Understanding Accountability

Most of the more sophisticated endeavors we pursue as a civilization have some level of requirement for Leadership Accountability in order to have any hope of achieving excellence.?

Turnarounds and Major Maintenance projects must needs suffer under that same burden.?

I choose the word “suffer” deliberately and with reflection on four decades of experiences; likewise I stand by the label of “burden”.

Where is the Accountability??(No, I’m not about to re-write a Black-eyed Peas song.)

Does everyone understand what Accountability is even??

For instance, is it perfectly clear that one might be meeting all of one’s “responsibilities” in rock star fashion -- and I would not want anyone to feel any less pride for that achievement,?we should all be proud to meet our responsibilities with style and grace – but responsibilities are not the same as “Accountabilities”, and that same rock star is often better described as a fallen star, or perhaps a dead star when it comes to meeting accountabilities.

Responsibilities we start accumulating not very long after birth.?It is the son’s responsibility to wash the dishes, his sister’s responsibility to fill the wood box.

Later in life it might be her responsibility to fill the lime hopper at work, or his to file financials on time by 10:00hrs each day.

Accountability, on the other hand, typically goes hand in hand with authority.?

If it is 03:00hrs and the flies in the kitchen are reminiscent of a slaughter house; the boy has perhaps failed in his responsibility regarding the dishes, but it is a parent or caregiver who is accountable for that failure, and the accountable person is completely negligent for allowing this result.?

When that caregiver angrily rousts the one who failed in their responsibilities from slumber to address their failure, it is cold in the house, but there is no wood in the wood box.?

We have established that it is another child’s responsibility to fill the wood box, but guess what, the same leader is accountable to both failures.

Yes, I’m choosing this as an opening example on purpose, because listen carefully with me, close your eyes, hear it… the angry parent, ranting about the complete lack of responsibility in teenagers these days, blah, blah… stress, stress… fail, fail.

The commonality in the example is?NOT?the similar ages of the two responsible workers, the commonality was?the failing accountability of the parent, and we see another common failing goes hand in hand as the parent rants and raves like a crazy person about teenagers.?

People who generally fail in the execution of their Accountabilities, invariably seek to deflect, scapegoat, and place blame.?Even to the point that just as in the above fictional example, blame the child when mommy fails in her accountabilities as a parent.

Let’s stick with this metaphor, I was going to switch to speaking directly about Turnaround Management, Project Management, and Leaderships accountability to assigning and enforcing the responsibilities of both teams, but we’ll use this simple metaphor, maybe it will make it easier for failing Leadership throughout our industry if I don’t focus the spotlight directly on them… we’ll fuzz it up just off to the side… so carrying on.

Let’s introduce a third party, let’s say a patient grandfather happened to witness these goings on.?Grandad is wily with the wisdom of age.

Grandad knows that ranting and raving seldom, possibly never, addressed anything at all in any meaningful way, so gramps approaches things a little differently.?

First, he talks to the sister.?She tells a story that at first seems contrived and unlikely… she was waiting to fill the wood-box to avoid conflict with her brother while he was washing the dishes.?Gramps has the years to know that most the time, if there is a bald-faced lie on the table, it came from an adult.?So, he makes a series of enquiries on the assumption that since Sister’s answer did not make sense to him… most likely he was missing data.

Gramps discovers that for the last little while, brother and sister have not been getting along, in fact the boy does tend to snipe at his younger sibling every chance he gets.?

Gramps can see that it’s pretty clear that his daughter, the children’s mother, is not enforcing any manner of code of conduct on the kids, in other words, sis is on her own in attempts to meet her responsibilities in the face never-ending hostility from the other team.

Gramps next chats with the son,?(snotty teenage nonsense doesn’t fly with gramps, he’s not focused on being your friend), gramps skips entirely the discussion about why is the boy mean to his sister, any idiot knows that teenage boys in puberty are not particularly nice and seldom enjoy their pre-teen siblings.?

Gramps accepts that if mom won’t force rules of civility with her kids, then sis is correct to protect herself by avoidance.?

So instead gramps moves straight to the next question… “Why are you not doing dishes immediately after supper?”?the reply is simple, “that’s not the rule, mom said I have to do dishes, she did not say when, she doesn’t care when I do them”

Gramps isn’t a simpleton, he can fill in the rest himself… clearly the boy has noted his sister’s effort to avoid conflict, and now he is leaving the dishes all evening long because he knows she is waiting for that to be complete, so she can meet her responsibilities in peace.

Time to chat with mommy/daughter about accountability, because this entire mess is her fault.?

She has the authority and responsibility to disallow sibling bulling… this is a failure of responsibility.?

She has the Accountability to see that the responsibilities she has assigned are met… it was her who should have been stepping in to tell her son to stop being an idiot and get the damn dishes washed… NOW!

She has the absolute accountability to understand that she has given two teams responsibilities with the potential to conflict, it was easy to insist dishes get done immediately, it would have been equally easy to change the wood box chore to a morning chore.?

She did neither, who knows why… maybe mom doesn’t understand what accountability is, or her part in it, does not matter why.?

Mom has failed fully completely in her accountabilities, gramps would rather that not be true of his daughter, because he realizes that somewhere in his less wise past, he must also have missed some accountabilities for his daughter to be so irresponsible.?

Whatever else Gramps may or may not be, he is a man of integrity, and he understands that covering up his long past error by papering over today is beneath him.

A very negative thing has come of this abdication of accountability, the boy, her son, just a normal teenage boy, has been allowed, by her abdication of accountability to put himself in a disciplinary position.

What makes Gramps sad is that mom is convinced all of this is the teenager’s fault.

After some thought, gramps has a sit down with his daughter and proposes, hey hon, I’m thinking I cannot just sit around here all day, I’d like to take the household management and the kids off your plate, anyone can see how hard your work is, from now on let me manage the kids and the chores.?

Mom agrees, this is the beginning of the son’s worst nightmare in the short-term sense, but in the long term he’ll be a better human being for this change.

Gramps makes two simple changes that both sets the tone for future interaction with the kids and corrects the most immediate conflict.

From this moment forward the boy’s chores are the dishes, AND the wood box, and both must be complete before he can sit down in front of tv or game every evening; no exceptions.?

He must re-arrange his gaming schedule with his friends inside the box if it conflicts with his responsibilities to the family.

Sister has a new chore, to vacuum the floors and carpets every day after school.

Gramps likes fair play, fair warning, and transparent management, so he makes it clear to both kids.?"There is no reason for the eldest to be anywhere near where his sister is working, if I see you there,?gramps promises, it better be to help or do something nice, because I will add a new chore per day every-time I see you taking your angst out on her."

The next day, the son had vacuum the basement added to his daily chore list, but the upside is the boy is smarter than he looks, he got it first time out, gramps will meet his accountabilities… which means that the boy had best plan on meeting his own responsibilities going forward.

The silent thought in Gramp's head says, "Maybe when you are my age, you’ll understand that Gramps made you the rock star you are today."

Dropping the metaphoric example… the Accountabilities of CEOs, COOs, Senior VPs, VPs, Directors… it truly isn’t any more difficult to understand than the example metaphor.?

If you incorporate a team, give them a mandate, give them a process to follow, perhaps you call them the Turnaround Team, perhaps you call them Major Maintenance, but when your other Projects teams are running rough shod over the turnaround program, ignoring the turnaround management team, your turnaround team is not failing… and as much as it kills me to admit this… your projects team is not at fault either, they may all be acting like idiot teenagers with over used egos, but they are not at fault for the fail.

Senior Leadership is 100% failing.?

Hunger games management is refuge of incompetent leaders.?

Competent leaders address their Accountabilities, just as competent parents do.

The multiple teams required to run a modern energy or petro-chem operation are all focused, as they should be, on meeting what they understand to be their responsibilities.?Very often, nearly all the time in my four decades of experience, the marching orders have many points of potential conflict with other teams intent on also doing their best to meet their own mandate.

Projects works to pmboc, Turnaround absolutely cannot strictly follow pmboc do to the very dynamic nature of turnaround projects.?

The Turnaround manager wants all of his Issued for Construction packages 18 months out, so they can be fully planned, incorporated into the schedule, the requirements of the project(s) may influence the choice of General Contractor… but most importantly, regardless of the exact reasons, understand this is not a whim.. that manager has a program that Senior Leadership has said he is accountable to follow, but neither project nor work management even pretends they are trying to comply with the turnaround program.

Projects has it in their program that they will deliver Issue for Review drawings at t -6, and Issued for Construction a month later, and they've zero intention of meeting the Turnaround ask.

This pre-decides for the Turnaround Management team that this portion of the project will be a fail on levels of cost, schedule, and quality. The truly unfortunate thing is in nine point nine out of ten cases, after the fact, the Senior Leadership team will expect the Turnaround team to speak to the fail.

Where is the Accountability?

Senior Leadership is coming to the party many, many months late, and drawing completely the wrong conclusions based on the fact they have not bothered to review the real data, the time to be interested, the time to meet their Accountabilities was back when they incorporated the Turnaround team in the first place... Turnaround Management and Turnaround Process will control the Turnaround, all in, no further discussion, then when engineering, projects and work management all went merrily on their own way defying every effort of the Turnaround team, it was time for Leadership to step up and do their job. There is nothing to figure out, there is not two sides to understand, the mandate, their mandate was, the Turnaround Process and Team control turnaround, their job is to force compliance, or start dismissing people.

No in house turnaround team I've ever heard of created themselves, every single one is a construct of what Senior Leadership believed was necessary, so why is it so difficult to step up, be accountable, and make it happen, could it be we are witnessing a complete absence of competency for the role?

I’m describing a conflict that all of us that can claim to be Turnaround project professionals see ever day, have seen over and over, we’ve seen it in far more operations than not.

In things as big as a facility turnaround projects, many different factors always play a role , but I stand by the observation of my four decades, Senior Leadership’s complete abdication of accountability is a leading contributor, often the direct cause of most turnaround project failures.

I see it over and over again.?Leadership has enough understanding to get it that turnaround is a different sort of project challenge, they create the team, they adopt a program, then they do absolutely nothing to enforce compliance from the supporting teams, and in the end question why their turnaround team isn’t getting better results.

Accountability is what Senior Leadership is all about, the responsibility to ‘know’ the truth is on you, acting, deciding, making decisions based on who chatters the most without even a token effort to discern the truth… that defines Leadership failure.?

Accountability is a Leadership Responsibility, if you are leaving your managers to fight things out in some form of hunger game contest… you are not doing your job, period.

Execution excellence requires a lot of things, all the things I’ve written about in my LinkedIn publishing’s to be sure and more, but this I know, no matter how much I strive to find that elusive thing we’ve defined as Execution Excellence, I will never find it until I hook up with a client who meets their Leadership Accountabilities.?

I worked for a company like that in the ‘80s, so I know they are out there.