Example of Management at Fault and Not the Employee

author: Lee Buttolph

I once met and advised a manager who was known amongst his direct reports to be a tyrant of a boss. He would scream and yell for even the most minor of infractions.

I advised him of the philosophy "The Fault of the Employee is the Fault of Management" and asking him to try implementing it in his group. It was an instant transformation. His team went from a constant state of firefighting to one where they started to work as a team to make improvements to the process.

The overall energy of the room changed. Everyone was much more upbeat and seemed more excited to come to work everyday.

I do not want to paint to rosy a picture though. The group still made a lot of mistakes and would go from days of great success to days of utter failure. This was due to a culture of high turnover and hiring the wrong employee for the wrong job. Once again... these mistakes were the fault of management. They set the hiring criteria. They set the pay rate. They decide how they are going to treat the employees.

Don't blame the employee until you, the manager, have looked at yourself in the mirror.

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