While TapRooT® occasionally utilizes discipline as a corrective action that must mean it is sometimes effective, right? But if you think about it, most people don’t do things wrong just for the heck of it unless somewhere they think it’s probably okay. They saw their co-worker take a shortcut just the other day and their manager told him “job well done” for getting the task done so quickly. Time is money, right! Time is money when things go right and when they go wrong. So, this time you took the same shortcut as you’ve seen others do, but this time something went wrong and now they have had to shut things down (at a minimum). Downtime is money too. You knew it was a shortcut, you knew you skipped a step in the procedure, but so does everyone else. What should the company do with you now that something bad happened?

If your company is great at enforcing its policies, you know if you take a certain shortcut to get done quicker than something negative will happen to you. There will be a consequence for not following the procedure and your company always enforces it. If that’s your company, then you are likely to think twice before taking that shortcut.

However, if you are at a company where people feel it’s okay to take shortcuts to get things done quicker (hoping all will be well and nothing bad will occur by taking that shortcut), it gets easier and easier within that company’s culture to take some shortcuts to get the job done. Because other people do the same shortcut and they sometimes get a pat on the back! But this time something bad occurred. Are you at fault for taking a known shortcut and then need to be disciplined? Not necessarily.

This topic is near and dear to Marcus Miller’s heart. Listen in as he discusses how enforcing boundaries and policies along the way consistently can help deter people from taking the wrong actions to begin with. Then if a shortcut is taken by an employee when there is a known constant, negative response to that action, perhaps then, discipline might fit. Even then when we dig deep enough, we can probably still find a deeper cause. Taking the time to investigate properly to get to the real root causes of why an incident happened is worth it! We can teach you how to do just that!

For more information on TapRooT® training: www.taproot.com/courses 

For information on our upcoming Global TapRooT® Summit: www.taproot.com/summit