How Will You Respond?
I was in a fleabag hotel in some tiny town, traveling for business. I had just finished a 12-hour day, just wanted to crawl into a pool of tequila, and sleep a few hours before doing it all again, when one of the supervisors reporting to me called: his team (my team) had released a new application with a bug that caused a six-figure error (costing over $100,000 of lost business). Shit.
I called my boss. He needed to know about the problem, so when he got a call from his boss, he wouldn’t be blindsided. I calmly explained the situation, what we were doing to fix it, and controls that we would put in place to ensure this didn’t happen again.
My boss hissed, “Who did this?”
I replied, “I don’t know. I didn’t ask. The team's staying at the office until it’s fixed. I’m going to log into the war room with the team until it’s resolved.” A war room is an all-hands-on-deck emergency meeting that I implemented for my teams to resolve critical problems.
My boss demanded again, “WHO did this?”
I replied, “I don’t know. I didn’t ask. It doesn’t matter. If you want a name, if you need someone to blame, you can blame me. I did it. I’ll take the bullet. I’m not going to let some witch hunt distract the team from fixing the problem.”
After 10-seconds of silence, my boss said, “Fine. I don’t need a name. Get it fixed.”
This is a true story. An excerpt from my book UNF*CK IT! Recently, I've been watching more news, reading more social media, and it reminded me of this story.
We are in the middle of a problem. I see two types of responses.
Some people look at this problem and try to place the blame. Some people blame China, the WHO, the Republicans, the Democrats, Europe, Spain, scientists, the news, the President, the Congress, the CDC, the hospitals, spring breakers, tariffs, international travelers, hospitals, different races, etc, etc, etc...
Some people try to solve the problem.
These are never the same people. The blamers do not solve the problem. The problem solvers are too busy solving the problem to worry about who is to blame.
When a problem arises, who are you going to be?
About the Author
David G. Rettig is the C.E.O. of Synoptus, which delivers IT Operational Excellence through leadership coaching, digital transformations, and custom Salesforce architecture & development. David has two decades of leadership experience, is a doctorate candidate researching business results and leadership training, and has an MBA and MS in Management & Leadership. He authored highly-rated leadership and technology books available at Amazon. If you'd like to talk to David about leadership coaching, Salesforce consulting, or digital transformation projects, email drettig@synopt.us.