Who's to Blame When Growth Stalls?

Guilty feelings and finger-pointing won't help. Instead, ensure that trust, consensus, and clarity are reestablished among senior management

By Steve McKee

This excerpt from "When Growth Stalls," a new book by BusinessWeek.com columnist Steve McKee, highlights the importance of maintaining a healthy state of mind when things aren't going well.

When my company's growth stalled back in 2003, I spent a great deal of time feeling downcast, certain that I had done something wrong. Because we had been on such a positive upward trajectory for so long, I really thought we had figured out the special sauce that would enable us to generate consistent growth. When things slowed down, I naturally looked in the mirror and blamed it on the chef.

With the benefit of hindsight, I now know that while not all my decisions were correct, the break in our company's fortunes was largely due to conditions beyond my control. Since then, I have come to understand that leader's guilt is common when growth stalls. However, that attitude is not only unhealthy and unproductive, in most cases it's just plain incorrect.

tectonic forces

If you're in a position of leadership, you obviously have proven talents and capabilities. You've gotten to where you are through a series of smart, successful decisions. But you can't be all-seeing or all-knowing. There is no way to anticipate exactly what, when, and how tectonic forces will shake your company, nor to know which windows may crack or ceiling tiles fall when the tremors arrive.

Planning for adversity and future challenges is an essential duty of any leader. But as the U.S. Army Leadership Manual knowingly states, "No plan survives initial contact with the enemy." In other words, stuff happens. Economies crater. Competitors innovate. Technology advances. People leave. There is simply no way you can keep tabs on every piece of information, every shift in the playing field, every risk that could threaten your organization. As long as you're using valuable brain cells stewing about what you may have done wrong, you can't fully focus your energies on getting it right.

My partners and staff are a talented bunch, and together we do good work. Occasionally we screw up, and when we do, we apologize for our mistakes, take our medicine, and set about fixing things. Still, we work in a collaborative, fast-paced industry in which problems arise literally every day through no fault of our own. Sometimes it's a printer that goofed and has to put a project back on press, delaying our promised delivery date. Sometimes it's an interactive programmer who, in fixing one bug, unwittingly creates two more. Sometimes it's a cable TV network that runs the wrong commercial or a research firm that can't get its interviews done. Sometimes critical staff members are out sick, effectively halting work on key projects.

who better to solve this problem?

In all these cases, I tell my people to remind themselves of a simple six-word axiom: "Not my fault. Is my problem." The principle behind this statement is that they shouldn't waste time feeling culpable because something went wrong. Sure, they may have to be the bearer of bad news, and that's no fun. And getting things turned around may in fact blow up their schedule for a day or two (or longer). I encourage them to not get angry or frustrated but instead take a more optimistic view and say to themselves, "Who better to solve this problem than me?"

You can take the same perspective. In fact, if you're going to pull your company out of its stalled-growth morass, you have to. Regardless of how circumstances came to be, you must dispense with unproductive emotions and focus on the challenge if you're going to turn your organization around.

It may not be easy. As long as your people are disengaged or divided, things are not going to get any better. Our research demonstrates that when growth stalls, management teams are not only less likely to be aligned on strategy but also more likely to have problems with human fundamentals like mutual trust and respect. Those are essential matters, and they're not going to fix themselves.