The dog ate your homework, huh?
I remember when the kids were small and one would blame the other for breaking a plate or knocking something over just to avoid getting in trouble themselves. And you always knew. With four of the little poppets in the house... well I probably don't have to say anymore!
There was one particularly memorable occasion where two of them were absolutely covered in a chocolate mess but still insisted that the dog must have eaten the ENTIRE tub of ice cream.
It’s what kids do.
But apparently it’s also what some companies do when trying to avoid bad PR.
I don’t really need to mention the incident that has inspired this particular blog post, cough cough United Airlines cough cough, but I will say that when a company tries to avoid taking responsibility for a mistake by blaming anyone else it is as transparent as when kids blame a dog (or a teddy bear or a ghost - that ones for another article, haha).
Everybody makes mistakes.
Too often, when a company or an individual at a company realises that they have made a mistake, they panic. They start throwing around the blame rather than just dealing with the problem in front of them.
I always have a great deal more respect for companies (and my own employees) when they hold their hand up and admit that they made a miscalculation.
By doing this, everyone involved can move on to finding the solution to the problem. (And then working to ensure it never happens again.)
If the organisation in question had said:
“Yes, this was a terrible incident that should never have happened. We are looking at ways to ensure it never happens again.”
Then people would have still been horrified, but I personally don’t believe that the same media storm would have followed. Obviously this all comes from the top and its frankly just embarrassing to see senior managers of a business trying really hard to either downplay or completely dodge ownership of an issue.
Taking responsibility for your actions and mistakes means that you can put them behind you and move toward a solution. We all get things wrong from time to time, the acid test is how we deal with these situations, accepting responsibility and amending policy so that it does not happen in the future.