Whose Fault is It?

Blame: to find fault with: to hold responsible: to place responsibility for - Merriam Webster

When things aren’t working as they should, there always seems to be more than enough blame to go around.  

How leadership deals with these scenarios matters - a lot.      

Do they declare themselves winners by pointing fingers at an employee?  Do they gather around the victory table & banter about how the employee is less dedicated, lazy, or trying to get over on the company?  Do they assert the employee should have ‘caught’ the mistake before it happened? Or does the blame get directed toward an impossible client with unreasonable expectations & demands?  It’s not us. It’s them.  

((Insert Victrola dog head tilt.))

All of this assumes the organization’s processes and workflows couldn’t be part of the problem. And that just seems silly to me.  I believe people want to do a good job, and if you hired people you think may want to get over on you or are lazy, you probably need to revisit your hiring practices or your belief systems.  

I believe leadership teams should consider whether the processes and workflows they built may need to be changed or modified.  Have they adapted to support the dynamic changes in the marketplace? What worked before may not work now. And almost certainly, the future will require more changes.  Leadership has to be willing to take some of the blame.  

• Are employees set up for success?
• Do employees have the tools and resource to do their job?
• Are the right people working on the right projects?

Ask how and why a mistake happened or a problem persists.  Save the “who” for identifying employees who can impact and contribute to a solution. 

#Blame #Management #Culture