Jerry's Blog

During one of the recent hurricanes in the Gulf Coast Region of the US, one of my clients had major damage to their facilities. So much so that they had to replace all the siding on a very large structure before they could resume operations. The contractors they brought in all told them that it would take 3 months to do the job. So our client decided to do the job internally. They brought in a couple of project managers from other parts of the organization and hired hundreds of construction workers. My team had been on site doing leadership development work with the supervision when the storm struck and put our project on hold. However, our client asked us to get involved during the 3^rd week of rebuilding efforts and it became apparent that they were not on track to meet their deadlines. He wanted us to help them get back on track and to understand why they were off track.  Within a few hours the why became astoundingly obvious - there was more work to be done than could be done in the time given. Yes there were the usual items of poor planning, lack of procedures, etc., etc., but given the conditions this was not unexpected or even unreasonable. No the real problem was that the when President of the organization said I want the plant back up and running by XX, can you do it? Everyone said "Yes Sir" even when they really had no idea how long it would take. What we found was a propensity to say whatever the boss wanted to hear and then start making excuses as to why they did not make the plan. This was not just one person, but everyone up and down the chain of command. To make it worse, everyone knew it. For example, when we pressed one supervisor to pick up the pace because he was falling behind the critical path, he would just smile and say that it was alright because no one was going to make their commitments because everyone had more work to do than possible in the time allotted.

We asked, what happens when you don't hit your commitments? Most replied along these lines: "There will be a lot of yelling and angry comments, but since everyone failed, what can be done? It'll blow over in a few days and we'll be back to normal." When discussed with the Senior leadership team at the facility, there was no surprise, no shock, no denial. I fact the #2 man simply said, "That's the way it has always been since it was built. It's the disease here at xxxxx"

If this was the only place I had seen this disease I would have agreed. Unfortunately, I have seen it in many places, in many forms. All which lead to a breakdown in the accountability cycle of the organization.