Taking ownership and responsibility

Ownership and management

We are all in control of what we do and how we do it.

However, there are times when we can slip into a “blame and excuses mode”.

This video explains what happened in one client’s case and how they got back on track.

Ownership and management

So here we are in the 9th week of lockdown, and I guess some organisations can certainly be excused for sometimes finding things getting a little bit out of focus.

Have you had any experiences recently of that sort of thing happening and what did you do about it?

(FD) Yes so as you say we are in the 9th week of lockdown and it is quite difficult working in these circumstances although they are regular meetings going on.

What happened to one of my clients last week was, we were having a catch-up and he said he is finding that it seems to be doing a little bit more work than he normally does.

We talked it through and what transpired was that a couple of his managers were coming to him with problems and not solutions.

This meant that he had to look into whatever the issue was and deal with it.

I immediately recognised that the managers were basically passing the buck as it were, and they weren’t dealing with whatever they were supposed to.

So, I asked the Managing Director to step back and think about where this was coming from and push back so that he is happy to help the managers but they need to come to him with solutions.

They are employed for a specific role, so they need to take ownership, they need to be accountable and they need to be responsible for their roles.

What happens is if you don’t push back immediately as soon as something like this arises, there is going to be blamed, people are going to make excuses, there is going to be denied and that is going to be more difficult to deal with.

My client recognised this straight away and has pushed back and actually, things are back on track.

(JK) That sounds great and it seems to me that this is a balancing act, isn’t it really.

Sometimes it can be a little bit too easy to let management get on with it without having a really good overview of what is happening.

You can kind of lose control and then all manner of higher management issues can happen.

On the other hand, you have your situation where managers who aren’t quite taking ownership of the situation, so I guess that what you did was to establish that equilibrium.

(FD) Yes, we are all in control of what we do and how we do it. It is up to us as individuals.

So, if you know that you are there for a specific task, you are in control of it, so take ownership.

 

Does this resonate with you? If you would like to book a complimentary, no-obligation, coaching session to discuss this further, please email me at falgunidesai@actioncoach.com