Chapter 75.
Seize Responsibility

Ninety-nine percent of failures come from people who have a habit of making excuses.

—George Washington Carver

“I sure wish people would take responsibility around here!” one of the attorneys in Scott Richardson’s law firm said to him. “It seems like the people I’m managing are ‘pass the buck’ artists.”

“Well, have you talked to them about what responsibility is?” Scott replied.

“Not really,” the attorney said.

“Play a little word game with me for a second. I will say a word, and you tell me the first word that pops into your head. Fair enough?”

“Oh boy, here we go.”

“No, this will be useful. I promise.”

“Okay, shoot. What’s the word?”

“What’s the first word that comes to mind when you hear the word responsibility?”

“Obligation,” said the attorney.

“Great,” said Scott. “Now let’s break down the word responsibility into its component parts. It literally is response ability or the ability to respond. The ability to do something! Responsible is response-able or being able to respond. That’s all responsibility is. Nothing more and nothing less. Responsibility doesn’t have anything to do with obligation or the host of other negative words that are associated with it, words that have an intimidating connotation, such as obligation, burden, debt, guilt, fault, and so on. If you want your people to take responsibility, you need to be clear yourself and with them that responsibility doesn’t have anything to do with those other words. It is simply the ability to respond, the ability to do something. Just tell your people you believe in them. That you know they have the ability to respond to this challenge, and you support them in doing so.”

Steve Hardison is a life coach extraordinaire we’ve worked with and written about extensively in previous books (visit him at: www.theultimatecoach.net). One time Hardison was invited to attend a board meeting of a company he was considering coaching. The first item on the agenda was “Whose fault is it that we have a $100,000 computer system that is a piece of junk?”

The president turned to one of the vice presidents and said, “Joe, this is all your fault!”

Joe quickly responded, “No, it’s not. I didn’t draw up the specs. John did!”

John quickly responded, “Hey, wait a minute. I didn’t choose the vendor. Rose did.”

Rose said, “Hey, that wasn’t really my decision, I just gave my recommendation to you!”

And so the people at the board meeting just kept passing the buck around and around the boardroom.

Finally, coach Hardison motioned to the CEO and interrupted the conversation.

“Can I say something?” he asked the CEO.

“Sure, what?”

“I am responsible for the computer system,” announced Hardison.

“What?” shot back the CEO. “We barely even know who you are! Why would you say anything so crazy?”

“Someone needs to be responsible!” said Hardison.

“Oh, yeah,” replied the CEO.

Once Hardison had taken responsibility for the computer system, he was able to lead the discussion on how to move forward and solve the problem. This is true response ability rather than responsibility = blame. Hardison wanted to have the ability to move the problem into a solution mode.

Another one of our affiliate coaches started as a salesperson at a high-tech company. In less than two years, he was the CEO. When he was asked how he did it, he said, “I considered it my company from day one. If I saw a piece of paper on the floor, I either picked it up or got someone to do it. If there were a division of the company that was not working, I got involved and got it running better, even though technically it had nothing to do with my job. After a while, they asked me to be the CEO, but I had already taken responsibility for the entire company long before.”

So if you would like to be the CEO someday, start from this moment taking 100-percent responsibility for the entire company. Nothing will motivate your people more than that.