"Nobody told me to." "Nobody told me how."
I don't think I'm the only person who has heard some version of these words when asking why something didn't go the way it was supposed to. Sometimes it's completely true. The employee wasn't trained. The expectation wasn't communicated, or no one explained why it mattered.
Even when that's true, though, I don't think the conversation should end there. The underlying question that needs to be evaluated when we hear "nobody told me" is: How much responsibility does someone have for something they don't fully own?
In a past article, I wrote about our company's core values. We grouped those values into three triangles that represent "who we are," "what we do" and "how we do it."
We tackle the heart of this responsibility question in our "how we do it" triangle because we expect everyone in our company to demonstrate ownership in their job duties; initiative to do better; and clear, effective communication. That expectation includes me and our president, Ken Boegeman.
When something doesn't go as planned, we look at ourselves first, not just the employee closest to it, to see what could have gone better and what needs to change. Through that lens, we want every person in the company to think about whether anything was assumed and not discussed.
Most of the time, when we talk about a costly assumption, we mean someone assumed a fact that turned out to be wrong. A customer assumes that a 1-inch trigger for a deicer pre-treatment means snow will never accumulate on the property. But, as we all know, we are in the snow removal business, not the snow accumulation prevention business.
Or a customer assumes refreeze is part of the service when it was never actually in the contract. Those can definitely be costly assumptions, but there's a quieter assumption that can be just as costly. It's the assumption that someone else already knows what you know and is doing something about it, when they aren't.
The same kind of assumption can cause problems anytime information needs to move from one department to another. The sales department closes a deal and assumes the operations department has what it needs to start the work. Operations finishes a job and assumes accounting has what it needs to bill correctly. Different handoffs, same assumption: "I know this, so someone else probably does, too."
As our company has grown, so has the amount of technology we rely on. That also means I've encountered plenty of situations where someone has a technology problem, but instead of telling anyone, that person simply finds a workaround.
We had one instance when a new seasonal employee joined the team. He wasn't able to clock in and out because of a glitch in the payroll software. For the first few weeks of his employment, the manager spent time writing down his clock in and out times and manually entering it into the system.
It's great that they had a short-term fix to make sure he got paid, but both were spending extra time every day, and the manual process created more opportunity for payroll errors. Unfortunately, neither the manager nor the employee told me about the problem. They found a solution, so the workaround simply became the new process.
Eventually I learned what was happening and was able to fix the glitch within minutes. Weeks of extra work came from a problem that took minutes to solve because the underlying issue never made its way to someone who could address it. It also made me wonder whether we had made it clear how someone should handle a problem like this.
The point of our "how we do it" triangle isn't that everyone should solve every problem they encounter. The manager in my payroll example didn't need to know how to fix the software glitch. Sales doesn't need to do operations' job, and operations doesn't need to do accounting's job. The responsibility is recognizing when something isn't right and making sure the information gets to someone who can do something about it.
That's where communication, initiative and ownership overlap. Communicate what you know. Take the initiative to ask when something doesn't make sense. Take enough ownership to make sure the issue actually goes somewhere instead of assuming somebody else will carry it.
The next time something goes wrong and the first explanation is "nobody told me," don't immediately accept it, and don't immediately reject it, either. Ask more questions. Be curious. Was the expectation clear? Did anyone recognize that something wasn't right? Did someone make sure the right person knew?
You don't have to own the entire problem to have some responsibility for what happens next. Sometimes taking ownership means solving it yourself. Other times, it simply means recognizing that something isn't right and making sure it gets to someone who can solve it.
Nicole Boegeman is executive vice president of Swinter Group and SG Advantage. Contact her at nicoleb@swintergroup.com.