Responsibility

hello my name is Gary Shotton and I’m here again as a part of Inspiring Better Business, IBBTalks today we’re going to talk about the subject of responsibility and more so about taking the correct responsibility for the actions of your company yourself your team members and how that works when you’re in the business world now most people tend to in the natural like to take responsibility when things are going really really well a I’m in charge because our team won the event arm charge because our team I’m in charge and I helped make this team successful I mean that’s a very common graph that we could gravitate to that if we’re not careful and to some degree that’s true but I like to hear a successful sports figure when asked about that they said you know I’m not the one that made this happen my team made it possible for me to score this many points or my team has done this and that for the success of the team and I really Registry and on that it bothers me when someone starts to soak up I’m the one I’m responsible I made it happen and that’s true in the business world if you’re a one-person operation then you could take all the responsibility good and bad but as soon as we start adding people then you’ve got to recognize that it is a team and things are going to be reflective of how the team did not how not how one person did now what I suggest number one is don’t have a pattern of saying they did it he did it she did it there someone else is responsible and it’s very subtle but if you’re late for a job on-time delivery is very important to us we don’t want to say well it was the quality department that caused us to be late was on time but quality is holding us up no we as a team didn’t deliver the part on time or if there’s something wrong with the dimension of a part is not meeting the drawing the specifications and we say well it was Joe again Joe he had a bad weekend let’s feel sorry for Joe I had a family situation that caused him to be a little distraught on Monday and because of that Joe made a bad part now don’t do that our customers don’t want to hear that it’s not a pattern we can’t develop this patterning of pointing the finger at somebody else that’s a very poor habit to get into and it will be spotted by the quality persons a at a beginning stage someone might let they get by and kind of fall for that but in the long run that is not the answer no if something happened I’m responsible even they know that I cannot make a single part or measure a single part to the quality levels that this company produces yet repeatedly in the front of my customer I will say without hesitation I am responsible why can I say that I’m the one at the top of the pyramid I am the one that it makes put into practice to be sure things are done correctly in a process of a pattern of a process that’s going to produce the end results I’m a systems person so that is part that comes with the territory the buck stops with me I am it now when something does happen our customer wants to hear how we’re going to correct that issue we have a corrective action report in other words when we have a part that is become to a customer and they unintentionally got out of our shop it’s going to happen that one of the dimensions or a couple of dimensions are not to the satisfaction of our customer or maybe the part just didn’t appear good enough maybe the customer didn’t like the way it looked and so they expect to do what’s official form that says corrective action and we then have Monday Wednesday and Friday discussion on every part that happens internally because we’re gonna make parts we’re gonna have mistakes everybody does and we try to correct those actions so that we minimize not eliminate but we minimize that and our customer wants to know that we’re not just repeatedly accepting this below par standard they want to know whether whether you’re doing whether they’re selling shoes you’ve got a plate of food that comes out to the table and and it was cold when you wanted it hot whether you’re doing a hairstyle and you make a mistake and cut the hair too short or you just name anything that the tomatoes were too ripe or just every single thing there’s going to be something that’s going to be substandard and in that process you’ve got to be conscious that the customer wants to hear what did I do to make sure this doesn’t happen again you know there’s a lot of lawsuit so this is on big scale things that people I think intentionally cause a lawsuit they’re not striving for money sometimes they’ll say I’m going to sue this organization or this company and I’m going to give all the proceeds to a non-profit because what they’re doing is we’re bringing attention to this my child got hurt or killed because of a defect in a product they’re bringing attention so that other children are not killed or hurt or the problem does it persist they come up again we had a situation where we have a very famous ice cream factory here in town and I remember there was some poisonous very minor things that that got out of their their shop is a form of a bacteria and yes it did it wasn’t right but if you go through all the shops with all kinds of food I believe this ice cream company had a pretty clean shop but they didn’t make any excuses none they had no excuse they said we will correct this to the tune of a hundred million dollars it costs and more because they emptied several months of supply of ice cream and dumped it into landfills they made sure nobody got that and they took responsibility Wow even though that cost him they had to reinvest they had to sell part of their company to a private investor to bring this back it’s a big company that’s been around for many many years and they did the right thing that no excuses and they took on that responsibility now there is this general attitude whether it’s big issue or not we can do better so it’s not uncommon for me to say I apologize for this situation happening and I know that we can do better and then we proceed to go back and make the improvements to do better the buck does stop with me it is the reality of this and it’s just the way we have to approach that and an attitude it’s an approach that says oh we’re going to resolve this we’re gonna come to a resolution now the things that we’re going to talk about you know is that you don’t want to you don’t want to say I apologize that the other person misunderstood me that’s not an apology that’s implying that the other person was ignorant and should have understood me like they’re the problem or I apologize because I didn’t mean to make them mad that’s not an apology you didn’t apologize you didn’t take responsibility you made it sound like the other person was overly sensitive should have overlooked that and so these are things that that you’ve got to look deep enough when I hear an apology on air are on the TV I’m listening very closely and I’m determining whether that person is passing the buck he’s not taking responsibility for his actions and it until a person takes responsibility for their actions say you know I am an alcoholic no not but you know if a person says I am an alcoholic and I take full responsibility for that and I’m gonna make the corrective actions by joining an organization that’s going to help me through this and I’m going to be a better / because of but I am fully responsible and I’m also responsible to make the correction boy there’s somebody on the right path now in business you’re going to do better with your customers when you take responsibility and even if they’re top person you had nothing to do with what happened you are the one that’s responsible to let it happen you didn’t have your systems in place you didn’t have a check and balance to let keep it from happening you didn’t have your quality inspections up to par somehow you could have done something differently you’ll have somebody that’s a not consistently at work on time you’re the you’re the ones responsible oh well they were late and I and this caused a problem or they didn’t show up for work you’re the one that had to deal with that and either train them and get them up to par or replace them you’re still responsible so taking responsibility is a big part of being a successful business owner I hope this is helpful we believe that you’re being inspired to do better business thank you