Accountability

We’ve been working through the growing pains of reaching that 50+ employee mark. With more people means there are more processes, more meetings, more management, more project management software, more, more, more… with more, it seems less is getting done and if anything, more balls are getting dropped.

An event from my personal life this past week helped provide some perspective for me on the issue. While visiting family our 1 year old son was doing what 1 year olds do best, crawl around like a mad man. Four of us were hanging out, each taking turns keeping an eye on Finn. Kind of a round robin, hot potato type of situation. One task, four capable adults, sounds simple enough.

After not long the shared system of responsibility broke down and the inevitable question of “where’s Finn?” erupted the house into chaos. The kid moved fast, made it to the top of the stair case where he sat teetering on the edge of disaster. Once the momentary scare had subsided and the blame game ended, the question that was in my mind was how did four grown adults totally fail at one simple task.

This is no different than what happens in the work place. Whether it’s business or personal, unless one person is accountable then there is going to be a higher probability of failure. And, if that failure does happen it’s human. All we can do is hopefully learn from the mistakes, improve upon the system and continue to grow.