Buried in the publicity of a nasty airline strike was a vivid example of how misdirected
management’s service improvement efforts can become. To improve service, the airline ordered
all attendants to attend three hour “Commitment to Courtesy” classes without pay. “They told
us the reason we were losing money was because we were rude to passengers,” said one
attendant.
How reasonable would it be to hold a shipping dock worker responsible for the quality of the
goods in the boxes he or she is shipping Not only would that be unfair, it would be bad
management. A good manager would argue, quite rightly, that the manufacturing process should
be traced back to find the ultimate source of the defects.
So how reasonable is it for managers to hold the final deliverer responsible for the quality of the
products or services he or she is delivering The person on the front serving line is a symptom
carrier, not the source of the problem. While he or she may be contributing to low service
delivery, blaming him or her is not only unfair, it’s unproductive.
The basic problem is that people are visible, but the systems and organization culture by which
group and individual behavior is shaped are largely invisible. So when something goes wrong, it’s
easy to trace the problem back to whoever touched it last and lay the blame there.
If you put a good person into a bad system the system will win. This has been proven so often
that it has become a truism in the quality improvement field called the “85/15 Rule”. The 85/15
Rule shows that if you trace errors or service complaints back to the root cause, about 85% of
the time the fault lays in the system, processes, structure, or practices of the organization. Only
about 15% of the ricochets can be traced back to someone who didn’t care or wasn’t conscientious enough.
I’ve seethed in the seats of all too many airport gates waiting for a late aircraft, or scrambling to find an alternate way home. Having a flight attendant then give me a bag of peanuts and a big courteous smile doesn’t turn me into a satisfied customer. I often feel sorry for the attendants (and the harried gate agents) while plotting my revenge for the faceless bureaucrats and managers that can’t get the organization’s act together.
Frontline servers often provide delightful service in spite of, not because of, their organization’s support and systems. Given the many obstacles, it’s a minor miracle that service is being
provided at all by some exceptionally caring employees!
Many manifestations of the “our workforce is to blame” assumption stem from the all too
common, but badly misguided, inclination to begin error “seek and destroy missions” by asking
“who” rather than “what” went wrong. Symptom carriers of the organization’s system and
process problems are hunted down and hung by the neck. The result is a culture of fixing the
blame rather than the problem. A culture of fear, cover your backside, and finger pointing.
If senior management truly wants to find the source of their organization’s declining service
levels, the best place to start is with a long and deep look in the mirror.
management’s service improvement efforts can become. To improve service, the airline ordered
all attendants to attend three hour “Commitment to Courtesy” classes without pay. “They told
us the reason we were losing money was because we were rude to passengers,” said one
attendant.
How reasonable would it be to hold a shipping dock worker responsible for the quality of the
goods in the boxes he or she is shipping Not only would that be unfair, it would be bad
management. A good manager would argue, quite rightly, that the manufacturing process should
be traced back to find the ultimate source of the defects.
So how reasonable is it for managers to hold the final deliverer responsible for the quality of the
products or services he or she is delivering The person on the front serving line is a symptom
carrier, not the source of the problem. While he or she may be contributing to low service
delivery, blaming him or her is not only unfair, it’s unproductive.
The basic problem is that people are visible, but the systems and organization culture by which
group and individual behavior is shaped are largely invisible. So when something goes wrong, it’s
easy to trace the problem back to whoever touched it last and lay the blame there.
If you put a good person into a bad system the system will win. This has been proven so often
that it has become a truism in the quality improvement field called the “85/15 Rule”. The 85/15
Rule shows that if you trace errors or service complaints back to the root cause, about 85% of
the time the fault lays in the system, processes, structure, or practices of the organization. Only
about 15% of the ricochets can be traced back to someone who didn’t care or wasn’t conscientious enough.
I’ve seethed in the seats of all too many airport gates waiting for a late aircraft, or scrambling to find an alternate way home. Having a flight attendant then give me a bag of peanuts and a big courteous smile doesn’t turn me into a satisfied customer. I often feel sorry for the attendants (and the harried gate agents) while plotting my revenge for the faceless bureaucrats and managers that can’t get the organization’s act together.
Frontline servers often provide delightful service in spite of, not because of, their organization’s support and systems. Given the many obstacles, it’s a minor miracle that service is being
provided at all by some exceptionally caring employees!
Many manifestations of the “our workforce is to blame” assumption stem from the all too
common, but badly misguided, inclination to begin error “seek and destroy missions” by asking
“who” rather than “what” went wrong. Symptom carriers of the organization’s system and
process problems are hunted down and hung by the neck. The result is a culture of fixing the
blame rather than the problem. A culture of fear, cover your backside, and finger pointing.
If senior management truly wants to find the source of their organization’s declining service
levels, the best place to start is with a long and deep look in the mirror.
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