“To be accountable is to care for the well-being of the whole and act as if this well-being is in our hands and hearts to create.”
—Peter Block
There is nothing that happens at Hancock Lumber in the way of a problem that I can’t trace back to myself as the senior leader of the organization. I can connect every challenge we face to something I did that I shouldn’t have done, or something I didn’t do that I should have done. In this way, I never see a problem at work as anyone’s responsibility other than my own.
This self-accountable view is liberating because it’s always actionable. Improvement only depends on me becoming the change I wish to see. And my hope in living and modeling this behavior is that everyone around me will share this view and take their own self-designed action to help make the company better. This is the essence of shared leadership and dispersed power.
This approach also eliminates blame. It eliminates looking externally and waiting for someone else to create change. It’s an empowering perspective that invites everyone to only look inward. Let me give you but one of many possible examples: In our retail stores our number-one goal is to get to the point where we are making a delivery. Everyone on the team has a job that leads to, or involves, this amazing moment. A customer has given us an order for building materials and, literally, it’s time to deliver.
To celebrate this critical milestone, we created an app that allows anyone in the company to take a picture of a loaded truck and, with the click of a single button, send an e-mail to the entire company, subject line “Freighted,” with a photo of that delivery attached. The task takes less than thirty seconds to complete, and the victory of a delivery is shared.
Recently, despite both the ease and importance of the task, many drivers have not been taking this step before departing the yard with their delivery. In the old management model of always paying attention to what others are doing, one might say “Why aren’t those drivers taking and sharing pictures?”
because their logistics managers aren’t asking about it regularly, and celebrating their photos when they send them. Furthermore, the logistics managers aren’t taking that step because their general managers aren’t regularly asking about it and celebrating those same pictures when they see them. And furthermore, the general managers aren’t taking that simple step because their regional managers aren’t consistently asking about it. And furthermore, the regional managers aren’t doing that because the COO isn’t asking about it and regularly participating. And furthermore, the COO isn’t doing that because the CEO isn’t asking him about it. And finally, the CEO isn’t asking the COO about the topic regularly because I am not asking about it regularly.
In this way, it all flows back to me. And me means anyone in the system. Anyone in the system, at any point, can break the chain of inaction by simply acting themselves and becoming the change they wish to see.
We are the truth we seek to know, and the solution to the problems we face in our work, and in our lives. This is both a blessing and an invitation to act today—like, now. We never have to wait for anyone else to “make it right” again.
