There was a long pause, and finally Jim asked me, "That's it? You're not going to fire me?" I told him, "I don't fire people for making mistakes. I fire them for making the same mistakes repeatedly. Do you know what mistakes you made?"
"Yeah," he said, somewhat tentatively. "I assumed that they were backing up, but I didn't check, and I deleted files without thinking."
"Good," I said. "Now don't make those mistakes again. Next time, make better ones."
Nothing more was ever said about the incident, and Jim remained a loyal and productive employee for many years.
For me, this event helped to draw the distinctions between accountability and blame. In my mind, accountability is the ability to discern and attribute individual and collective results. Blame is about who is going to pay the price for problems. If there's no clear accountability (and even if there is), you can blame anyone for problems. But fear of being the whipping boy isn't going to help you build a productive, learning organisation.
That day, I learned that I didn't need to blame Jim. With clear accountability, he learned what he needed to learn from his mistake. Beating him up over the error would only have made him more defensive and less likely to learn from the situation.
Both accountability and blame have roles to play in good management. If you think carefully about the distinctions between the two, your responses to problems can be much more nuanced and tailored to both the situation at hand and the needs of individual employees.
Paul Glen is the author of the award-winning book "Leading Geeks: How to Manage and Lead People Who Deliver Technology" (Jossey Bass Pfeiffer, 2003) and Principal of C2 Consulting. C2 Consulting helps IT management solve people problems. Paul Glen regularly speaks for corporations and national associations across North America. For more information go to c2-consulting.com. He can be reached at info@c2-consulting.com.
