The standard fallback position for many barbers and taxi drivers when a silence looms is “What they should do is…”. At that point you know you are in for a lecture on what someone else should be doing. It’ll be the government, the council, the footy team coach or the boss who needs to do things differently.
The more quick witted amongst you will have already noticed by the image of me included in this article that I have little use for a barber. However, I have regular experience of taxi drivers. If a taxi driver, barber or hairdresser doesn’t have an opinion on a topic then it isn’t worth mentioning.
We’ve been told all our lives during our upbringing and education to take responsibility for our actions and stop blaming someone else. And yet now we are adults, everywhere we turn we experience and, all too often, practise the exact opposite. We are spending more and more time and energy passing on the blame or responsibility to someone else.
There are entire financial business models where every aspect of the business is either outsourced or managed by someone. The theory is that this is more efficient. I think it is a copout and a demonstration that we are not prepared to take responsibility for our own actions. And the best way to do this? Don’t actually do anything, just manage it!
Outsourcing is the classic option for organisations that no longer want to provide goods and services but just want to manage a range of service providers. Remember the days when your local council provided a range of services that were included the cost of your rates? Nowadays it is very difficult to identify exactly what service they do provide directly, and for which they can held directly responsible. Our rates haven’t gone down but the range of services surely has.
Even our tax system is comprised of those who have their tax compulsorily collected and others who choose how much tax they will pay. Not many of us really want to pay tax anyway and so we have two tax systems – – a voluntary one for the big end of town and a compulsory one for the rest of the community. One group wants the other group to pay more so that their tax burden can be reduced.
The fee-free university education that many of our civic leaders benefited from is now one of the biggest debts an individual will acquire. It’s just cost shifting – – making some else pick up the bill and all under the premise of user pays. It’s not as if the country is on its uppers and investing in education should be negotiable.
It really seemed to take hold in the 90s, when finance departments couldn’t cost shift quickly enough, either to other departments or to the general public. Banks started by herding their customers away from tellers to the ATM in the wall outside. Then they herded them to their computers to do transactions online. Ironically, we are now being herded back inside – – and on Saturdays too! With each change we have been given spin that each change is good for us because it will reduce the cost of banking.
When you actually see someone take responsibility for their own actions it is quite profound. It is rare and it shouldn’t be. It is all part of the learning I think we need to do as managers. Unfortunately, in these days of litigation and aggressive Enterprise Bargaining regimes, managers are reluctant to admit an error. We see senior managers being frog-marched out the door because they haven’t achieved what may be unrealistic KPIs. And silently whisper under our breath, there but for the grace…
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