changing their internal communications, "lightening the load," and letting go of sticky language. They grew their resiliency and found that not only did this new mindset help with the production tasks, it also helped everyone on the team go home at night knowing that they were doing a good job. More importantly, they all realized that they had work they could actually look forward to accomplishing.
Bottom Line
When our work environments become tense and the pace of business is rapid, it becomes easy to make snap judgements. We fall into blaming others, and sometimes fervently believe that sales and marketing (or any group, just insert their name here) has "done it to us again."
When your response to every problem is "It's not my fault," it isn’t time to start asking, "Well, whose fault is it?" Instead, you need to determine what you are going to do to fix the problem. Remember: Being big enough to bypass blame and get right onto discovering a solution promotes a culture of accountability. As managers, we need to model the way. Be sure to root out blame in your department, and don’t allow “It’s not my fault!” to become an acceptable response.
