QBQ - Being Personally Accountable Again.

Very recently I listen to QBQ: The Question Behind the Question and found that it was a very appropriate follow up to the last book, Who Moved My Cheese? The two seemed to compliment one another very well.

QBQ is focused on getting us to change our way of thinking in primarily the work environment. Of course it's something we should probably use in many other parts of our lives. It draws us away from negative thinking, moves us from asking questions that lead to the Blame Game, and puts our focus back on how to correct the problem.

We tend to ask Inappropriate Questions in our job, the root of which is to push blame from ourselves onto another source. What we should be doing is asking questions like, 'How can I change this?' Or 'What can I do to achieve this goal?'

It is when we stop putting our energy on things like blame, and turn our energies towards moving forward, pressing on, and getting past the negative things that bog us down, that we'll free our personal resources from those debts to build other resource-wealth. If my time and emotions are tied up in being unhappy because the company won't train me, or my manager won't give me the tools I need, or what-not.. then those parts of my personal resources are indebted to those pursuits. If I get out of that I can start moving forward and using the tools I have to get things done, or putting together my own sort of plan for training. When we do these things, often we will find that more tools will come our way, that training will begin to materialize.

It's not easy being personally accountable. It takes practice and repetition. The concept is even a little old-school. But with time, it can become part of who we are. If you knock over a glass of milk at the dinner table, you don't just cry over it, do you? You may want to, but as adults we sometimes just hang our head a little and go get a towel and wipe it up. It's our mess, we made it, we should clean it up. And when our children do it, we dash into action, trying to keep it from spreading far and wide, leaking over the edge of the table. And while there we are, holding back the flow of errant milk, we say, 'Go get a towel!' Thus we show by our action, while helping them, that they too need to be personally accountable to clean up their own mess.

This isn't a new idea. We all ran for a towel when we were younger, didn't we? We just have to move that old habit back to a more prominent place in our way of thinking and our way of life.