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A Manager's Crucible Being Responsible, Accountable

As you advance in your career, developing a stronger and greater sense of accountability for what happens around you is a must, especially if you are a manager in an international company. Your top management likely does not expect everything to go perfectly when you first assume your new role, particularly here in China, where so many unexpected things happen. That’s not realistic; but they expect you to anticipate problems and to fix them as quickly as you can when they do arise. Above all, avoid playing the blame game: that doesn’t address an issue or solve a problem at hand.

A True Sense of Accountability

One story of accountability that I like to share in management development workshops comes from a former general manager (GM) of a manufacturing and assembly plant in Suzhou. The plant that he was running had just delivered two large, manufacturing control systems to a client’s factory. Unfortunately, the systems were defective. As expected, the client was not happy. The situation required the two pieces of equipment to be replaced at a large cost to the GM’s company. Given that the client was one of the company’s key worldwide accounts, the mishap caught the attention of corporate headquarters.

A conference call was immediately arranged between the GM in Suzhou and his boss in the United States. Also in the meeting room during the call were the GM’s quality control, manufacturing, production, customer service, and maintenance managers. Over the speakerphone, the GM got right to the point. “The situation is entirely my fault. I screwed up,” he declared to his boss. “But I want you to know that we’re on top of the situation now. We’re going to remove the two faulty systems and install temporary ones free of charge. In the meantime, we’ll work around the clock to fix and reinstall the original ones to the client’s satisfaction. This will all be done within the next 48 hours.”

The call went on to cover a few details on how things were going to be handled. When it ended, the GM recalls his managers all looking at him with puzzled expressions. “Why did you say that it was your fault?” one of them finally asked. “This whole situation is a result of our mistakes, not yours. You didn’t even know about the problem until we told you.”

The GM’s response to his management team was immediate and clear.

“I told my boss that it was my fault for two reasons,” he began. “The first is that even if I had told him that it was your guys” fault, he would still feel that I was to blame. You might have made the mistakes, but as the GM of this plant, I’m the one responsible for your training, the sound execution of our processes, and the quality of work that we produce and deliver. So no matter who I might point the finger at, he is still going to feel that it’s my responsibility to account for what happened, and he would be exactly correct in doing so. It is entirely my responsibility.

“The second reason is that, ultimately, he doesn’t care so much about whose fault it is or why it happened. That’s something for me to sort out and correct with all of you, which you can be sure that we’ll be doing ourselves after we’ve cleaned up this matter. What he cares about most is how we are going to fix the problem and deal with our client, which is what I tried to let him know. I would have gained absolutely nothing by making excuses or explaining why this should have happened or why that didn’t happen. More than anything, he wants to be reassured that this situation is being taken care of in a timely and satisfactory manner. That’s how you should be responding if you are being truly accountable as a manager.”

Overcoming Fear of Failure, Looking Bad

That willingness to take on greater responsibility, however, is a difficult challenge for many young professionals. It involves the great risk of possibly looking bad in some situations, or even of failure. Still, if you expect to be a manager, it is unavoidable.

Early on in my own career, I realized as well that if my goal was to become a successful business executive someday, then I would need to develop a stronger sense of responsibility.  I knew that the key to doing that was overcoming my fear of failure, which was a huge psychological hurdle for me. At the time, I was an extremely risk-averse person. 

But by avoiding accountability, I also risked missing chances to develop my capabilities and to accrue achievements. By accepting more accountability and risking mistakes or failure, I learned and grew as a professional. I began to accept the opportunities and responsibilities that came to me. To be honest, I was quite nervous at first, and there were occasions when I did not deliver the kind of results that I knew others expected from me. Gradually though, my capabilities did improve and my feelings of uncertainty were replaced by a growing confidence in my ability to handle challenges. In looking back, without that willingness to take on greater accountability, my professional development would have suffered.

“Many mainland professionals need to recognize that in taking responsibility for new situations, difficulties will arise. That’s a natural part of doing business, especially in a place that is developing as fast as China is,” states the managing director of a leading US software company that has been operating in China since the early 1990s. “I always tell my staff that in taking accountability for something that does go wrong, you just want to make sure that you do three things: understand what happened, correct it, and determine how to avoid a reoccurrence.”