As with the most recent incident in the Gulf of Mexico impacting the economy, environment, and the people in the region there are issues that cannot be overlooked. As more and more comes out regarding what happened on the oil rig under British Petroleum's guidance and management more will also come out about what lead to the disastrous and deadly events of April 20, 2010 out on the Deepwater Horizon rig.
As people start to look and wonder at what caused those 11 deaths and the spilling of hundreds of thousands if not millions of gallons of oil (at the end of this) into the Gulf of Mexico they should not only look for answers but for ways to prevent such obvious blatant disregard for preventative measures, safety practices, and good old fashion common sense.
As a stakeholder in your organization you have a vested interested to ensuring that your company is not one that finds itself dragged through the mud in the daily news, ridiculed in the Sunday Morning News talk shows, and have your organization's once good name quickly fall from grace and become synonymous with other companies such as Enron, Arthur Andersen, AIG, any Motor Vehicle Company (except Ford) and now BP.
On that note, organizations all over the world must take notice from these examples of what not to do. Now is the time for all organizations to turn a careful eye inward and see their organization for what it is. Leaders must realize that the organization is not an automated process, it is not a conglomeration of machines, and your organization is only one thing: a living breathing assembly of human beings. It is no secret that each and every one of us is flawed, imperfect, and prone to make mistakes. So it should come as no surprise to anyone when something goes horribly wrong.
However, it should not also come as a big surprise when the layers of determining what happened are peeled back and reveal that other humans allowed what happened to happen.
Logically, questions must be asked such as could the disaster on the gulf have been prevented? Yes. Most certainly it could have been prevented. What could have been done to prevent it? Anything and everything.
Anything and everything sounds like a cop-out answer, a catch all, something politicians say when they don't want to get pinned down on something that may or may not make them look bad. However, in this case anything and everything means that all it would take is for someone in the organization to have said, "Hey, Stop and wait a minute this doesn't look right."
Did I just write, "Hey, Stop and Wait a minute?"
In this economy, in a time that stopping the presses more often than not means that the presses will never restart, is it a wise thing to stop the process, a process that managers and employees have been told to trust? It must be, who would ever imagine that overlooking a simple spike in a pressure reading or a small leak would change the world?
Now ask yourself, who is overlooking the simple spike in the pressure reading in your organization? More than likely you know whom the person is but may not know that they are not taking care of the little things, not taking care of the basics.
When the basics get overlooked, the beginning of the end starts. This means that the core functions of your department, division, company, or organization are not being successfully accomplished. This is then evident as throughout your operations things are not getting properly done because of a lack focus on the core operating functions, thus modifications based on those core functions that are also not getting done. Therefore, at some point the problems will start to surface.
Depending on how long the basics have been overlooked it may take a while for the problem to come to the surface. For example, a small leak in a fire hose will not be an issue when it is needed to put out a house fire. Small leaks are expected, especially as the hoses and couplers get old. Now imagine if the hose is put to use 8 hours a day for 40 hours a week, every week.
The small leak will eventually start to get bigger and over time the business end of that hose will not deliver as much water as it once did. This may be acceptable to someone but it is certainly not acceptable to the homeowner, business owner, real estate investment group or the owner of the property that is on the fast track to becoming a pile of ashes, this is not acceptable to the customers and clients of the fire department. While the majority of us are not putting out structure fires on a daily basis, we are putting out fires of our own and having a leaky hose is not acceptable as well.
Whenever there is a fire, Fire Investigators are called in to find out the cause or origin of the fire. Almost always the cause of a fire can usually be attributed to human error or human involvement (arson, faulty wiring, unmonitored space heater, kids playing with matches, unattended burning candles, grease splatter on the stove, etc., etc.). In the modern workplace as leaders are working hard at putting out fires they are also trying to find the root cause of those fires. Just like the Fire Investigators, we can determine that 99.98% of your business fires have a man-made origin. Then dig even further and you will find that at the core the basics were neglected. As a leader, a business owner, CEO, division chief, department head, front line supervisor, manager it is up to you to ensure that the basics are never neglected.
As the leader you are tasked with ensuring that things are done right, every time, by those you lead, manage, and supervise. Of course, no one is perfect and expecting 0% defects is crazy, then again not sticking to the basics is an even crazier way of doing business. What can a leader do to get everyone back on track? The answer is threefold; conduct your own internal audit, staff review, and train, train, train.
Audit all your processes to determine if the changing times (technology, governance, and ideologies) have made what was once relevant now irrelevant. If there are changes to be made, then ensure that you are clear and concise on what needs to be changed. Once that is identified, be prepared to deliver a thorough examination of what you propose make relevant that which has become irrelevant.
The next step is to conduct internal reviews of the people involved to determine what is and what is not happening in the way or manner it should. At least you should be conducting annual performance reviews of your staff, however, this might not help the problem if the next review is 10 months away. Therefore, conducting frequent internal reviews of not just your staff but also of the members of other departments that your staff interacts with.
Let me qualify this by stating that your role in the internal review is to determine where following the basics went off track. This is NOT an opportunity to pass the blame off on somebody else or on a different department. It is only an opportunity to find out where the problem is originating and then working out a plan to correct it. Should it turn out that the problem originated outside your area of responsibility, do no take it upon yourself to go over and correct it but instead coordinate with the department/division head and discuss the issue and form a corrective plan as soon as possible.
Come prepared because most people don't like being told that they have a problem, especially other managers. However, having the problem and the cause, as you see it, well documented will go a long way towards getting your issue(s) resolved and the organization back on track. Once you have identified the reason as to why the basics were not being followed and who is involved, develop a plan of action to correct the problem; the next thing that must happen is training.
Train your staff on what the problem is, how it will be corrected, how to identify when things do go wrong, and what the future expectations are. When it is all said and done you have to train the people you lead, supervise, or manage right the first time and every time after that. Periodic refresher training is mandatory as people will eventually become complacent and start to slip back into a mode of lax and slipshod ways that are not acceptable. Thus, the need to train, train, and train is ever present.
Time and time again, the public has been witness to what happens to an organization that forgets to stick to the basics. In many cases, overlooking the basics creates situations that organizations may never fully recover from, like many of the unfavorable situations that organization find themselves in, it is avoidable. When it comes to dealing with the basics of any job function or organizational business practices the leadership must not only recognize that there is a problem but also act almost immediately to curtail the fallout. Unfortunately, those leaders that recognize that a problem does exist more often than not fail to properly act and thus create a bigger problem. Therefore, for a leader to truly lead, she must not only be the person that finds the problem but also works even harder to fix the problem and do what it takes to prevent it from happening again. Your organization and those you lead not only demand it from you but as a leader it is your duty to turn that iceberg into a manageable snow cone.
Dave Guerra
Owner The Dave Guerra Company ( http://www.daveguerra.com )
Dave Guerra invites you to find out how providing Information Technology Leadership and Management greatly enhance return on your technology investment. The Dave Guerra Company helps small to medium sized organizations get their message out via the use of Internet Technologies utilizing new media tools such as Web2.0 and the emerging Web3.0 technologies.
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