Senior Leaders are Ultimately Responsible

Using the picture below as an analogy for a work situation for senior leaders, many things come to my mind.

Obviously, during the course of routine business activity you come upon problems; in this case a small downed tree in the paint zone for side striping the road and probably at nozzle level. As a senior manager the problems are not as operational as spraying paint but more strategic in nature. So encountering an issue/problem what is done?

This issue was likely seen far in advance and there was time to formulate a plan of action. This assumes that one is looking forward, scanning the environment and not entirely focused on “where the paint hits the road.”

Why was the paint applied around the tree end and not just sprayed over the tree-end to keep a straight line? Why did the operator not just shut off the paint flow and leave a short break in the stripe? Why did not the rig stop ahead, move the tree and resume painting? One has to assume that the thinking followed was that it was too much effort (resources) and so little impact (quality) in the context of probably miles of painted line that day to do otherwise than work around and create a three-foot section of offset line (bad product). After all this is probably, a defect rate of about 0.1136% and that is not bad for roadwork.

There will be times for senior leaders that the implied costs or the marginal return is just not there to do other than move forward with a work around knowing that the outcome does not meet standard. Oh but what about the risk….this is a 3 inch wide paint line…yes but there is a tree in the road and if the organization’s mission is ultimately highway safety then getting the tree out of the road should have been a much higher priority to the day’s work than getting the side stripe down as quickly as possible!

One of the roles of a senior leader is to set and communicate the organization’s vision, mission, and values so that employees instinctively know how to act when confronted with issues/problems and no management is there to tell them how to react.