Originally posted on LinkedIn.
A friend gave me that advice when I started my first management role and it’s been an important principle for me ever since. Things inevitably go wrong, but it’s crucial to remember that everybody’s doing their best and to keep the blame focused where it belongs: with me.
Imagine a developer breaks a critical business system. They didn’t walk through the door hoping to screw something up, so what really happened? Maybe they didn’t have the support or training they needed. Perhaps the process didn’t have the right guardrails to prevent mistakes escalating to outages. Maybe they weren’t the right person to be doing that task. All these problems are management problems.
Sometimes people are breaking the rules. That’s bad! But there’s often a good reason. People do what they think is right for the business, and if that isn’t desirable then their manager needs to do a better job of setting expectations (and probably rewriting the rules). To what extent does your organisational culture reward people who bend the rules to meet business needs?
I have seen people who weren’t in quite the right role or even the right company. People, roles and companies all change over time and sometimes there’s no longer a fit. That’s something that needs fixing in the right way (ideally to the relief of everybody involved).
It’s my responsibility to put the right people in the right places, point them in the right direction, and build the right culture around them. In the right environment everybody can bring their ideas and innovation to help the team achieve more.