PAPod 520 - Navigating Leadership: From Accountability to Responsibility

Music. Welcome to the Pre-Accident Investigation Podcast. How are you?

I'm checking in. I'm seeing if you're okay. Because, you know, it's a really important thing to do as a human being. I'm trying, you know, I'm trying to focus on doing cool stuff, making people happy and getting everything, you know, providing a better world for us all in which to live. How's that sound? Is that a good outcome? It is a marvelous time to be alive. All is well. Well, you just can't say enough about how interesting and fun it is to be in New Mexico in the fall.

Because it just, I've said it to you before a million times, so this isn't new news. But it just smells good here. I mean, just, you know, they're burning pinyon pine and roasting chilies. And just so the air is crisp. It's just a nice time to be alive. And so I'm taking a moment and just kind of allowing it to happen because, you know, then everything gets really crowded with, you know, the stuff we do, the work we do. And that's an interesting time as well.

Plus, I don't know how you guys are doing in the rest of the world, but for those of us in the United States, there's a lot going on here. I mean, holy cow, I can't decide, do I want to watch the TV or not watch the TV? Do I want to expose myself to the world? And I don't mean expose myself. That'll get me in trouble. But you know what I mean. There's just a gob of things happening all at the same time. And I can't decide if it's exciting or scary or both or neither.

It's just the world in which we live. And don't act like you don't feel the same way because I know you do. It's just a crazy time to be a human being. but also kind of an opportunity-filled time.

And that part, I think, is the most exciting part of all the stuff we talk about is the opportunities we have are just remarkable. And that's kind of what today's podcast is focusing in on, that idea, because we're going to have a nice little conversation today. And I'm so excited that you can be a part of it. It's between a young man named Mark Hohmeyer, who spent an entire professional lifetime working in the maritime industry as a vessel master.

But then he went on to sort of, as they say in the maritime world, spend some time on the beach as a kind of a leader amongst many vessels. And he has moved into, because there's so much pull right now in the maritime industry for the stuff we talk about, for this notion of how do we build systems that can understand variation and variability, but also be dependable and reliable. And there's just been a lot of attention. I mean, you know that because you exist in the same world I do.

And Mark goes out and helps all sorts of organizations, not just maritime organizations, but all sorts of organizations, understand their role properly. Especially at the leadership level. And so it's a super interesting conversation that I think you're going to enjoy immensely. I'm so excited for you to hear it because Mark is just a great human being.

So that's a great starting place, but he's a great human being who's thought a lot about what leadership means and what accountability means and its relationship with expectations and responsibility and how you create these super interesting, high-performing teams, which is kind of in the maritime industry what they do.

I mean, it's these little teams that perform this function, which happens to be this giant ship full of stuff, but it's a great conversation to have and you get to be a part of it. So that is exciting at every single level. I can't even wait for you to have that conversation. But checking back in from my side, still on the same bicycle. Nothing untoward has happened. In fact, I'm about to go jump on it now. So I'll give you the full report on how that is because it's a nice day.

And if it's a nice day, I need to go and do stuff. And that's exactly what I'm going to do. But before that, let's take a minute and listen to the pod.

This is a conversation between you, me, and Mark Hohmeyer. And we're going to talk about the world as it progresses and how important it is to set clear expectations for workers so they can form a super good team. Bout didn't get that out. I mean, but it came out at the end, so that's fine. So without any further ado, here's Mark and our conversation. What do you think it is that you bring to the table that people like?

I definitely think it's, I've walked a mile in the worker's shoes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I've also spent some time in the management, on the management side. So I understand the dilemma. Can I throw a word out there? It's a dilemma. It's more of, you know, it's a stool with a couple of legs and they lean up against each other. And there's a push and a pull that kind of comes with it. Wow. So you're going with that metaphor over dilemma?

Dilemma is you think you think a two-legged stool that pushes and pulls on itself i'm i'll have to spend like a weekend drawing that out of my head okay i yeah i'm there's a push pull to it i think that i i i understand the management side i i definitely say if i turn over my collar it's blue so i'm i'm a worker at heart you know at the at the end of the day and i think that push pulls a pretty interesting part of it. I mean, that's, it's, there's a, there's an irony to leadership.

That's interesting and no one hardly ever talks about it, but once you become a leader, then you're not a worker. Yeah. It's hard for, I think as a leader, looking back in retrospect, I think it took me a while to recognize that I couldn't see things as a worker as accurately as I could before, right? But I think as leaders, getting out in the field and really getting down and being curious is super important.

It seems so obvious, but I'm shocked by conversations I've had with leadership people who just don't feel like it's their responsibility. So why do you think they don't feel, because I'm super interested in that. I think they think they have people to do that for them. Yeah, that's a good answer. And I think they think they already know. Oh, yeah, no, they definitely know. It's, yeah. And so the lack of curiosity, well, I think that's not fair. It's not a lack of curiosity.

It's they're curious about different things, but they also manage and lead different things. Sure and and to give a to give credence to being a leader you know you have a lot of other really important things that are distracting that can make it harder you know are you familiar with jim senegal yeah but why well he was the i say this i i went to b school with a couple three VPs from Costco. And Jim Senegal was the co-founder and CEO. That's why. And his big thing in his company was to go.

He would go out and push carts in the parking lots with, he would travel to all the warehouses. That's what they call them, warehouses. And he would push the carts with the folks out in the lot. And then he would go into the stores and urge the warehouses. And he knew exactly where everything was supposed to be. So he's very connected with the front line. And they just revere him.

Universally, you would have a hard time finding somebody who wasn't just electrified by the opportunity to spend time with Jim Senegal. He was just one of those guys that, and it seems so simple, you know, go spend time with your people. Yeah. I mean, it, it sounds simple, but I mean, you don't get to 200 and whatever, $35 billion a year in sales without doing something like that, I think. But, but, but the, the downside is that then they're overcome. They have to create time to do that.

Absolutely. Yeah. So, so therefore it has to become important and getting it to be important. That's, I don't know, it seems like it's really hard. It's just a really interesting time for me. So thinking about that.

Yeah. Well, in management, you know, we wouldn't think anything of spending two or three hours, two or three times a week in a budget meeting or, you know, some sort of finance meeting, but taking two or three hours to go visit your people in the field is really hard to hard for people to get their head around.

And you learn so much in just those couple, three hours. I think I, I was always, I spent, I think I, I guess the reason I said Jim Senegal is because I, in my latter years as a manager, I really made it a regular practice to get out and walk the ship with my guys. And I didn't have to talk to the manager. I just spent time with the frontline guys on the deck. And I, but within a half an hour, I was real clear on exactly where the ship was, you know, in terms of its culture, safety, everything.

I, it was a complete download right there. So it's better data. It's quicker data. Very effective.

It's much more accurate data. And then what would you do once you walk the ship? How would you interface then with the leadership of that vessel? Would just sit down and talk with them and say, what i'm seeing or what's fun is the captains you know they they're of course they're communicating by radio so they know when i come aboard of course and of course the captain's in the house he's here he's here look busy look busy oh no they're in the middle of doing cargo so it's fine but they.

The captain would be perched up in his window looking down and you i sometimes an indicator if the captain would put on his coveralls and come down on deck you know that was a good indicator of how he interacts with his crew. If he didn't. That also was sort of a telltale side, but sometimes the captains would come down and like, Hey, what's you guys doing? How's it going? Cause I, I guess I'd make them a little nervous cause I had spent so much time with the crew. Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure.

It drove great conversations because I came up already with a list of questions that I was really interested in. The other thing I would do is spend time reviewing their safety meeting minutes and near miss reporting data. So I had a good understanding of where they were when I walked on. I thought that was really, for me, I felt very informed. I wasn't often surprised in my latter years. Something didn't come out of nowhere at me where I was like, whoa, I was a manager.

I mean, of course, serious incidents happen the way they happen. But the culture of the ship, to be surprised by some issue between the management of the ship and the crew, I was always pretty clear on, yeah, I had a good sense of where we were. I really like that idea that serious incidents happen the way they happen. It's kind of sort of the definition of an accident, you know, is an unexpected combination of normal performance variabilities.

Take that one step further. Why is that an interesting way to say it? Why did you say that?

Well i think you know you talked you know you have talked about being able to have controls to manage things there and that there are some things that are beyond control you know they're beyond your controls or or beyond your imagination right right right you can't you can't see them coming i think i'm sorry going to take an off ramp here i think culturally the big shift was for me was when you get away from blaming and punishing people, which we did pretty successfully,

people started to really, they were, they were, they had, they were tuned up to look for issues, right? So they just take a different approach when instead of being on the defensive, they're sort of like, I guess on the offensive, you know, they're looking for things, they're probing things, and they're really interested to bring those things to the fore, right? And I think they understand that if things go wrong, even if they are probing, they just go wrong. I mean, it happens.

And how can we learn from it and move forward? What do we learn from this that we can use? I think I spent the last, I don't know, probably seven or eight years in my organization when I was in a leadership role. I don't recall a single instance where we punished anybody for anything. I mean, we made it a, I mean, we punished people for. Well, you discipline. Yeah. I mean, you had to discipline people. I mean.

Yeah. But, but I mean, I'm talking about from an operation, you know, if there was an operational gap, we understood that there was a gap and where can we go with this? Where can we, how can we learn? Yeah. But you asked me to expand on that. I would say there's an understanding that things are going to happen.

And I think the value of the employee is to be, if you change the culture from one where they're sort of on the defensive to on the offensive, they seem to be, they're probing for the next thing. And they're excited to bring what they've fleshed out as issues to the fore. And, you know, we got a lot of the a lot of the things that we got toward, you know, in the latter years were really super clever ways that came from the front line of ways to avoid major incidents.

Yeah. That idea of moving from defensive to offensive. I've actually never thought about it that way. I mean, it's a it's a really pretty it's a good way to think of it. I just hadn't thought about it.

How do you get a leadership team to deliberately make that shift? Yeah, that's a great question. Well, you brought it up. Well, I guess I was the, I was the, I think it's about understanding that, Your workers are, I feel like I'm kind of parroting a lot of stuff here, but it's understanding that your workers are really have got the solution for you. They are really, they're the gift that keeps on giving.

But that's a huge shift. I mean, I don't think that's a parrot in as much as, I think that is a huge shift in thinking. I mean, that's the one thing I think this kind of new approach to understanding operational reliability is brought to the table is that the workforce isn't the problem. Right. Oh, absolutely. The workforce is really the solution to go out and listen to. They're adaptively creating success all the time.

Here's what I'll say. I think – so we started off – I think the evolution goes something like this for me, Todd. It starts off that we, in management, we hold people accountable and we have expectations. Well, then we come to find out that, lo and behold, we haven't been real good at expressing our expectations to our employees. So then we have that. Which I totally agree with. 100% agree with.

So once we get to this place where management is real clear about setting expectations and managing those expectations over time, and you see a lot of fruit that comes from that. The step that I think really turns the corner is when you take expectations and accountability and turn them into trust and responsibility. And by that, I mean, when your employees understand that you trust them, that they are the guys that know how to do the work and they will be really successful at that.

And I trust you to do that work well, to execute well for me, you know, to execute appropriately in the circumstance.

It just it changes it from expectation is sort of a something that you put on somebody else responsibility something i put on me i'm responsible i don't i don't i'm not accountable i'm responsible and i think that it for me it hits differently i don't have that it doesn't it resonates differently with me accountability feels sort of like finger wagging responsibility feels like, hey man, this guy's trusting you to do this work.

But I like how you're building that relationship, that coupling between expectation setting and responsibility. That one can't, if I'm hearing you right, one can't exist without the other. And I actually think you're onto something because I think we're not very good at setting up expectations. I think we think we're good at it, but we're not terribly good at it. And I think the expectations oftentimes go to cross purposes. So I hear you say...

Do this as fast as possible, make as much money as possible. And you are saying, take your time, no need to hurry. You never need to rush. There's sort of this cross message there, this goal conflict that oftentimes it would be fixed if we clarified those expectations. That's a really an interesting idea.

Yeah, right. And I think, again, I think the place where this goes from working well to maybe being excellent and having where you where the sky's the limit and in high high performance is when you move away from accountability into responsibility and i know i'm these are just this is my way of thinking when i take it upon myself when i feel responsible because these people trust me to do good work i just think that sets up a whole different relationship oh totally and i found employees

to be exceptionally responsible for their work under those circumstances they're like and when we do have failures and i think i've heard you talk about this too the time when it goes poorly they often will come to me initially and want to be responsible for the outcome. And then I try to, you know, what I'm doing is I'm like, look, I got you, let's turn the corner. And how can we take this and make it better in the future? What can we do with

that? And that just totally flips the script on them.

And, and, and it's, it's, it's really an interesting moment in time too, because they come in ready to fall on the sword. And you say, I know you feel like you screwed this up, but if we stop learning here, all we've learned is that you screwed this up. I mean, We need to understand the richer context. Wow. What an interesting, super interesting. You've really thought about this. How come? Well, it really excites me. I love being, it comes down to that teamwork thing.

I think when I love high performing teams, I love to be a part of a high performing team. I think everybody really wants to be on a winning team. Yeah, I agree. And there's something about that that is very intoxicating when things are going well. And then even when things don't go well for everybody to kind of circle the wagons and like, okay, how can we fix this? We've got all the resources that we need to fix it.

How can we make this better instead of going to, you know, this guy didn't do this or this guy should have done that. And that mindset shift. It's totally, it's possible. It just takes time in the organization to move away from the blame. Blaming really is also very intoxicating. It's really, that stuff's crazy. It's not good. No, but you're right. It's somehow emotionally satisfying. For a minute. Yeah, it's like peeing in your pants. Actually. It's a relief and then it's creepy.

I've gotten to this place where i don't even it's not even it just i immediately walk away from from it when i feel it i as soon as i feel that blame thing i i shift immediately to okay look at the context of this whole thing what could we have done differently here how could we how what system could we adjust or adapt that would would make this better and and then really i'm looking to my people to tell me what that solution is yeah yeah yeah yeah especially interestingly.

Even at the vessel level a lot of the times it's the it's the people that are as close to the to the front line are that usually are the ones that come up with the solution it's not the captain or somebody up the food chain it's usually right down there at the coalface you know that they'll come up with that, you know, if we did this. And when you, when you do that, it seems so obvious. The solution seems so elementary, but they are so impactful and valuable.

Yeah. How do the leaders respond to this message when you talk to them? When you go out, work with a company, have this conversation, do they look at you like you're crazy? Do they hug you or any place in between?

Yeah, it's all over the map. I, I, i think they well you know now they've had an opportunity to see that other organizational leaders have adopted this and are looking at it so i think i often i'm coming in and organizations have already had some exposure to human and organizational performance and so, i think they they have the grassroots understanding coming into it of what you know where we're looking to go i'm again i i have to say usually.

I would say that organizationally, generally speaking, they get it. They just have a lot of other pressing issues on their mind to keep them busy, you know, to keep a lot of focus on, which is making the company make money. And I totally get that. I think the trick is how do you make money by being high performing in the world in this, you know, around the world of safety and reliability.

Like trying to get them to understand that if they're really highly reliable and a safe organization, that the cost-benefit analysis on that works, that it makes sense. Yeah, not cutting corners definitely makes sense. And it builds confidence. It builds confidence in the people, builds confidence in the leaders, and builds confidence in your system. Yeah. I always try to remember you're only as good as you believe you are.

Yeah, I think you said something about it being like not being a safety program and being more of a core part of the organization rather than it's not you have a safety program. Safety is just intrinsic to your operation. It's just a part of how you do business. Yeah, it's not it's not a program. Yeah, it's a practice. It's just what you do. Wow. How fun.

So are you having fun doing it? yes i it's really enjoyable i really enjoy the i really enjoy the interaction especially when i get to get it i i've been trying to get out with the the organization ahead of time so i'll go a day early just so i can go ride around and see stuff because i i love to see how the organization runs i get so much out of that yeah yeah yeah i just want to you know be a sponge and just take up as much as i can from that and it helps me focus

in on exactly the things that i think will be most helpful to them cool as you know as you say over time there's some things that are very valuable that they've already adapted you know they're already working there's it's not a linear approach right there's they are moving in great directions in certain places and they're you know they're lagging behind on others like. Music.

So as crazy as this sounds, and it's going to sound kind of crazy, I never really thought about that offensive, defensive posturing for leadership. I mean, it's totally true, and it's a pretty good way to talk about it.

And I just never kind of put that together, is that what happens is we oftentimes have leadership teams who are clearly in a defensive posture, especially as it relates to things like systems reliability, operational reliability, operational stability, the kind of stuff we talk about all the time. And what's interesting is that if they're in a defensive posture, then they're always going to be reactive. Absolutely. I mean, without question.

What's amazing to me is when you shift to an offensive posture, you're actually looking for problems in normal work. And you're trying to best understand sort of how normal operations work with an eye on, a weather eye, if I can use a maritime expression. Thank you very much. A weather eye on what's yet to come. And I think that's a super, super elegant way to talk about this. Thank you, Mark. Way to go. way to blow my mind a little.

I'll take that. I'm always open to new information, and I'm super open to cool ways to think about stuff, and you did it both. Man, that was great. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening. Tell your friends the podcast is open. It's free. It's easy. It's always available. There's a million of them. I mean, it seems like there's a million. It is awesome when I look at how many there are that we've done this many podcasts. I find that it's just interesting.

There's been a lot of conversation, hours and hours and hours and hours of conversations. I hope you learned something new today, and I hope you get a chance to learn something new every single day. Learn as much as you can, have as much fun as you possibly can. Be good to each other, be kind to each other, check into each other, and for goodness sakes, you guys, be safe. Music.