Who’s in charge?

Who is in charge, who is responsible and who is accountable?

These three questions may sound similar but in reality, they are miles apart in terms of impact or effect. While doing the pre-seminar assessment of a client’s company, I noticed how the company had several branches, many qualified leaders and an array of services, plus a seemingly good number of staff who were motivated. But in spite of that, the branches were reportedly under performing and not benefitting from so much potential.

Like a surgeon, I probed a little, bruised a few egos, and gave some cutting remarks, all in the interest of doing a biopsy on their culture and operations. While some management consultants prefer to be gentle and nurturing while extracting such information, I much prefer to cut and slice the problem in order to quickly determine what needs to be done. This way you can quickly assess what it is and how to cure it, and how the patient or patients will respond to your treatment options.

As expected, some leaders felt I did not cut deep enough or put people in their place, while some “licensed practitioners” challenged my competence and questioned “who does he think he is considering he’s just a media person and not a licensed professional.” I can sympathize with them since it’s not the first time it’s been said and chances are it won’t be the last, but to quote Clark Gable in the movie Gone With The Wind: “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

You may not like my bedside manners, but unfortunately, you’re in the corporate emergency room and I happen to be called in to be the attending physician so to speak. When you’re running a multi-million or billion-peso business, everyday that’s not maximized is money lost, everyday wasted not addressing a problem, means inefficiency and that means money lost. Money lost means jobs will be lost!

A case in point is an actual problem concerning a multi-billion peso company trying to rent land to put up a business. Believe it or not, the process of negotiations to rent nine square meters took one year and one month because not all the players or decision makers came to the table early in the ball game. Everyone was pushing papers from table to table discussing P’s and Q’s. The irony of the matter was that the company effectively lost millions of pesos in lost opportunities and sales.

If a team composed of “who’s in charge, who’s responsible and who’s accountable” were on the ground on the day they visited the site, had the logistics to explain, draft and print the contract on site, the negotiations would have been done in a day. But because lawyers have tables, engineers have tables, and bosses have assistants, the papers got pushed around and nothing was done until the property owner signified losing interest. Only after someone decided to get out of the office and address the issues did things improve.

So as I assessed my prospective participants, I constantly asked, who’s in charge? All the time, people would point at each other, tentatively suggest someone, but not once did someone say: “I am” or “she is” or “He is”. Everyone had a title, a specific job description, but no one was officially or unofficially in-charge. If someone is in charge, that person knows it, as well as everybody else. The person in-charge is in control of things not only because they were given the title, but also because it’s in their nature and character. They may not necessarily be the boss, the owner, or someone with a title, but one thing is for sure they take charge of what needs to be done as much as their boundaries allow them. Some even ignore boundaries as well as accolades as long as things get done.

When it comes to the question: “Who’s responsible,” I noticed that people tend to compartmentalize, politicize or agonize about responsibility. Many people don’t think of responsibility as a shared burden that forms a chain. We individualize responsibility or departmentalize down to the point where we can pinpoint it to an individual because by and large “responsibility” is usually viewed in terms of blame and fault. So if a quota is not met, something goes wrong in the production flow, or there is a breakdown in the business process, responsibility is determined through isolation and not collective reflection. In plain English it is easier to say “It’s someone else’s fault.”

My definition of who’s responsible? We all are.

Whatever business you may be in, we all need to take responsibility for both process and problems. Problems are not simple individual incidents. Problems occur because of poor planning, foresight, decisions, investments, etc. Somewhere along the chain of events more than one person screwed up but often we isolate the problem to a unit instead of the system. A bum stomach does not begin with what enters the mouth. It starts with the eyes, the brain, the hands, and then the mouth.

In much the same manner, accountability or being the person who’s accountable, has earned such a negative connotation. Being accountable has become synonymous to being ready to take the blame, to be held liable etc., but what about taking the term literally as in I can account for the process, explain the process, because I followed the process, studied the process and took ownership of the process. In other words accountability should be associated with ownership. You believe in the work, the idea, the process so much that you’ve taken ownership of it.

The sad fact about the “employee generation” is that they deny themselves the opportunity of learning and experiencing what it feels like to be owners instead of employees. What better opportunity can there be to know what it’s like to own a company without having the actual risk and responsibility of ownership. You can’t be a good piano player without practice, an athlete without practice, but you also can’t practice on a business you yourself put up because it’s all business from day one.

But the greatest loss in not taking ownership of a business process or the company you work for is that by abdicating or not being involved you are effectively letting others determine the profitability and the future of the company you are in. In other words you have handed over every right to determine or affect your future and your profits because you don’t want to be accountable or be taken into account. Ownership should be about developing character not compensation.

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