Responsibility Explained

I recently ran across an interview on LinkedIn with a business author promoting her latest book. The book is What Awesome Looks Like: How to Excel in Business and In Life, by Amy Rees-Anderson. The author’s background is that she started a software business and later sold it for $400 million. The book is listed elsewhere as “a guide for entrepreneurs, executives and employees with the desire to understand how they can excel in business, balance work and family life and find a purpose beyond the bottom line on the way to becoming successful leaders and business owners.”

A guide to entrepreneurship seems a far cry from the idea of behavior having consequences. It didn’t catch my attention for that purpose. In fact the title was the first thing I noticed. It was a turn-off for two reasons. First it looks like just another book full of magic answers – excel in business and life? Otherwise, it could be good advice disguised and presented as magic answers, in which case people will find the path is easy to understand but the execution is hard, just as dieting and achieving financial security require discipline and responsibility. So there might be the link to behavior after all.

The second negative is just a personal pet peeve. "Awesome" is possibly the most overused word in the English language today. It is supposed to be an adjective, but adjectives are used to describe. In current usage, the description has become so watered down that it carries only some vague positive connotation. It has lost any specificity. It tells me that a person feels good about something, but hasn’t the energy or imagination to describe the feeling in more detail. With any luck it will go the way of groovy, a similar adjective/interjection, popular in the 1960s. But I digress.

Pertaining to the subject of behavior in the five key dimensions, the interview commented on the number of apologies in recent news from politicians and celebrities for various missteps. Some have been strong and some weak; some are almost non-apologies. They sounded good, but said nothing.

An important point is that everyone makes mistakes and the interview presented a good outline for making a good apology. Any apology should contain some commitment not to make the mistake again. The author presents the outline as a memory device calling it the, “Six A’s of a Proper Apology: 

1) Admit – I made a mistake
2) Apologize – I am sorry for making the mistake.
3) Acknowledge – I recognize where I went wrong that caused the mistake.
4) Attest – I plan to do the following to fix the mistake, on this specific timeline.
5) Assure – I will put the following protections in place to ensure that I do not make the same mistake again.
6) Abstain – Never repeat the same mistake.”

Underlying this process is the idea of strong behavior in the dimension of responsibility, taking ownership of your error and problems and making a sincere attempt to improve. How different this is from the current trend of playing the victim, blaming circumstances or someone else, or seeming to apologize only for getting caught.

This is a good guide for responsible behavior and also reinforces the point I have made often. Many books, articles and blogs explore portions of the solution contained in the five key behavioral dimensions, but only this one pulls them all together.

The Behavioral Model

Part of my management training over many years in business included interviewing, assessing, and performance evaluation.  We were taught to “cite behavior” when making observations or giving feedback.  We were always reminded (and reminded each other) that the purpose was to solve problems by improving behavior.  It was not about the person, but what the person said or did.  You don’t get good customer service by lecturing on attitude or motivation.  You get it by describing specific words and actions either as good examples (recognition) or as weak examples (correction) and contrasting them with what is desired.  Similarly parenting training teaches criticize the behavior and not the child.  Done right, it works.

I propose to use this same approach to address the larger problems Americans face today to show how most of those problems are behavior-based. By design this behavioral approach bans name-calling, accusing and many other unproductive behaviors we see from our politicians and interest groups. No wonder nothing is getting fixed! By using this model, we take the solution out of the hands of the government and put it back into the hands of the people. Thus, I am taking no political sides – the only reason government gets involved is a broad lack of understanding this new model provides.

What we have in America today is not a food safety problem or a childhood obesity epidemic or a healthcare crisis or financial meltdown or retirement security crisis, or run-away litigation, or a failed educational system, or a drug problem, or too many guns or not enough guns, etc. What we have are the consequences of faulty behaviors that can be divided into 5 key dimensions.  Changing certain behaviors would take us a long way toward solving nearly all these issues.

Remember, the assumption is that the majority of our biggest societal problems stem from these core behavioral issues. I will supply positive or negative examples each week from the local or national news, advertising, or from personal experience, not to criticize, but to develop an understanding of how to use this approach to effectively understand, address and deal with these so-called “crises.”

Here are the dimensions with a brief description of each. 

Understanding the Economic Process:  We are all connected economically.  As the economy expands everyone benefits to some extent.  When there is waste everyone pays.  There is no magic money tree to provide benefits with no future payment due.  Eventually we are all on the hook, and the burden is usually greater on those who can least afford it.

Discipline:  Many things in life are simple to understand but not easy to do.  Dieting is the prime example – eat less, exercise more – but how many keep looking for the easy answer, one that promise big results for little effort?

Responsibility:  Admit my failures, pay my debts and don’t look for others to blame.  It’s about doing the job I signed up for.  Sometimes life in America seems like a buffet line where people fill their own plates and then sit down at the table to complain about the meal.  They claim to be victims and look for someone else to bail them out.

Critical Thinking:  Use logic, not feelings to solve problems.  There is difference between facts/evidence on one hand and endorsements /stories on the other.  We waste a lot of time and money on unproven remedies or by following our gut reactions.

Perspective:  When I have perspective, I separate the important from the trivial, the substantial from the artificial.  I don’t profess one set of values and live my life differently.  I put proper emphasis on possessions/events and practice moderation.

Strong behavior (words, actions, choices) in these categories leads to positive outcomes.  Overall weak performance will cause the problems and crises to continue to pile up.  Simple, everyday examples show symptoms of problems that build over time into major failures.  Not recognizing the underlying behavioral factors has led us to ineffective solutions, more controversy and increasingly uncivil discourse.

Look for new examples and discussion every Monday and Friday.