Discussion on:

Management style: Accountability vs. blame

I have learned that it is most effective to find out how something happened and explain that the purpose of the analysis is so we can prevent it from happening again, without fixing the blame on anyone. (Unless as is pointed out in the article, it is a mistake that is made repeatedly.)

is that sometimes people enjoy the blame game. Insecure people(and not only managers) get an ego boost by seeing others fail. They delight in pointing out others failing, and usually they are totally lacking for good suggestions on how to prevent future occurances (fire them is what I hear).

I used to run Post Mortems for an IT department. Emotions and blame tended to get in the way of decent analysis. But after a few occasions, people started to get the hang of it and began to focus on process and improvements as opposed to personalities and blame.

James

It sounds like you need to change the circle you're hanging with! Just kidding!

I've worked for some great companies and some not so great companies...

You have a choice, you can try and make things better or resign yourself to what you inherit.

The one thing I've learned is that its hard to tell just by the interview or by doing net research. You have to find an "unbiased" insider and thats challenging.

Of course, you live in Hamilton.....perhaps you should move to a city with a football team...

Just kidding...

James

At my last job when things went wrong (which was frequently due to a "house-of-cards" system thrown together by consultants with no long-term accountability and an over-bureaucratic management system which prevented positive change) it was generally asked "Who's fault was this?"

It was as if every problem was the result of an individual's error. This is, of course, often not true. Problems generally arise from more systemic issues rather than singular events or persons.

This fault-laden environment lead to employees doing absolute minimal work, more concerned with covering their ass than doing good work or fixing persistent problems. It also led to a great deal of stress for mid-level IT managers. (It got to the point that I burned out and required stress leave. I was a mess.)

I was relieved of duty while off sick and given my notice. Two other ?young? managers (half of those in Technical Services) were also used as scapegoats and let go in that same year.

The result is a poor work environment, poor product, high turn-over rate, low productivity and zero innovation and initiative.

(I am not permitted to state how the legal matter between me and Medavie, or Atlantic Blue Cross Care, was resolved. So please do not ask.)

Steve, your case is, sorry to say, becoming a common occurrance. In todays business world it seems that one must learn to CYOB, instaed of being a team player and/or think outside the box. Often one must, by concept, divorce themselves from a situation or process in order to gain insight on the design flaw, or flaw by implementation.

I currently work for a midsized insurance company that will use more resources to prove who fault it is as compared to focusing on finding and applying a solution. IT people do usually fit in well in these circles be cause we tend to think logically, as opposed to thinking politically( for lack of a better term). In oder to survive in the work place we need to learn thier game, or thier method of thinking so we may illustrate the flaws, and show them a better way.

Oh mighty Bill Gates, help your children....

Mighty yes. Help no.
He didn't get where is now by leaving the booty open to attack.

It is more of a company culture (especially at the higher management level) of blaming someone when things go wrong than to resolving the problem.

And these people would rather spend time and effort to find the "scapegoat" than to direct the time and effort to solve the problem. The most common question is usually "Why did this happen?", "Why didn't he check?", "Who is supposed to monitor this".

Why can't they change their mentality to "How do we resolve this?", "How can we prevent the same thing from happening again?".

Well, they are in the upper management position, so there is nothing we at the lower level can do. But I would like to point out that it is very unhealthy because everyone will be busy thinking of ways to protect themselves first in everything they do, instead of doing the productive work itself.

the cause of every failure is
Wasn't me.

Blame should not be part of fixing a problem.

Ensuring the problem is resolved and everyone is aware of the issue, how it begain and how it is resolved is imperative. The WHO, WHY and WHATFOR's are completely irrelevant and don't stand to achieve absolutely anything other than creating more problems.

In fact I have had issue that I KNOW are someone else's fault and when asked to point the finger I'll take it on the nose. I couldn't care less if you blame me, I fixed it didn't I? Therefore there is NO problem.

I don't mind people blaming me or pointing the finger, it usually means someone else isn't upset or offended by it, th person who NEEDS to force blame is happy to have a little spaz and I really couldn't give a damn myself.

The client wasn't curious why they paid for a month of development when the code was recreated in a day?