5 things to check before placing blame

When something goes wrong at work, it is often easy to get caught up in looking for the person responsible. Before you do, consider checking these five reasons things go wrong:

1. Process - Make sure the process is correct and doable. A good process should not leave room for errors to go undetected. Bulletproof the process, and this problem will not happen again. Place blame, and in all likelihood, it will.

2. Inputs - Was the issue really that someone failed or was it that someone had bad inputs? Was it bad information from the client? Was it an incorrect report? Find out to stop this issue from reappearing.

3. Equipment - Bad equipment can derail even the best process. Make sure your people have what they need to get the job done. Goes without saying.

4. Metrics - This is a tough one to ferret out, but it is also the most common cause of failure. How you measure success impacts what people do. Make sure your measurements make sense. Think how the focus of performance reviews and status reports might cause things to go awry. If people are following incentives, can you really blame them?

5. Chance - Sometimes failure is really just random chance. Nobody and no process is immune to chance. If the failure is an isolated event and the impact is small think about cutting some slack.

Of course if these five are all in shape, go ahead an place blame, someone really missed the mark.

Disagree? Let me know...