Signage is a critical part of an effective infrastructure that allows for “silent” (non speaking) communication.  We rely on signage every day to navigate through work.  Signage is used to guide and direct traffic, get us into and out of buildings, and tell us which restroom we should use.  Signage, in the form of uniforms, also makes it possible for us to know who we are talking to, who belongs to which group, and what people are accountable for.  We depend on signage to help us coordinate work.  Given our reliance on signage, therefore, it should not come as a surprise that failing to play attention to it can create performance breakdowns.

I work on a conference project where people are assigned to different teams.  Each team has a particular accountability and must coordinate their part of the conference with others.  One way we distinguish who is on which team is by the type of name tag they wear.  That way, when the conference is happening, we can tell instantly who is suppose to be in certain places and who isn’t – all without ever talking.

In a way, it is like the way the teams on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier distinguish themselves by the color of their uniforms.  Since the flight deck is loud, oral communication is not always possible or effective.  And, because the deck is dangerous, it is imperative that coordination get done or people die.  One way the Navy accomplishes the necessary coordination is through the use of colored uniforms.

Although the conference I work on is nothing like the flight deck of an aircraft carrier, effective coordination of it nevertheless requires being able to know who is who quickly, and in many cases, quietly.  We do that though name tags.

Recently the client we do the conference for said that a new person was going to be at the conference doing work for them.  “No problem”, we said, “what name tag will he wear?”  Rather than answer the question, they proceeded to explain what he would be doing at the conference and why it would be important and valuable.  They didn’t understand that we were asking a question about infrastructure and they answering a question about activity – they are not the same.

We didn’t want to know what he would be doing, we wanted to know how to “tag” him so that people at the conference could appropriately coordinate with him.  We explained that if he wears a conference participant nametag, he will be related to in one way, but if he wears a conference worker nametag, he will be related to in another way.  No one will ask (or even care) what activities he is engaged in other than as they relate to his name tag.

All this over a name tag????!!!!!  Yes, because that is the power of infrastructure.  It is one of the key elements we use in coordinating with the world and each other.  I suspect that there are far more breakdowns and upsets related to issues of infrastructure that many of us imagine.  In our case with the conference, the client had no idea they were violating a piece of infrastructure we rely on for coordination.  Instead, they believed we were being resistant to the person (“You don’t like him?” they asked) and what he would be doing.  Each time we would ask about the “name tag”, they would try to explain what he would be doing.  We were not communicating and both sides were upset, but for different reasons.

I am beginning to wonder how much things like “resistance to change” or “poor performance” are a function of infrastructure breakdowns rather than motivation, leadership, commitment, etc.  What do you think?

Consider the case of Paul (you met him earlier in http://professorford.com/2010/02/01/is-demanding-%E2%80%9Cnow%E2%80%9D-undermining-leadership/).  He has consistently had problems with his boss not setting deadlines and calling things “high priority”.  From where Paul sits, this habit is frustrating, inefficient, and ineffective.  So he wants his boss to stopping doing it and start having more complete performance conversations in which deadlines are established and agreements for actions and results clearly established.  Now, unlike many people who just complain about their bosses, Paul has actually talked to his boss about the issue, but without success.

In the face of his failure, Paul asked, “I need to come up with an angle/pitch that proves unequivocally that the form of “high priority” manipulation my boss uses is inefficient.  I need to detail a “process” to help him make better requests more efficiently. Any thoughts, resources, and editorial skills are welcome.”

I told him, “If it were me, I would want to know what my boss is concerned about, what he is accountable for and how he wins at his game.  Inefficiency may not be his thing in which case you are showing him something he may not care about. The thing that is likely to interest him is if you can show him that his actions are actually working to limit him getting what he wants or cares about.”

No matter how insane, inane, or just plain stupid the actions of a boss may seem to us, those exact same actions look reasonable, appropriate, and potentially effective from the boss’s point of view.  Bosses and the people who work for them live in different worlds – what looks “wrong” in our world looks “right” in theirs.  So, if you want to understand more about why bosses do what they do, you will want to learn more about what the world looks like to them rather than judge them from a world they do not inhabit – ours.

Paul raised an interesting issue: “Maybe that is the problem in of itself.  Maybe my requests to understand his concerns are not good enough.  It feels that when the topic comes up I am rebuffed more than answered.  I will have to think some more on that.  Maybe the simple answer is that my request is just not understood?”

What I like about Paul’s response is that he is beginning to consider that maybe he has something to do with how his boss is acting.  Rather than put all the blame on his boss, or make what his boss is doing wrong, Paul is looking at one of the things he can personally control – his own communications.

I told Paul, “Pperhaps he doesn’t understand why you would want to know what they [his concerns, etc.] are. There are at least two reasons someone might want to know my concerns – to support me or to thwart me.  Since most people don’t seem to care about the concerns of others, it can be seen as strange and create suspicion and guardedness.  The key would be to make it clear you are his partner in winning and that your only interest is to support him in winning at what he needs to win at.  Any other reason is worthy of suspicion.  If any of this were the case for him, then the approach would be a closure conversation to acknowledge the past attempts and your concern that your interest may have seemed out of place and apologize for that.  Then let him know it was out of an interest in support and that you still have that and if he is willing to share with you, you promise your support, thereby creating a new agreement with him [or something like that].”

Bosses are interested in winning at the game they are accountable for to their bosses, and anything we do that does not support them in that is seen as a hindrance, a distraction, or unnecessary.  Paul’s wanting deadlines is something he wants, not something his boss necessarily sees as valuable no matter how often Paul tries to explain it to him.  However, if through the use of deadlines, Paul can have his boss win, his boss is more likely to see the value in deadlines.  Paul now has a choice, complain about the way his boss works, or become a partner to his boss and use what he (Paul) knows to have his boss win.  If what Paul has to offer has value, the proof will be in the results.

Paul wants his boss to use deadlines rather than calling everything “high priority”.  One way of accomplishing that is to partner with his boss.  Now he has to decide if he wants to do that, or if he just wants to BMW (bitch, moan, and whine) about his boss – could be a tough choice!

There are lots of reasons why we don’t like some people at work: they don’t treat us or others the way we think they should, they create problems for us and others, they don’t do what they say they will, and so on.  For the most part, these differences don’t create problems for us and we can go on about our work without much difficulty.  But occasionally the fact that we don’t like them, or the things they do, gets in our way.  It is at these times that our lack of affinity for them actually works against us; our effectiveness is reduced, our stress increases, and we lose our sense of humor.  Work gets harder and more unpleasant and it takes longer and more effort to get things done.  And, we blame them.

What we fail to consider in all this is that it is OUR lack of affinity for them that is an issue.  It is not surprising that we treat people we like differently than the people we don’t. Nor is it surprising that we use the fact we like or dislike someone as a justification for how we treat them.  When asked why we do or don’t do things for others, we are likely to respond (if truthful) “I like/don’t like them”.   We act as if they are responsible for our liking or disliking them; that it is their fault we don’t have much affinity for them.  As a result, we believe that unless and until they change, our relationship with them has little chance of improving.  We are not responsible.

Like most people, the managers in my MBA class bought into this line of reasoning.  That is, until they did an exercise in which each one of them wrote a letter to three people they didn’t particularly like.  In the letter, they were to write out exactly what they would say to the person to authentically:
1. Acknowledge the person for something they had done but which the manager had not acknowledged, e.g., completing a project on time;
2. Appreciate something about the person, e.g., a good sense of humor;
3. Apologize for a mistake or misunderstanding the manager was responsible for but had not owned up to, e.g., not providing clear directions on an assignment; and
4. Amend an agreement that had been broken but had been stepped over, e.g., an agreement to meet on a weekly basis which wasn’t kept.

What surprised each and every manager was that they had more affinity for the person after they wrote the letter than before.  They discovered that it was their interpretations, assessments, evaluations, and conclusions about the other person that was the source of their liking or disliking them, not the other person.  They realized that they could be responsible for their affinity toward others and that if they were willing, they could shift that affinity.  What they found most exciting was that they could potentially improve their working relationships with other people if they were willing to authentically engage in something as simple as acknowledging, appreciating, apologizing, and amending agreements with them.

I encounter this complaint from the managers in my MBA classes as well as those I interact with in the “real world”. They insist that a lack of accountability is the primary source of the problems they have in their organizations.  Laurie (my management consultant wife) encounters it with her clients, some of whom maintain that the reasons for inefficiency and poor communication is because people are not being accountable.

It’s as if “accountability” has become the new mantra of managers or the new solution for whatever problems leaders might be having getting things accomplished.  “If people were more accountable, we would be much better off,” they say.

Unfortunately, the call for “more accountability” is often one sided, focusing on the lack of accountability in others, and fails to recognize that there are two sides to accountability: the “holder” side and the “producer” side.  The two sides are located in different places and both are necessary to have any accountability actually perform.

Holder Accountability is the responsibility of a person who wants something, asks for it, and “holds” that commitment until the result is produced. A person with Holder Accountability might be a manager who wants her team to handle customer service calls, or a supervisor who wants his crew to repair equipment. The manager or supervisor (or parent, or friend) requests what s/he wants and then checks back at the end of the day or week or month to see what portion of the request is completed. The manager holds people to account by asking the customer service team or the repair crew to account for their work, their performance, and their results.

When your boss gives you an assignment and then asks you questions regarding its status, she is demonstrating Holder Accountability, holding you to account for the assignment.  Similarly, if you tell a colleague you will do something for them by Friday and they ask you about it on Thursday or Friday (or the following Monday), they are holding you to account for what you said you would do.

The second side of accountability is Producer Accountability. It is the accountability of the person or group who will be producing the results or doing the work: the customer service phone team and the equipment repairmen who are doing their jobs are demonstrating Producer Accountability. They were assigned to do a job and they are doing it, and they will report on the status and outcomes as needed.

There is no “accountability” without both halves of the equation. If there is nobody making a clear request for something to be done and who cares enough about that request to follow through and see that it actually is performed, there is no Holder Accountability. If there is nobody who accepts the request to perform the work, there is no Producer Accountability. Getting “more accountability” in an organization requires accountability on both sides of the table: manager and staff, boss and worker, or any person who asks for something from another and the person(s) they ask.

Someone else can impose Holder Accountability on us, but only we can impose Producer Accountability on ourselves.  When my doctor gives me a diet to reduce my cholesterol, I don’t think about that as any kind of accountability – until I go back the next year for another blood test. She looks at the blood test results and she can tell whether I’ve kept my part of the bargain or not.  Producer Accountability is completely self-generated, and we have only ourselves to look to if it is missing. My doctor will hold me accountable by saying, “Your cholesterol has improved, but only a little bit. How much did you follow the diet?”

Authentic Producer Accountability says that we own the work we have to do – it is ours.  It’s like saying, “I will look to see what needs to be done to accomplish this, and I will do it. I will get the help and the resources needed, and if I can’t find them, I’ll get back to you and ask for your guidance in how to take the next steps.”

So, what is it that leaders are really calling for when they call for “more accountability” in their organizations? More often than not they want more Producer Accountability.  They want employees to show initiative in taking on work, to own their work, and to do what needs to be done without constant supervision and without excuses.

But here’s the catch: if a leaders does not provide a clear request with a visible outcome that permits a follow-up, they are not living up to their side by providing any Holder Accountability.  Furthermore, if a manager has no commitment to holding people to account, and following up with them regarding their performance, workers will eventually assume the managers doesn’t really cares how, when, or if the work gets done.

It is wishful thinking to expect people to generate a high level of Producer Accountability in the absence of Holder Accountability.  The key to building a culture and organization of “more accountability” starts by creating the conditions for authentic Holder Accountability.  In other words, if managers want more accountability, then they will want to learn how to assign work in a way that makes what people are accountable for clear and then hold them to account. Good Holder Accountability gives people a reason to develop Producer Accountability: with a great manager, I’ll maintain or improve my work performance even when I’m in a bad mood.

How can you improve your Holder Accountability?  Here are some ideas:

1.            Spell out the conditions and measures that must be met in order for the assignment to be considered successful.  People need to know what the job is, and you need to know how to tell if they did it. No fair saying, “Do a better job.” You’ve got to say how you – and they – will measure success.  People need to know the “what”, and if needed the “how”, they will be held to account for.

2.            Provide specific time lines and due dates for when you’ll be checking back with them. They need to know YOUR timeline for your Holder Accountability, and when they will be expected to give you a status report or a result.  They need to know the “when” they will need to account for.

3.            Follow through on a consistent and regular basis, such as weekly debrief meetings in which people have to report on the status of all their work and make projections about what they will accomplish in the following week. Holder Accountability is all about reliable follow-up on assignments and is where holding them to account actually happens.

As to building Producer Accountability, here are some tips:

1.            Be sure you assign work to people who have the ability to do the job.  When you give a work assignment to someone you know will fail, it will not build their Producer Accountability. It will build resentment, distrust, and cynicism. If you have people who can’t do the job, you may have a training problem but you don’t have an accountability problem.

2.            Be sure people have all the information and resources they need to succeed. You can’t expect people to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. You’ll build Producer Accountability by telling people that you want them to be specific about what resources they need, to assemble as much as they can themselves, and to come to you when they need help.

3.            Give people timelines, milestones, and deadlines. It will support them in good planning to meet your expectations.  No fair saying, “Do it as soon as possible.” Performance is a function of time, and if people don’t have deadlines, they can’t organize their resources to deliver what you want.

When you strengthen your own Holder Accountability, you also strengthen other people’s Producer Accountability.  If you want more accountability in your workplace, start building it!

The other day I was changing a light bulb in my basement work area.  One of the screws holding the cover on the light was tight, so used a screwdriver to loosen it.  When I was finished with the screwdriver, I threw it down onto the workbench (I was on a stepladder), where it hit and scattered some small ceramic tiles I had been removing from a table made by Laurie’s dad.  I found all the tiles except one and was upset because its loss would mean the table could not be restored in its original form.

When I went upstairs to tell Laurie, my first thought was to say “The screwdriver knocked a bunch of tiles off the workbench, and now I can’t find one.”  And that’s when I noticed how the absence of accountability sounds – there is no “I” in the action of what happened.  My initial thought made the screwdriver accountable for the lost tile, not me.  I was the one who threw the screwdriver and my having done that accounts for why the tiles were scattered.

As I thought more about this one example, I began to notice how many places I leave off any mention of “I” when things happen, as if they happened on their own accord and I was simply an observer.  You know, stuff like “The cup feel off the dish drying rack and broke” rather than “I hit the cup and knocked it on the floor.”  The more I considered explanations for things that I have something to do with, the more I realized that the key word missing in those explanations was “I” and what “I” did that produced the result – good, bad, or ugly.

Perhaps you have noticed the same thing when people give explanations – there is no “I” in what they say except, possibly, when it is something good.  Check it out.  Listen to the explanations you and others give and see when there is an absence of accountability.  Let me know what you discover.

I recently had a conversation with a manager who was disturbed by her inability to meet the expectations of those “higher up” (her term).  They would give her assignments and then, when she would complete them, they would point out something that was missing they expected to be included. Has this ever happened to you? Although it is easy for this manager to blame the “higher ups” for not being clear, she shares some of the responsibility for not finding out what they wanted.

If you look at each of your current assignments, are you confident you are 100% clear about what is expected of you in every case?  Is everyone else involved in the assignment also 100% clear about what you expect of them?  Or are you assuming you’ll figure it out, or they already know?

Assumptions and expectations are “silent standards”. We take a big risk when we assume that everyone knows what to do. If creativity is desirable, it’s fine to give a general direction. But if there are specific creative requirements that matter, you’ll want to get them spelled out.

Take the time to spell things out. What should the final product look like? What are the components? When do they need to be ready? Are there other people who should be involved and if so, who?  Is there a particular method or process that should be used or avoided? What restrictions and specifications apply? Don’t take a chance: assume nothing is obvious.

Remember: everyone associated with an assignment has expectations and assumptions.  Some people expect you to ask for their advice, others want to be kept informed, and some only want to be involved in an emergency.  And, they expect you to operate according to these expectations even if you don’t know them!  Ask people to take time with you to spell out their expectations.  Yes, you have to ask.

Sometimes people are afraid to ask because it might make them look less competent or capable, or they don’t want to deal with an unpleasant reaction.  One way around this is to say something like “I want to be sure you get exactly what you want and in order to do that, I want to be sure I understand the assignment clearly.  I don’t want to complete it only to find out there is something missing that you wanted included.  Could we take a few more minutes to clarify some things?”

Getting clear creates a common ground in that both of you know what is expected.  This has the effect of turning an expectation into an agreement and gives you (and them) the opportunity to say whether you can or cannot do what they ask. If something new comes up later, you can always say, “I didn’t agree to that, but I’m willing to consider it.”  What you want to avoid is having to say, “I didn’t know you needed that,” or, “I thought this is what you wanted”.

Reduce your risk by taking time to unspoken expectations into clear agreements that everyone can see and understand.

In the absence of a deadline or due date, all you have is a ‘whenever’.  A ‘whenever’ is something that gets done… whenever they bug you enough for it, whenever you find time to work on it, whenever you feel guilty enough to do it, etc.  ‘Whenever’ is stressful, an ever-looming, unknown burden to be carried around.  ‘Whenever’s’, particularly from bosses, are fear generators – we worry about when it will come due, anxious it will be asked for before we have completed it, concerned about its impact on all the other work we have, and afraid of what will happen if we don’t get it done when they want it (even though we don’t know when that is).

Contrary to a ‘whenever’, a deadline is a tool for accountability and accomplishment.  Deadlines provide information that allows both the person giving it and the person receiving it to know how to plan and do their work.  Deadlines make both the person giving the assignment and the person getting it accountable for getting work done by a particular time, rather than whenever either feels like it should be done.  When we say this is “high priority”, we avoid our responsibility for doing the work necessary to determine by when it really needs to be done.

In some organizations, a “high priority” assignment means it is to be completed within a well known period of time, for example, 24 hours.  In those cases, giving someone a “high priority” assignment is tantamount to saying “Do X within 24 hours”.  But in organizations where “high priority” is not well defined, where managers use it indiscriminately, saying an assignment is “high priority” conveys no useful information for when it should be done, only dread and worry.

In the training session, managers from the one organization pointed out that managers are now saying things like “This is priority 1-A” in an attempt to distinguish their high priority assignment from all the other high priority assignments.  Who are they kidding?  All they are doing is adding confusion while undermining their own credibility and any chance of real accountability.

Do yourself and others a favor, make clean requests and give a due date.

If you go into any workplace, what you will see is people doing things.  They are talking to each other, walking from one place to another, working on their computers, sitting in meetings, etc.  In short, what you see is people and their behavior.  What you don’t see are such context factors as the hierarchy of authority (titles and reporting relationships), workflow, accountability, trust, personal relationships, goals and objectives, or most of the other things that happen “in between” people.  People and behavior are in the foreground, context factors are in the background.

Why does this matter?  Because it leads to what is called the “fundamental attribution error” in which observers overattribute behavior to the dispositional factors (e.g., attitudes, emotions, motivations, skills, traits) of people rather than to contextual factors.  I can see you and your behavior, but I can’t see all the context factors or how they are impacting you.  As a result, when you do something – more often when you don’t do something – I look to you and you alone for the explanation.  I assume it has something to do with your commitment, your attitude, your motivation, your competence, whether you care, etc.  I don’t look to me and our relationship, or to the myriad things you have to deal with, or any of the factors going on between you, me, and others.  In short, your behavior is a function of you and you alone.

The impact of making this “error” is that if I want you to behave in some different way, for example, being more accountable, then I will try to alter your disposition in some way.  I might send you to training, talk to you about the value of being accountable in an attempt to motivate you to be more accountable, or any number of other things to change your disposition.  What I won’t do, however, is consider other context explanations, such as our conversations, and whether your being accountable is a function of the requests I make and whether I consistently follow up on them.

In my MBA class on management, I assign the book “Leadership and Self Deception” (I strongly recommend it).  Its and easy and engaging book in which the “hero” of the story discovers he has been interacting with people based on erroneous attributions, how and why he made those attributions, and the impact the errors have had on his leadership.  What I find particularly interesting is that students don’t want to talk about how they make similar attribution errors and how to overcome them.  They want to talk about how then can stop their boss or the people around them from making the error!

That was the second part of my insight – the fundamental attribution error is extremely persistent.  Even in the face of evidence to the contrary, people will continue making the same attribution error.  In other words, telling people, even demonstrating to people, that they are making an error, an error that has negative real life consequences, they will persist in the error.

For years I have wondered why it was that even though countless of articles and experts have said it is not possible to motivate others, that motivation is an internal state, managers persisted in wanting to know “How can I motivate them?” I now see an answer – they believe behavior is a function of disposition, not context, and anything said to the contrary is ignored.  That belief makes my job harder and reduces the opportunity for breakthroughs in leader effectiveness.

The idea behind offering incentives is that they make a task or activity more attractive than it might otherwise be and thus increase the likelihood that people will do it.  But, as Dan Pink indicates and the research supports, extrinsic offerings don’t always work and in fact may actually make the activity less attractive.  But does this mean that incentives don’t work?  No, it means that what you offer someone as an incentive may not be an incentive.  Whether or not something is an incentive depends on its effect on the person to whom it is offered.  Incentives are meant to incent – to arouse or encourage.  If they don’t do this, then they aren’t incentives even if you call them incentives.

Whether or not something is an incentive, therefore, depends on the person to whom it is offered.  To offer workers who want more money more time off is unlikely to occur as an incentive to them.  In fact, you are likely to hear someting like “What kind of incentive is that?”, or “That’s no incentive?”  Since whether something is an incentive and works as incentive depends on the person to whom it is offered, using incentives is a tricky business.  In fact, many managers have found attempting to use incentives frustrating because they can’t seem to find “what works” and what they can provide isn’t always sufficient.  This is one reason why books on recognition, such as Make Their Day! Employee Recognition that Works, have become popular because they focus on things managers can do other than offer incentives.

One way around this issue is to ask people who are hesitant to do soemthing you want done “What would it take for you to do this?” and then determine whether or not you are willing to “pay the price”.  Another way around this issue is to build the level of integrity in the relationship so that people are accountable for what they say and know that they will be held accountable for what they say.  Surprising as it may seem, most people truly value their word and do not want to gain a repuation for being someone who “says yes, but does no”.  Giving people the opportunity to operate consistent with their word, and then operating consistent with their word, reduces the “guessing game” of incentives.  Then, when you do want to use incentives, you can ask people and they will tell you what will work.

Although there were a variety of answers, there were two underlying themes.  The first was how to motivate people to change.  The second was how to deal with people when they resist change.  It was all I could do to say “If you stop trying to motivate them, you might find they are more cooperative.”

Stop trying to motivate people!? Are you nuts Ford?  Isn’t motivation what leaders and managers are supposed to do?  How do you expect to get people to do what needs to be done if you don’t motivate them?

The answer to that question has two parts.  The first is by making good requests and getting good promises in return.  The second is by consistently following up on those requests and promises in order to build credibility, trust, and accountability.

In many cases, “motivation” has become the code word for convincing, either positively or negatively, people to do something we want done.  Such convincing may involve trying to inspire them, making them feel guilty or obligated, offering them some inducement, or threatening them.  But regardless of its form, convincing people (motivating them) has the effect of reducing people to victims.

How does it make them victims?  Because it says we are the cause of their behavior, not them.  They are doing what they are doing at the effect of “our” motivation.  It is tough to have others be accountable when we say we are the one motivating them – so they aren’t accountable for their behavior, we are.

Why not stop trying to motivate people and let them be accountable for their own motivation?  Make good requests in which you ask people to take actions or produce results by a specified due date, ensure they have the resources needed to do what is asked (this includes time and availability), and that they have an idea of how to accomplish what is being asked.  Let them know you are taking them at their word, ask if there is anything they need from you, and set a time to meet to discuss the outcome.  Then follow through true to your word.

Something happens when people realize their internal state (motivation) is not your responsibility, but is up to them.  They become more willing to engage with you as partners rather than someone you have to convince.