Who, Me?

[Post by Chuck Krugh, October 4, 2024]

One of the things that I like to do is talk with you when I have the chance to get out on the deckplates. I always find it interesting (and sometimes unpredictable). However, one word consistently comes up in different conversations with employees across all areas of the company – accountability. I’ve heard it enough times that it’s gotten my attention. Interestingly enough, I have heard it from shipbuilders wearing many different colored hard hats – including white hats.

I broached accountability in my blog entitled What’s It Like Moving from the Tools to a Salaried Position?, but I said I would talk more about it in a future blog. So, let’s dig into accountability and see if we end up where you thought we would…

Accountability in Meriam-Webster’s online dictionary is “an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one’s actions.” It’s interesting how the definition points inward and not outward. In other words, accountability belongs to me for a particular responsibility or action – not to someone else.

In life, we are accountable for and to many things and people. We are accountable for actions, activities, tasks, jobs and so on.

Last week’s blog discussed the role of accountability in accepting work assignments. Let’s talk about that a little more.

One of the most important things we are accountable for is our own behavior and all that it includes. Every day when we come to work and are given tasks to do, we become accountable for completing those tasks. I know this is very basic, but it’s foundational to how and why we work. We trade our labor – and are accountable for a task or series of tasks we execute through our labor – in exchange for money: our paycheck and benefits.

We are also accountable to many people during the course of our lives. If I just use myself as an example, I’m accountable to many – starting with my family members. If I look at my work here at BIW, then I’m accountable to many more people. Let’s look at a few of the people who hold me accountable – YOU and the nearly 7,000 other people at BIW, our General Dynamics leadership, our customer, our stakeholders, our vendors, our community and so forth. I think you get the idea that we all have a broader group of people to whom we are accountable.

If we look into BIW’s organization, each and every one of us is accountable to a much larger number of people than we might first think. Of course, we know we are accountable to our boss and to the people on our immediate team. But there’s a lot more BIW people we need to consider when we think of our accountability.

For example, let’s look at a shipfitter. The shipfitter has a duty to perform jobs as assigned by his supervisor. When the job is assigned, the shipfitter is now responsible for completing the task and becomes accountable to the supervisor to complete the work at the quality level expected and within the budgeted time.

Do you think that is the only accountability pathway created? If you said no, you are right! Who else depends on the shipfitter’s work? For sure, the welder does. The welder’s job is easier or harder depending on how well the shipfitter does. So, the shipfitter is also accountable to the welder. Is that all? Again, if you said no, you would be right.

Who else can the shipfitter possibly be accountable to? That shipfitter’s assignment is one of thousands of tasks required to build the ship. If the shipfitter does not meet the schedule or quality commitment, then he/she will impact others with their work. These impacts could be negative things like housekeeping, causing rework, damaging equipment or leaving an unsafe condition like a misplaced hole cover. On the other hand, the impacts could be positive, like completing work on schedule or in fewer hours, identifying a better way to do the job or doing the job safely. Each of these outcomes creates more pathways of accountability.

You may not think about it very often, but YOU as a shipfitter, welder, designer, buyer and all of our positions are as accountable to the same stakeholders as I am. Every day that you come to work with the expectation to get paid in exchange for your labor, you are creating an obligation that you become accountable for.

I could easily change the shipfitter in the example above to any other trade or management position in our company. The same relationships will occur – as well as the same responsibilities – even though the job titles and functions are different.

Remember the definition of accountability implies that we as individuals are responsible for our obligations and responsibilities; as such, we shouldn’t need someone checking on us to “hold” us accountable for the work we are doing. But in practice, we do. It’s one of the reasons that organizations grow large with layers of management to manage the business. Accountability should be yours to manage, but in reality, it takes others to make sure we do what we are supposed to be doing and to hold us accountable. If it is working well, managers are supporting their employees as those employees strive to carry out their commitments. If people are not meeting their commitments, then things get harder to manage and problems arise – potentially on both sides.

Do you take your job responsibilities seriously? You should, as that’s what you are getting paid to do when you come to work!

See you on the deckplates!

Safely Execute High-Quality Work

Chuck
President, General Dynamics Bath Iron Works

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