Name of weekly column: Sprog

This week's contributor: Gareth Chick, director, Spring Partnerships

 Last week saw publication of a report into the loss of six discs containing the whole child benefit database. You may recall that when this ocurred last November, HM Revenue & Customer bosses claimed that a single employee had not followed procedures.

It transpires that basically no such procedures existed, and therefore the blame shifted from any single employee. So was it senior management that was to blame? Of course not - the report concluded that it was the culture of HMRC that was at fault. Yet again, an intangible but seemingly all powerful entity gets blamed for an unacceptable error. Well, as long as we don't try and hold any humans to account. 

Who's at fault?

Hearing this, I was reminded of a damning headline some years back that proclaimed "NASA Culture blamed for shuttle disaster". In that case, disaster investigators concluded that the destruction of space shuttle Columbia and the death of its seven astronauts in 2003 were caused by a "self protective culture" at NASA. Sure, it was the flying foam insulation damaging the heatshield 'wot dun it', but lying behind this were "mission managers driven by schedule, starved of funds and burdened by eroded processes". NASA bosses vehemently denied the findings, incredulous that their exhortations about 'safety first' were not followed, and asking what more they could have done than to have written procedures and expect people to follow them.

Leading by example

So cultures can kill as well as lose data? Cultures must be powerful things, so perhaps we should regulate them or legislate? Come on guys, when are we going to accept that leaders create the cultures, and that therefore leaders are culpable? The truth is that the culture of any organisation is a mirror of the behaviour of its leaders. Leaders may speak fine words about values (as I am sure NASA bosses did about safety, and HMRC bosses did about data protection), but it's what leaders do that counts - what they focus on, what they reward, what they really value. In my view it's simple - leaders should communicate clearly on values: they should use the language of the values in their coaching of their own management cohort; they should ensure their own behaviours are totally in line with their words; finally they should check that things are as they should be with employees and with customers. 

How does your organisation's culture measure up - or are we all harbouring potential criminals in our midsts?