Responsibility

It’s the most fundamental of management principles: a supervisor is responsible for the work of others. So basic a principle that it seems everyone thinks it goes without saying – or writing. When was the last time you read anything about this part of management? 
 
Shop online, you can find plenty of best-selling business and management books on missing cheese, managing constraints, emotional smarts, military ops, just to name a few. Biographies and autobiographies of successful business leaders abound, should you want to be like Mike – or Jack. What do they all have in common? They are interesting. 
 
Supervising the work done by others? Boring. Besides, everyone knows how to do that. 
 
Boring fundamentals seems redundant. At home, when your kids want to play video games instead of doing their math homework, being honest you ought to admit that’s something you understand perfectly. “Tell your math teacher to quit wasting your valuable time on equations. Nobody does math anymore. That’s what computers are for.”
 
At the office, the detailed operating work done by others doesn’t seem to matter all that much to management either. When was the last time you got an email from someone in the executive suite: “I want an hour-long power point presentation on how we inspect our goods in process at step 27 of the assembly work process”?
 
Other than when a customer found a huge problem that escaped detection at step 25, never. 
 
That’s the thing about operating work. When somebody does it poorly – or not at all – and the problem has repercussions outside the immediate supervisor’s sphere of control, it can spark all kinds of interest in what are now important details – about the business!
 
As to the precipitating event, it could be something small, like putting the wrong tires on a customer’s car in a tire shop. It might be huge, like failing to properly fasten the door space on a $100 million commercial airliner. Don’t think that could never happen. 
 
Tires, rivets, what’s the difference? In many cases, only the number of people involved in failure.
 
The good news is that in today’s economy, product quality and service problems are the exception. On the other hand, seldom do you hear about defects that don’t show up as events, or near-misses that easily could have been one. 
 
So, maybe next time you take your car into the shop to get new tires, you might want to check each tire, matching up the product serial number with the shop order.
 
But who’s got time to do that? Besides, that’s the supervisor’s job.

Being Responsible
 
As the one responsible for the work of others, it naturally follows that a supervisor is responsible for the work being done safely. That is every supervisor’s first duty. Surprisingly, in theory, that part of the job should be easy.
 
Why so? Every supervisor wants everyone they are responsible for to be safe. More to the point, nobody doing the work intends to go home by way of the hospital. Meaning that, on the matter of safety, there’s perfect agreement throughout the organization. No need reading a business best seller on strategic vision alignment to help with that.
 
The work needing to be done isn’t with intent. As my mother used to say, “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” The crux of the challenge is this: working safely requires people to do things – a lot of things – and do them consistently well. Like following all the rules, all the time. And not doing other things that are tempting, like taking shortcuts when nobody’s looking. 
 
As to where the supervisor fits in to that process, does “being responsible” mean the supervisor must explain when things don’t happen the way they’re supposed to? Or does “being responsible” demand the supervisor take action to see to it that the right things are done – and the wrong things are not? 
 
Yes is the obvious answer to both questions. The supervisor is expected to cause the work to be done safely, and will be called upon to explain why when it was not. 
 
If the technician at the tire shop installs the wrong tires on the car, the supervisor can’t get away with telling the customer, “Well, don’t blame me. I wasn’t the one who did it.” You might think no supervisor would ever say that, but I’ve had supervisors tell me straight out, if one of their followers were to get hurt because they weren’t properly trained, that would be the fault of the Training Department. “They’re responsible for training, not me.” 
 
That line of thinking isn’t limited to the front line. In the aftermath of a high-profile failure, it’s not unusual for a top executive to point to functions down in their chain of command – vendors, suppliers, contractors, engineering, construction, accounting – as if to say, “Don’t blame me: I wasn’t the one who did it.”
 
The smart strategy would be for a supervisor to do everything in their power to make sure those they are responsible for do their jobs well. That way, there won’t be problems to be explained. 
 
On that point, it really doesn’t matter what the supervisor’s rank might be.
 
Hope Is Not A Method
 
As to causing followers to work safely, there’s a long list of challenges to be dealt with. It’s familiar to every supervisor, looking like: attitude, awareness, behavior, compliance, complacency, communication, culture, distractions, equipment, environment, pressure from the business, pressure from peers, resistance to change, training, turnover…
 
Since you know that, consider this: when someone gets hurt, and a supervisor is explaining to the boss why it happened, what are the odds the reasons won’t be found on this list? 
 
Pretty low. 
 
Were the boss to figure that out, whenever there’s an injury, they’d always ask the supervisor – the one directly responsible for the work of others – “What have you been doing to deal with that totally predictable cause? It’s not like you didn’t see it coming.”
 
If you get asked that question, please do not complain. It should be asked routinely.
 
Appreciating that should point every supervisor in the direction of the work that needs to be done to deal with the challenge. Unless a supervisor is willing to hope for the best, there needs to be a plan. What do you do? How do you do it? Why do it that way, and not some other way? How do you measure progress?
 
An example might serve to illustrate. Consider the challenge of overcoming resistance to change to a new safety procedure, one that isn’t popular. A challenge well known to every supervisor. 
 
For openers, what’s the goal? 
 
“Communication” is not a good answer. That’s just reading the words. The goal is achieving understanding, acceptance – and execution. In plain English, as an output, those doing the work follow the new policy, all the time, exactly as written.
 
What’s the process to accomplish that? What does the method look like, step by step? “Explain” is not a particularly good answer, either. Tell them exactly what? In what order? 
 
When the resistance to change comes, what’s the best way to deal with it? If someone points out a problem the change creates, is that even resistance? Is it a good practice for the supervisor to share their personal opinion as to the advisability of the change? How is the execution of the change going to be measured?
 
You might be thinking, “Those are a lot of questions about one small aspect of a supervisor’s responsibilities.” Yes, indeed. But what questions are unimportant to the process? For the ones that are, how good are your answers?
 
The alternative is to hope they’ll change, simply because you told them to.
 
Leading – And Managing
 
There’s one other popular theme making the rounds in management circles, “We need leaders, not managers.” You’ve probably heard the take; it’s been around since the 70’s. It started with an article in the Harvard Business Review. That should make it gospel. 
 
Few would disagree: “You lead people.” Fair enough; being responsible for the work of others, you can’t get around that simple truth. And safety is all about people.
 
But is “leading” enough? Can those assigned to do the work of the business do their work well – and safely – without goals, processes, systems, technology, organization, training, and the means to measure performance?
 
Of course not. 
 
Planning, organizing, and measuring are examples of management functions. Do they count less than leadership? That’s not how W. Edwards Deming saw it. “95% of the variability of performance of a system is caused by the system itself; only 5% is caused by the people.” 
 
If Deming had worked in the Safety Department instead of the Quality Department, he probably wouldn’t have seen performance quite that way: too many instances of behavior being completely human. But no matter what the proportions, being responsible for the work of others requires that a supervisor focus on people and process. 
 
Every supervisor must lead – and manage. It really is that simple.
 
In supervising the work of others, safety is your first responsiblity. So, what’s your plan? Your process?
 
 
 
Paul Balmert
January 2024