When I said, "Blaming senior management is rarely constructive," Jane
Collins responded, "If the ship runs aground, the Captain is relieved of
his command, even if he was asleep in his stateroom when it happened.
Why? Because he is held accountable for everything that happens on the
ship; or, in other words, he is totally responsible for the system.
Should he be blamed?"
I'm sorry I missed the original posting, but Bill Hobler's answer mirrors
my own. Yes he should be blamed. He should be relieved of his command.
He has put his entire command of perhaps thousands of people at risk.
Bill describes why he should be relieved, and I agree.
However, this does not negate my point. It may reinforce my point. Let
me describe why, and you can tell me what you think.
I don't think running the ship aground is analogous to what I described.
The analogy in business to running the ship aground is, I guess, going
bankrupt. The CEO who allows this to happen has put at risk his
stockholders, his employees -- perhaps thousands of people -- and
generally, loses 'his command'.
What I described was a local malfunction within a large system. I think
the proper ship anology might be for a minor malfunction in the engine to
go unattended by the engineer because he was waiting for an organizational
assessment. I suspect the commander would be somewhat angry if this
actually occurred, and would properly demand that the situation be
corrected immediately. Furthermore, the engineer would be in front of the
commander for an extraordinarily clear explanation of what the commander's
next steps would be with respect to the engineer.
The commander would be demanding that the engineer correct the problem
because the engineer is the best-trained for the task. In fact, the
commander would most likely be unable to correct the problem himself, just
as in the case of the CEO I described.
Bill described Jonesy, who is the kind of person any leader would just
love to have on his or her staff. Why? Jonesy is an empowered person.
Jonesy understands personal responsibility, and accepts it. Jonesy is at
the opposite end of the spectrum from the engineer. Who would you rather
have to count on?
I agree with Bill that the private sector does not practice leadership or
learning as well as the military. I hypothesize that the public sector is
even lower on the leadership and learning scales, but I would love to hear
from someone with recent experience of both sectors.
I would be very interested in hearing Bill's views on whether the military
process can be applied broadly in the business environment. It is very
appealing in many ways. What would it look like? What would employees
experience that is different than now? What would management do
differently?
-- Rol Fessenden LL Bean 76234.3636@compuserve.com