If We Stop Buying Excuses Will People Stop Peddling Them?
Excuses are the currency of dysfunctional organizations. When we allow people to give and take excuses, we exclude responsibility for problems from the equation. When allowed to, some people will try to use excuses to transact just about anything. What would your organization look like if you stopped accepting excuses and started buying performance with competence instead?
Problems can be found everywhere. There is not a person or organization that is immune from problems. Problems are all about choices and not all problems are bad. At issue is 1) what we choose to define as problems, and 2) how we choose to deal with them.
It’s worth understanding that a problem is just a label we place on things that are different than we need or prefer them to be. Things are not problems, per-se, until we identify them as such, or apply the label. Whether or not something is a problem is always a matter of perspective. Something that is a problem to you may not be one to me. And it may actually be a benefit to others. We’ve all heard the phrase, “a good problem to have.” Problems are not all bad. Problems are the root cause of progress.
Every business exists to solve the problems its customers have. They may be simple problems – such as not wanting to make time to wash our own laundry, or complex problems – like having cancer. And a problem for you might not be a problem for me. If I am capable of solving your problems, your problems are a benefit to me. If cancer were eradicated entirely, it would be a problem to the cancer-care and cancer cure industries – though – even they might suggest this is a good problem to have – provided they can repurpose their talents and resources and move on to another problem to solve.
In highly functional, high-performance organizations problems are strategically distributed to the people who should own them. That might be those who have the specific skills and resources for dealing with them, or simply those who caused them to exist in the first place. Taking on problems that you should not own is inefficient and ineffective.
Unsolved problems tend rise upwards in organizations – to the top where they finally have to surface. That’s where the “buck” eventually has to stop. When we allow all the currency of problems to float to the top, leaders find themselves drowning in problems that they should never have to touch – if they allow themselves to. Some problems can only be solved at the highest levels – but most can and should be solved – even obviated by others, provided leadership makes that both possible and necessary to happen.
Excuses are what give problems buoyancy.
Those that can’t or won’t solve the problems they should own – either attempt to burry them deeper or else sell them off with excuses.
An excuse is an explanation without a solution that deflects responsibility from those who should own the problem.
For some people, problems are like shiny objects they are attracted to. There are people in organizations that thrive on solving problems. They are ready buyers for other people’s problems, and the price they pay is their performance. When people take on other people’s problems, the problems they should not own, they are sacrificing their time and resources and diminishing their personal performance. These venerable problem solvers are far too valuable to an organization’s performance to allow their talents and efforts to be wasted or even misdirected.
Selling anything always requires a buyer. When organizations stop buying people’s excuses – there is an opportunity to eliminate one of the greatest sources of dysfunction.
People who are allowed to make and sell excuses are not only wasting valuable time and effort in the process; they are also burdening those they are selling them to. And when we become buyers – we are often depriving the seller of the benefit of learning to solve the problems that they should be capable of. Competent leaders recognize this – and set up triage processes to allocate problems and exterminate excuses.
Functional, competent organizations give no currency to excuses.
When we give any value to excuses we encourage people to find or fabricate them. Instead, high-performance organizations place value on solutions to problems.
Competent people take responsibility for solving the problems they should own and don’t go around buying the problems others should own. It is the role of leadership to make it necessary and possible for people to become competent problem solvers, and to systematically strategically distribute the ownership of problems. And be vigilant to ensure that problems are not allowed to become chronic. Competent problem solvers understand that problems that repeat need to be prevented – not just solved. Competent organizations obviate problems by curing the cause rather then treating the symptoms.
Leadership must be committed to devaluing the currency of excuses. The objective must be to take them out of circulation entirely. It begins by choosing to no longer tolerate excuses – beginning with our self. It also requires that the organization is equipped with people competent to solve the problems you would rather have – and obviate those that chronically impair the organization’s performance. And that there are systems in place to ensure that the resources to solve problems – our own and especially our customers’ – can be efficaciously deployed.
Are you ready to take-up the cause and proclaim in your organization, “There Is No Currency in Excuses!”?
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Phil Liebman is the CEO and founder of ALPS Leadership and a Vistage Chair since 2005. He earned his Master of Leadership Arts and Sciences at The Thayer Institute – studying High-Performance Organizations and Competent Leadership under Dr. Lee Thayer. You can learn more about what it takes to become a more effective leader and building and growing sustainable high-performance organizations by visiting ALPS Leadership at www.ALPSLeadership.com
