Someone made a mistake at the office. The HR manager tries to figure out who did it, what happened, and how to help the person responsible avoid making the mistake again.

Yet they struggle to do it and run into resistance from team members: they tend to cover for each other, it is everyone's fault and no one's, there is a general passing of the buck. The problem is not clear and cannot surface.

No one wants to take the blame because they fear repercussions.
No one points the finger because they fear repercussions.
Everyone has their say without, however, compromising anyone, because they fear repercussions if they stay silent.

In the end the matter is closed with the anesthetic promise that everyone is sorry and that people will be more careful next time. On the surface everyone is satisfied; deep down everyone is sure the problem will happen again.

A code of silence and team members' lack of accountability toward problems are the most harmful and devastating things that can happen to a company.

An empire whose leaders are no longer aware of its problems is like a heart whose arteries no longer carry blood to the brain: sooner or later it will face an inevitable collapse.

Information about problems in a system is like the blood flowing in our veins: it must be constant, clean and nourishing, otherwise the system does not work well and can suffer serious problems.

Blocking the flow of information about problems is like blocking the flow of blood in our body.

Using this metaphor, who is mainly responsible for this flow?

the heart's pump is the team members who keep this flow of information circulating;
the muscles, which by contracting compress the veins and push blood toward the heart, are unexpected events and problems in general;
the venous valves, which prevent blood from flowing backward, are the managers who guide the flow of information and encourage it to move forward.

Team members who do not report problems to their supervisors constantly and continuously are team members who are not performing one of their main functions. They are team members who, over time, pick up bad habits and dysfunctional behaviors. They are the equivalent of a heart that no longer pumps blood, or pumps it irregularly.

Detecting and reporting problems is therefore not an extraordinary activity or one specific to certain roles; it should be an ordinary duty shared by every member of the company (at least, that is how it works in high-reliability systems*).

*A high-reliability organization (HRO) is an organization that operates with very high complexity and a risk of accidents whose consequences can be fatal, in terms of human lives or natural disasters.

The different approaches to detecting and communicating problems

Not every member of a company detects problems in the same way. Some write them down, others don't. Some hide them, others report them only when asked, and others still detect far too many. Some talk about them only with the people directly involved, others talk about them with everyone except the people directly involved.

We can distinguish 5 different approaches to detecting problems:

The first is the defensive approach: problems are hidden, people tend to obscure them and invest energy in keeping them from surfacing. They think things are already going badly enough without detecting more problems. Or that everything must go as planned, schedules must be met and expectations satisfied: problems are seen as what stands in the way of all this, so they are treated as a spoke in the wheel to be avoided, delayed and minimized as much as possible.

The second is the passive approach: problems are reported passively, only when requested or when the damage is already evident. Here, too, problems are seen in a negative light, but there is at least a willingness to acknowledge them and communicate them as a last resort. Naturally, this ominous aura attached to problems will lead people to keep their distance and analyze them in a cold, superficial and detached way.

The third is the conservative approach: problems are reported, but selectively, leaving out those that could be most compromising on a personal or reputational level. Here problems are split into two categories: convenient ones and inconvenient ones. For problems in the first category there is a certain proactivity and willingness to detect and communicate them. For those in the second category, the approach will be rather passive.

The fourth is the perfectionist approach: every tiny problem is reported, even insignificant and negligible ones. Here detecting problems becomes a distinctive personal trait, a kind of superpower to highlight and emphasize to the point of falling into perfectionism. This approach shows that detecting problems has been associated not so much with a useful means of evolving, but with a tool that is an end in itself, used to prove one's own worth.

The fifth is the proactive approach: all problems are reported in a rational, causative and constructive way. Here problems are seen as opportunities for growth, and detecting them is seen solely and exclusively as a means of developing oneself and the system one is part of.

Every member of a system can be associated with one of these approaches. The interesting thing is that, depending on which problem-detection approach a person follows, you will also find specific personal traits in them.

The paradigm shift consists in seeing the approach to detecting problems not as a consequence of personal traits, but as a cause.

Let's look at the specific behaviors associated with each approach.

The defensive approach leads to irrationality, to denying the evidence, to taking no responsibility for one's own results and actions. To passivity and, in the long run, apathy. This approach creates a greater predisposition to conflict and greater resistance to every form of change, which inevitably lead to a lack of personal growth, obtuseness, closed-mindedness and touchiness.

The passive approach leads to chronic passivity and laziness, to doing only what is asked and only if it is asked, to putting in nothing more than necessary. Low proactivity, a tendency to do and produce the bare minimum, little care in what one does. It leads people to consider every form of compensation as owed to them and to put their own interests before those of the system.

The conservative approach leads to a code of silence, to the phenomenon of groupthink (*1), to favoring socially approved decisions even when they are objectively worse. It leads to the creation of factions and political camps, to mental conformism, to flattening creativity and talent, and to spreading the problem rather than solving it. It feeds the habit of seeing oneself never as the cause of problems but only as their effect, and of relying on logic, rhetoric and other linguistic smoke screens that reduce rationality and practicality.

The perfectionist approach leads to closed-mindedness and increases touchiness and rigidity. It reduces the ability to listen and encourages an attitude of criticizing and complaining about others. It amplifies judgment and predisposes people to see others' shortcomings as more significant than their own. In the long run it generates excessive and dysfunctional self-confidence.

The proactive approach trains causativeness, proactivity, openness to change and personal growth. It helps build the habit of putting the interests of the system before one's own and of considering one's own shortcomings before those of others.

What is interesting about this analysis is how the single habit of detecting problems can have so many effects on a person's attitudes and identity.

A person's specific approach to problems is the most precise thing we can use to predict, and positively influence, their productivity, usefulness and capacity to evolve.

If you want to change team members' habits for the better (proactivity, causativeness, accountability, openness to change, etc.), there are generally three possible paths:

Force a change in these habits with new rules
Promote a personal growth program that makes team members aware of their areas for improvement
Focus on the habit of Problem Noting (how problems are detected) and indirectly drive the adoption of all the other positive behaviors

How to change team members' habits

The first way that comes to mind to change habits in a company is to impose new rules on team members: to make the behaviors a basic requirement for continuing to work there.

The second way is to invest in training on soft skills* and personal growth: trusting that if people better understand how the mind and relationships work, they will adopt better habits.

*Soft skills (or transferable skills) are the interpersonal, communication and behavioral abilities that define how a person interacts with others and manages their own work.

These are not the best ways, because they are direct and require team members' complicity and awareness. In fact, they are not the methods used by the two greatest experts in shaping habits in this world: religions and multinational corporations.

It is hard to think of anyone more skilled than religions and multinationals at shaping people's habits. And what is their method? They certainly make use of rules, more or less strict, but only in a second phase. The first phase is always to work on so-called 'Keystone Habits'.

Keystone habits are small and seemingly insignificant behaviors that have two characteristics:

they are easy to adopt (they generate very little or no resistance in people)
they are invisible catalysts of other habits that are adopted later out of consistency

A special forces soldier is known for iron discipline, a sense of honor and great reliability in the field. How does the army create people like that? Through dedicated training which, as it happens, starts with small habits that are easy to adopt: making the bed, waking up on time, submitting to authority forcefully by shouting 'Sir, yes, sir!' every time it is required. Small behaviors that lay the foundations for adopting increasingly impactful habits.

So this is how you can create habits we would never have developed: out of consistency, starting from keystone habits.

To build positive habits in team members, rules and training can undoubtedly be useful tools, but never as effective as a gradual adoption strategy that starts with a keystone habit.

By installing a small keystone habit, you get a slow, gradual ripple effect in which habits consistent with it are created and spread. Minimum effort, maximum return.

In 1987 Paul O'Neill was appointed the new CEO of Alcoa (Aluminum Company of America), one of the largest US companies in the aluminum industry.

Instead of presenting a complex strategic plan to the Board of Directors, Paul O'Neill announced a single priority, worker safety, and introduced a simple habit: every accident had to be reported to the CEO within 24 hours, together with an analysis of the causes and a plan to prevent it from happening again (in practice, a problem-detection habit).

That small habit led the whole organization to develop many others, perfectly consistent with it: observing what was happening more closely, collecting data systematically, collaborating across departments, quickly identifying the causes of problems, sharing information and implementing corrective actions.

The initial habit thus became the engine of a much broader cultural change, because it changed how people worked every day. Over time it improved not only safety, but also process quality, operational efficiency and the company's financial results.

This is further proof that a single keystone habit, if chosen correctly, can trigger a chain reaction capable of fostering the birth and consolidation of many other virtuous habits.

The most powerful keystone habit we have found for developing a team member's accountability, autonomy, critical thinking and many soft skills is, as in the Alcoa example, the methodical detection of problems.

Conclusion

To recap:

Reporting problems is a fundamental duty of every team member
There are 5 different approaches to detecting problems, 4 dysfunctional and 1 functional
Depending on the approach a person follows, you find consistent attitudes and habits. The approach to detecting problems has an enormous influence on people's mindset
By changing the approach to detecting problems through an effective method, you affect a team member's causativeness, accountability and productivity.

Sources and references

(*1) A concept formalized in 1972 by social psychologist Irving Janis, who studied how cohesive, isolated groups can make disastrous decisions precisely because of the pressure to conform.
It shows how team members tend to suppress their own critical opinions in order to reach unanimous consensus. It often appears in very close-knit groups, leading to hasty or irrational decisions because the need for harmony prevails over good sense.