Several years ago I did a Baldrige assessment for a well-known service company. It was quickly apparent that a siege mentality permeated its offices with leadership blaming the production facility for problems and production blaming leadership and everybody blaming the customers, who generally disliked the company. When I presented my evaluation of the company’s management system, I told leaders they had a “culture of blameology.”

The most common question in response to any problem was, “Whose fault is it?” As a result, people kept their heads down. Nobody took initiative. Everybody avoided responsibility. Unhappy and unmotivated employees spent more time looking over their shoulders than focusing on what was in front of them.

So the first task was to change the question. Instead of asking whose fault a problem was, the more effective question is, “What’s the process?” W. Edwards Deming and Joseph Juran liked to point out that 80 to 90 to 95 percent of an organization’s problems are problems with the system, not with the people working in the system, so if you really have to blame someone, blame the people responsible for the system. Blame leadership. That won’t solve the problems but at least you’ll be holding the right people accountable.

You solve problems by understanding and improving the processes that produce them. This is a process issue, not a people issue. As someone once said, if you put a good performer up against a bad system, the system will win every time.

The Baldrige Criteria ask questions that reveal a systematic approach to process design, management, and improvement. Evaluate your management system and your key processes by asking and answering these questions.

A year later I did a follow-up evaluation for the service company. I heard “What’s the process?” repeatedly in meetings. People were more relaxed and more positive than they had been a year earlier. Most of the problems had still not been solved, but at least everyone was working on the problems and not taking it out on each other.

To read more about process management, click on these articles:

• We Are All Idiots
• 10 Critical Questions: Process Management
• Identifying Key Work Processes
• 5 Powerful Process Questions
• The Process Matrix

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