Last week another politician signed up to take “full responsibility” for his actions. This time it was Anthony Weiner, the Democratic Representative from New York whose puerile obsession with his middle-aged hormones gave him no time to enact worthy legislation, but left plenty of time to distribute lewd photos to his cell phone harem. But, of course, “taking full responsibility” doesn’t mean he will resign, pay back, recompense, correct, or compensate in any way. It means he will take full responsibility to continue his bilking of the voters who put him there and anyone else he can find. It has the all the usefulness of Janet Reno’s “taking full responsibility” for the Branch Dividian debacle, or Jimmy Carter’s “taking full responsibility” for the disastrous Operation Eagle Claw. Words are vacuous and stagnant. “Taking full responsibility” can only be accomplished by deeds.
Ignoring politicians, who would be no example for anyone, what does it mean for a technologist to take full responsibility?
Wrong question.
“What does it mean” is most often answered by jaded relativity – what I did was not a bad as what John or Susan did, or not nearly so stupid as what so-and-so did last year. Recall your history. Aristotle would not posit the question, “What does an individual do.” He would only dilate on “What should an individual do?”
In my book, The Persuasive Wizard: How Technical Experts Sell Their Ideas to Non-technical Decision Makers (to be published this summer), I make it an absolute edict that technology persuasion is not to be had by falsehood, spin, or innuendo. Technology persuasion must be based on facts, data, good engineering, and circumspect judgement.
Notwithstanding, there may come a time when you are absolutely wrong. You make a major mistake. Things go awry. Poor decisions are made. Money is lost. Failure occurs. What do you do? Step one is to identify, impersonally, what went wrong. Analyze the problem and find out where the train jumped off the track. Keep digging until you find the root cause of the error. Why did the train get off tract? You must search hard to find the root cause of why? Do not settle for superficial rationalization or the laying of blame. What was the real reason the project went south?
Among technologists, you almost never find malfeasance or purposeful neglect. What is common, though, is to find overbought optimism. Technologists often get so wrapped up in their projects that they try to make the data say what they want it to say. Technologists do not fudge the data so much as to misinterpret it based on desire and enthusiasm, occasionally ego.
An experiment that all physicists know is that of Albert Michelson (1852 – 1931) and Edward Morley (1838 – 1923) searching for the aether. Their experiment in 1887 paved the way for Einstein‘s Theory of Relativity. At the time of their experiment, scientists felt that all waves needed a medium of transport. Water waves need water, sound waves need air, and so forth. Therefore, electromagnetic waves needed something, the undiscovered aether, or so they thought. (In truth, electromagnetic waves do not need a medium of transport; they travel through empty space.) The Michelson-Morley experiment searched for the medium of transport. The experiment found nothing, nothing whatsoever. Their experiment was undoubtedly the most famous null experiment ever performed. Lesser physicists might have found the aether because they wanted to find it, because they needed to find it, because they just knew it had to be there, somewhere. (And why not? Every physicist knew it had to be there?) In the case of the aether, it was not and is not. The point is, that the integrity and exactness of Michelson and Morley kept them from being so optimistic as to fashion results. When training young technologists, use the Michaelson-Morley experiment as an illustration of how to be honest in collecting and reporting data.
In industry, I have found that the second most common cause of error is lack of detail, lack of follow up, lack of verification. Everyone gets busy. There is limited supervision. The problems are complex. The data are manifold. No one wants to ask the hard questions and no knowledgeable person has the time to validate the work of others. Yet, as a manager and person responsible, you must do this. If you do not do this, you will find yourself like Pons and Fleischmann – announcing cold fusion and then becoming a byword for exuberant optimism without validity.
Having found the root causes of the error, looking first impersonally and then for individuals, How does a technologist “take full responsibility?” Know that if you are in charge, it is your responsibility. Do not lay the charge on others. If it happens on your watch, it’s your baby.
First, then, acknowledge publicly the mistakes of your team as being your mistakes. Quantify the mistakes as to their magnitude and impact.
Second, investigate and make a report, immediately, on the root causes. Make this report impersonal. Do not mention any names. If there are individuals involved, discuss this privately and then only with select individuals in the management chain. Do NOT discuss individuals with anyone on your team. You are not a buddy, you are a manager.
Third, put together a recommended plan for correction and remediation.
Fourth, present it to the decision makers. If they accept your plan, good. If not, go with their decision. Whatever the outcome, keep it business and technology, and not personal. Above all, learn from your mistakes. If you find that you have been too high-level and need to get more involved, then do so. Change what you are doing. The problem is that most people know their mistakes but never make a change. Make the change. If you are too much of a micro-manager, if you must have your hands in everything, then back off and give others some responsibility. Change what you are doing and next time you will change the outcome.
If you lose your job or take a pay cut you still will have three things that will serve you better in the next job: integrity, honesty, and a lesson that produced a change in you.
That’s what it means to take full responsibility.