AGILE IN ACTION: The difference between blame and accountability

Thursday, May 01, 2008

The difference between blame and accountability

I talked about communication when people do pair-programming. For a while now, there's been some trepidation in the team when holding people accountable. People seem to have difficulty knowing how to hold someone else accountable. It's a communication problem. People are so worried about being seen to blame someone for something that they'd rather avoid the conversation completely. The problem with this approach is that the things that shouldn't be happening keep happening because the people doing them don't know they shouldn't be doing them.

Deal with the root cause. Have a conversation and hold the person accountable.

To me, the difference between blame and accountability is language and delivery. Here's a couple of examples:

"That code you wrote to do thingamyjig is rubbish. It's causing all sorts of problems."

Here you're assigning blame, which can be exaggerated with intonation and gesture.

"You know that code you wrote to do thingamyjig?
I think there might be a better way to do it. Can we sit down and try refactoring it?
I'd like to show you what I'm thinking and get your feedback on it."

Here, on the other hand, you've approached the person, offered to help improve the code and created a learning opportunity for him (and probably for you too) that will help address the root cause and prevent it from happening in the future.

Tags: communication, accountability, blame

2 Comments:

At permalink, Nana Abban said...: Ujamaa is a Swahili word and in English it means collective work and responsibility. Thus, Ujamaa is characterized by a community where cooperation and collective advancement are the rationale of every individual's existence. This embodies what I believe is essentially the basis for effective communication and excellent team work. Every opportunity to work with people is an opportunity to learn, to improve on one's knowledge and behaviour, to unlearn bad habits and take on new ones which help sustain and increase the energy in the group. Being agile is essentially about being perceptive and intuitive about how we work, interact and resolve difficult issues or solve problems whether it's refactoring or fixing a bug in QA. Soft skills are as important as hard technical skills. Knowing how to do something really well and not able to communicate effectively with colleagues can only lead to problems that can affect the whole team and the velocity of the team in a given Iteration. Sometimes I wonder why people are just plain lazy or simply dont care enough about how they communicate. It should be second nature to talk to people respectfully and in a manner that creates an opportunity for learning and increased collaboration. Ujamaa in pair rotation is the way forward and clearly will lead to better code and a more positive environment for the team. There is no gain in blame but there is profit in accountability. Keep up the good work at Energized Work.
At permalink, Diego said...: There is an idiom in spanish "Hijo del rigor" wand in English means "only obey or do something provided it is indicated by law", which is where this "overnice" attitude does not work in an enviroment where at least one person does not care about the collective well being and you cannot fire him as you are in a corporation.

I've had to deal with such things, and, so far, I didn't found any practical solution.

You cannot convince other to be professionals, they either are, or not. And it is of wishful tinkers to hope that you will ever have such great team in average.