Why usually “it’s not my fault” is not enough

... and how ‘you can change the world with words and ideas’

As far as back as I can remember, I worked with a team for the majority of my job positions. I started almost 15 years ago and I almost never worked alone; this for sure taught me a lesson: it’s really easy to blame someone else for the failures but the truth is that, also if you did your part perfectly, usually it’s your fault. Let me try to explain what I mean.

Working with small or big teams is of course different: working in a small team usually means that everyone has to take care of almost everything, maybe there are well-defined “macro” areas, but at the end of the day you have to solve a lot of problems not strictly related to your job position. In my personal experience, this became even more true when I started to be a Manager. 

When you’re leading a team, it’s really easy, compared to when you’re one of the developers/designer of the team, to blame someone else for all the failures, most of all if you can easily prove that something doesn’t work, or something doesn’t look as it was supposed to be, but that’s the lesson I learned: if you simply expect from others what you want to achieve, then you’re making a mistake in the first place. It’s your job to be sure that everyone will be able to deliver what you expect, and not viceversa; and this is very difficult in small teams more than in big ones. 

In small teams it’s easy to get excited, most of all, at the beginning, creating a strong connection with the other members of the team, dreaming all together about how things can be done differently than in big corporations, and so on, but, at the end of the day, you will face the truth: the market is the same for everyone and it’s up to each single member of the team to realize it in order to succeed. Maybe, if you’re a startup, being able to focus on a single project and a single goal, that is different, but when you start to have several clients, that need almost daily assistance and count on you to create a better product month after month, the tasks for the team start to increase, cumulate, and soon the small team will not be enough… and it seems you need a bigger team, better organization, you will start using tools to organize todos, milestones, meetings, etc.

At this point, you need everyone to be aware of their own role in the company, because you’re not a “dream” anymore, you’re now a strong reality, with real clients, real commitments, real goals. And this is the moment when you’re going to make your choice: am I going to blame everyone else to not be what I was dreaming about, or am I going to embrace this new adventure?

I realized that the human nature tends to react in mainly 2 different ways:

• This is not working and I’m not good enough
• This is not working and it’s not my fault

but there are situations when both options aren’t correct; there are situations when you’re simply scared and you try to protect yourself, and that’s why you start blaming others for the failures or considering yourself not good enough.

I want to give my suggestion to someone that could have this kind of feeling: focus on yourself, do what you think it can make you grow and try to solve the problems, instead of creating them. 

I’m not a fan of blaming others and I always try to understand where I did something wrong when I see around me something I don’t like. This is applied not only to my work, but also on the society; for example: why I don’t like this place? Why I don’t like these people? What I can do to create a better place? What can I do to interact better with these people? That’s where I start from when I encounter some problems or something I don’t like.

I do understand that everyone reacts in different ways to problems, so it’s of course up to every single one. But once you made your choice, go for it because when you really want something you will start to become a better person and, in your work environment, a better professional. Blaming others or delegate the fix of the problems to others is not what is going to make you a good professional, at least in small teams; if you’re good enough to analyze and understand that there is a problem, then if you find a way to solve it, involving also other people of course, then you’re making the difference. And that’s why I say that, usually, when something doesn’t work it’s your fault.

You cannot change the world, but I always thought that it deserves at least a try. It’s better than blaming others that the world sucks, isn’t it?

About me: I’m the Chief Technology Officer at Fleka; former Professor at Istituto Europeo di Design in Milan; Pixel Art lover, posting experiments on Twitter; I write about technology related to business topics here on Linkedin Pulse and on my Medium account. Check instead my Instagram profile for a sneak peek of my private life ;)