Week 2: Taking Responsibility for Organizational Problems
This week I had the opportunity to spend a couple days in Bridgman, MI working hands on with HCPI’s portfolio company, Kruger Plastics. The Kruger team was very welcoming of me and immediately gave me opportunities to contribute to their company. When I met and talked to their CEO, Doug, I soon realized the unique position he is in as the CEO of a company that just recently changed from being family owned to professionally owned. He has a responsibility to both his employees as well as to my bosses, the owners of the company. HCPI took over ownership of the company 6 months ago, so there is still a lot of problems with the business that Doug is responsible for figuring out. With this comes a lot of situations that cannot be resolved with easy answers.
I cannot get too in depth with the situation that I am referring to but it had to do with an error that was made by an employee. Doug knew the importance of controlling the communication with HCPI so that they had confidence in how he was handling the situation, but also admitting that there was a mistake and took full responsibility for the error. It reminded me of a discussion we had in class this past year, where we talked about how good leaders take the blame even when others deserve it, but give credit to others when they deserve it. Doug knew that him blaming somebody else would not solve the problem, and instead chose to take full responsibility and move forward. I learned a lot from this situation. It is easy to talk about taking responsibility for someone else’s failures, but seeing this in an organization showed me the true importance of doing this.
Sounds like an interesting scenario. I totally understand that you cannot provide lots of details – no problems. Presumably, the individual who did make the mistake will receive some feedback; understandably, you may not be privy to that conversation. One could imagine that without any feedback, repeatedly taking responsibility for others actions might enable employees to continue to make errors, etc. It will be interesting to see, as you continue, if Doug also gives credit when due. I encourage you to think about ways in which you as an intern, who is majoring in leadership studies, might identify issues and share concepts and strategies with supervisors and colleagues that could address issues, etc. that you observe.