Never Say There Wasn’t Enough Time

The operations leadership team gathered around the conference room table for our monthly metric review meeting. Productivity, efficiency, yield and overhead cost by plant including labor plans, revenue projections and so on.

We then reviewed open corrective actions. Ours was an ISO registered quality management system, and thus we maniacally tracked the customer and internally initiated corrective actions with the goal of driving them to root cause, correcting the root cause, communicating the corrective action to the individual or company that initiated it and later validating its effectiveness.

I noted to our V.P. of operations and quality that the list of open corrective actions was extensive and that it looked like we were behind on addressing them.

He assured me that he was working on it. Annoyed that he had let these details go, I didn’t let up.

“Our customers don’t care that you’re working on it, they care that you solve their problem.”

“I’m trying,” he responded.

“Just get it done. Understood?”

His shoulders slumped a bit, and he let out a deep sigh. The table was surrounded by his direct reports. Our directors and managers of operations, production, quality, scheduling, logistics, customer service; his team responsible for giving their all, giving whatever it took to keep production running and customers informed and satisfied. With the entire mid-level leadership team waiting on his response, he said something that floored me.

“There just aren’t enough hours in the day. I guess I didn’t have time.”

Manufacturing executives spend their lives performing a perpetual balancing act. The plant will consume as much time as we let it, leaving precious little time for other priorities like caring for children or aging parents, extended family, faith commitments, volunteer activities, personal fitness and the like. If it seems like there’s never enough time to fit everything in it’s because there isn’t.

But, as leaders we can never, never, ever say there just wasn’t enough time to complete an important task.

“We’ll talk about it later,” I told our V.P., and did we ever. Following the meeting he stuck around for a few minutes. I asked him if he realized what he had just done to his ability to lead his team. He didn’t.

I asked him how he was going to respond the next time a member of his team missed a deadline or customer due date or other commitment and offered the excuse that they just didn’t have time; that there weren’t enough hours in the day to complete it.

“How will you ever be able to hold them to account without looking like a total hypocrite?” I asked. The message started to sink in.

As soon as we use a lack of time as an excuse for not meeting our commitments, we give our team members permission to use the same excuse. And if all it takes for a team member who missed a commitment to get off the hook is to say they didn’t have time, rest assured you’ll hear that excuse over and over. After all, it was OK for the boss to use that excuse, why wouldn’t it be OK for them?

So, as leaders we can never ever say there wasn’t enough time to complete an important task. What’s the alternative? There are several.

First, leaders who treat their commitments like solemn promises and do everything necessary to keep them will rarely fall short and won’t have to make any excuse at all.

Second, those who treat their commitments this way will be careful about what they commit to, knowing that they’ll have to deliver on what they said they would do. Thus, they will be less likely to overcommit.

But even the most disciplined among us, those who treat commitments like a solemn promise, will fall short at some point. Eventually we’ll forget or misunderstand a commitment or end up with an unforeseen or unavoidable consequence which precludes us from keeping it.

As one example, try as I might to keep every commitment and live up to my responsibilities having two loved ones in the hospital at the same time a couple of years ago meant I had to re-prioritize several items on my to do list and miss some deadlines.

When a commitment is missed, begin with honesty. Instead of saying you didn’t have time, explain the circumstance and own it. On the rare occasion I miss a commitment, I simply say, “Look, I screwed up, and it’s unacceptable.” Then I share the reason. I overcommitted and didn’t budget enough time. I misjudged the resources I needed to allocate to the project. A business or family crisis demanded my time and pushed the item down the priority list. I meant to do it and totally forgot.

None of these reasons make the miss OK. It’s still unacceptable to miss a commitment. But instead of using the lame excuse that I didn’t have time, I admit my failure and I take responsibility. I then promise to do better. And by admitting my shortcoming and acknowledging that my miss as unacceptable I preclude any other team member from justifying a missed commitment by claiming they ran short on time.

Never, ever miss a commitment. But when you do, never, ever say there wasn’t enough time.