Last week I wrote about W. Edwards Deming and his management philosophy that can essentially be summed up as “focus on fixing the system, not the person.” The article was very well received, and of the dozens of comments, almost all voiced strong support of this philosophy.
However, there were also many people who disagreed to some degree, arguing that in some cases the person—not the process—really is at fault. I believe their point is completely valid. Having served in healthcare leadership for over 45 years, I’ve experienced more than a few situations where I would say the problem had more to do with the person than the process!
But I still wouldn’t place the bulk of the blame on the employee in question; I believe more often than not the management and the processes in place are more to blame for the issue than the employee.
Obviously there are exceptions—humans are only human, after all, and mistakes happen all the time. But just like the amusing but eye-opening analogy about not asking a fish to climb a tree, leaders must put the right people in the right position (with the right process!) in order to achieve success! Not an easy task for any leader, but a very critical one.
Back to Deming’s philosophy—whether it’s the hiring process, the training process, the reporting process, the quality-control process, or any other process in an organization, very often somewhere along the line a part of the process is to blame for poor results.
In response to my previous article, commenter Linda Scott made this discerning statement:
“We do hear all too often, when something goes wrong—‘who did it?’ It is a culture shift to get to ‘why did this happen?’ It takes a bit of courage when the CEO asks ‘who did it?’ to reply ‘our processes, tools, training did.’”
As Linda noted, it is easy to point fingers and ask, “Whose fault is it?” But leaders need to reframe the issue and rephrase the question, instead asking, “Why did this happen?” When the fault is properly traced back to its origin, leaders may be surprised to find how often process is to blame instead of employees!
“Eighty-five percent of the reasons for failure are deficiencies in the systems and process rather than the employee. The role of management is to change the process rather than badgering individuals to do better.” – W. Edwards Deming
