Excuses from Employees – Boundaries and Accountability
If you’ve been in business long enough to have staff, you’ve heard every variation of an excuse. You don’t always see them coming, but you know they’ll show up eventually.
Sometimes they’re small and harmless: “I couldn’t finish because the printer jammed”.
Sometimes they’re big and painful: “I didn’t think the client needed it today… so I didn’t send it”.
And sometimes they’re so elaborate you almost want to applaud the creativity: “The courier driver’s cousin’s dog got sick, so the order didn’t arrive”.
The problem isn’t that people make mistakes because everyone does. The problem is when excuses become the default response instead of ownership and problem-solving.
Excuses are rarely about the actual problem; they’re about protecting ourselves from discomfort. When something goes wrong, our brains look for the quickest way to preserve our self-image to protect the story we tell ourselves that we’re competent, capable and in control.
When Standards Slip
Let’s take a real-world example. A small retail store worked incredibly hard to build a reputation for a personalised service and curated product range. One of your sales assistants is on the roster for a busy Saturday. A customer comes in asking about a particular jacket they saw on your Instagram post. Mia can’t find it on the shop floor and tells the customer, “I guess we must have sold out. Sorry”.
In reality, the jacket is in the stockroom, but Mia didn’t check because she assumed she knew what was out on display.
Here’s the cost:
The customer leaves disappointed and buys from another store
That sale (and potential repeat business) is gone
The marketing effort you invested to get that customer in the door is wasted
Other staff members see that it’s ok to guess rather than verify, which subtly lowers the standard of customer service across the team.
It might be small, but multiply that by a dozen similar incidents in a month and the lost sales and wasted marketing spend add up quickly. As soon as you let the excuse “Oh, I thought we were out” slide, you’ve silently approved a lower standard of effort.
Boundaries
Boundaries do not equal micromanaging. They’re about defining what “good” looks like in your business, so there’s no room for confusion.
Instead of vague expectations like “make sure you check”, a boundary might sound like this:
“If there isn’t any stock of an item on the floor, please check in the stockroom thoroughly before confirming it with the customer. Take their details so you can notify them when it is back in store and provide them with an ETA”.
That’s not controlling; that’s clarity. Boundaries remove the grey area that excuses love to live in. They also make it much easier to have a straight conversation when something goes wrong because you can point back to the agreed on standard, not just a personal opinion.
Here’s where most leaders get stuck. They hear the excuse, feel frustrated, and either let it go to avoid conflict or react emotionally. Neither works.
You shouldn’t set out with the goal to punish. Instead, you should be shifting the conversation from why it didn’t happen to how it will happen next time.
The Danger of Letting Excuses Slide
When you let excuses go unchallenged, you’re not avoiding conflict; you’re making a decision. You’re deciding that this behaviour is acceptable.
One of the fastest ways to turn a strong team into a mediocre one is to tolerate excuses from even a single person. High performers notice, and it’s incredibly frustrating to work twice as hard while someone else does hardly anything. Over time, they’ll either stop trying or leave and either way, you lose.
Building a No-Excuses Culture
A no-excuses culture doesn’t mean people are scared to speak up. In fact, it’s the opposite; people feel safe admitting mistakes because they know the focus will be on fixing, not blaming.
It looks like this:
Problems are flagged early
People come with solutions, not just problems
Ownership is celebrated
Standards are clear and consistent
It takes repetition, patience, and sometimes a few hard conversations. But once it clicks, it’s one of the most powerful cultural shifts you can make in your business.
Excuses are human, but if you’re in a small business, you can’t afford to let them run your culture. You are responsible for creating a culture where people can own their work, fix their mistakes and help protect the momentum of the team. It starts with you.
