Sounds great, if the boss is not somehow magically delivered from being a responsible party, and as long as the boss's reasons for not meeting commitments are not considered somehow different and therefore "not excuses", i.e., acceptable.
The no excuses culture
21–30 of 171 posts
Re: The no excuses culture
#22"[Steve] Jobs imagines his garbage regularly not being emptied in his office, and when he asks the janitor why, he gets an excuse: The locks have been changed, and the janitor doesn't have a key. This is an acceptable excuse coming from someone who empties trash bins for a living. The janitor gets to explain why something went wrong. Senior people do not. "When you're the janitor," Jobs has repeatedly told incoming V…
This isn't really true at all. CEOs give excuses in their earnings reports all the time ('economic headwinds', 'unfavorable regulatory climate', 'manufacturing complications'). Sometimes investors will punish the share price, but only rarely does the board consequently penalize the executives, and only in cases of really severe screwups.
Quite. More often it's a case of 'You really fucked this up. Here, have a $1.94m bonus.'
Re: The no excuses culture
#23"[Steve] Jobs imagines his garbage regularly not being emptied in his office, and when he asks the janitor why, he gets an excuse: The locks have been changed, and the janitor doesn't have a key. This is an acceptable excuse coming from someone who empties trash bins for a living. The janitor gets to explain why something went wrong. Senior people do not. "When you're the janitor," Jobs has repeatedly told incoming V…
I've heard this from a lot of business-management types, but I've always felt they have the causality backwards. It's not that "reasons don't matter", so therefore you can know your job is now in the executive suite. It's rather that once you're an executive, you are (presumably) granted enough power and authority to actually fix problems on your own initiative, before they become visible to the people above you. So…
No, I think the OP is correct.
My father and ex husband were career military and I was a full time mom. Both the military and parenting have this in common: You may not be in control of certain things, nonetheless, you are responsible for the outcome.
In other words, kids are autonomous beings and may do things the parent does not want them to do. When the law says money is owed due to the child breaking something, they come after the parents. In the military, if you are in charge, you take the fall when things go wrong, even if it wasn't your fault.
The world gives us endless obstacles between us and our goals. If you want to make excuses, there is never any shortage of them to be found. But if you want a thing to happen, at some point, you just have to decide that "The buck stops here" and not accept excuses.
Re: The no excuses culture
#24I've always been struck by an odd irony in academia: People tend to have left-wing political beliefs, but maintain an organizational culture that is decidedly authoritarian.
Perhaps this is necessary: I can't think of how else to manage a classroom than to have hard deadlines for things like homework assignments. Even in college, by definition, the work is finished when the semester ends.
I'm personally guilty of missing deadlines at work, and if I were permitted to be honest about it (or if it even mattered), my three excuses would be:
1. Managing the complexity of my job is over my head, because there are too many internal dependencies.
2. I'm going to miss this deadline because x[n] didn't happen, and I can't make those things happen.
3. I was kind of hoping the task would vanish, as roughly 75% of urgent tasks seem to.
Re: The no excuses culture
#25"Excuses are the nails used to build the house of failure," or so the saying goes. A teacher used to repeat this phrase to any grade-school students who failed to turn in homework. He didn't care what the excuses were; no amount of excuse can undo the passage of time and the truancy of students. The bulk of the post is about compensating for the lack of excuses with compassion and teamwork, and avoiding creating a cu…
Never did my homework. I'd rather stayed at school an hour longer than doing homework in the afternoon. Lowered my grade in every class, but my free time was totally worth it. In the end I still got to study computer science, like I always wanted, so I don't see their point in retrospect...
Same here.
Re: The no excuses culture
#26If you to treat your employees as children, you will end up with a culture of excuses. If you give and take responsiblity for both your own work and the work of helping others do their work, you will realize that excuses won't be needed. People will inherently know they are either messing up or have messed up and will volountarily ask for help from others, who will help.
Not trusting and respecting in your employees will corner them to behave like children and you will eternally (be unhappy to) be their parent. Treat people with trust and respect and expect the same. It will make for a much more happy and a much better performing team and ultimately, company.
Re: The no excuses culture
#27This is a piece of positioning. It's not so much Blank giving any serious solution to the solution of 'no accountability' as him saying 'look at how tough and uncompromising I am.' He literally says he thinks 'creating a culture' is the same as 'I hung a sign on the door.' Well no. A lot of management thinking (5 Whys etc) has gone into breaking down problems into micro-blockers. If your graphic designer is constantl…
Perhaps you didn't make it to this part of the article:
> By accountable I meant, “We agreed on a delivery date, and between now and the delivery date, it’s OK if you ask for help because you’re stuck, or something happened outside of your control. But do not walk into my office the day something is due and give me an excuse. It will cost you your job.” That kind of accountable.
> The goal wasn’t inflexible dates and deadlines, it was to build a culture of no surprises and collective problem solving.
Re: The no excuses culture
#28I've always been struck by an odd irony in academia: People tend to have left-wing political beliefs, but maintain an organizational culture that is decidedly authoritarian. Perhaps this is necessary: I can't think of how else to manage a classroom than to have hard deadlines for things like homework assignments. Even in college, by definition, the work is finished when the semester ends. I'm personally guilty of mis…
Not to detract from your main point, but authoritarianism exists across the political spectrum. See
the USSR and Nazi Germany, or modern-day Venezuela and Russia.
That there are authoritarians in academia isn't too surprising - it's all about politics ;)
Re: The no excuses culture
#29This is a piece of positioning. It's not so much Blank giving any serious solution to the solution of 'no accountability' as him saying 'look at how tough and uncompromising I am.' He literally says he thinks 'creating a culture' is the same as 'I hung a sign on the door.' Well no. A lot of management thinking (5 Whys etc) has gone into breaking down problems into micro-blockers. If your graphic designer is constantl…
Perhaps you didn't make it to this part of the article: > By accountable I meant, “We agreed on a delivery date, and between now and the delivery date, it’s OK if you ask for help because you’re stuck, or something happened outside of your control. But do not walk into my office the day something is due and give me an excuse. It will cost you your job.” That kind of accountable. > The goal wasn’t inflexible dates and…
Ah the 'I'll fire your ass if you give me an excuse on the due date but of course an attempt to maintain an open line of communication between now and then will be met with sunshine and rainbows.'
Let's call this disingenuous bullshit what it is - management by fear. Don't tell me you're about 'collective problem solving' in an environment where people are constantly fearing for their jobs.
Re: The no excuses culture
#30I've always been struck by an odd irony in academia: People tend to have left-wing political beliefs, but maintain an organizational culture that is decidedly authoritarian. Perhaps this is necessary: I can't think of how else to manage a classroom than to have hard deadlines for things like homework assignments. Even in college, by definition, the work is finished when the semester ends. I'm personally guilty of mis…
Not to detract from your main point, but authoritarianism exists across the political spectrum. See the USSR and Nazi Germany, or modern-day Venezuela and Russia. That there are authoritarians in academia isn't too surprising - it's all about politics ;)
It exists everywhere, no need to single out specific countries.