To Blame or Not to Blame?

As corporate leaders we are taught not to blame, we work hard to create a blameless work environment.  In the Private sector you hear all about mental safety and safe work environment.

Yet, as we step into the public world, we ignore all of it, we turn into finger pointing monsters.  I’ve done this with my innocent little kids and I bet you did too.  Have you ever stepped into a room with a broken glass, something has spilled on the floor, and said “WHO DID THIS?”?  That question scares any of us even if not guilty. What if we ask “Is everyone ok?” wait for an answer and then ask “What happened?”

When the explosion happened in Beirut, everyone raced to understand the root cause, questioning the “fireworks” storage explosion. Then we felt sorry for the people and city, and at the end we started looking for someone to blame.

We have yet to see any reports about inspecting other storage facilities in Lebanon.  Any initiative to build policies and regulation for hazardous storage.

We have yet to see any effort to improve the response to emergencies in Lebanon.  Could we have saved more lives if we’ve done things better?

This is beyond the Lebanese borders, although it is easier to find problems within it. But let’s move back across the ocean and raise your hand if you have been caught on the left or right side and pointing to the other side.  Raise your hand if you blamed our problems on a color - Black, White, Yellow, Blue, or Red.

Let’s move away from all the politics and talk about Leadership and how we could fix the problem. Let’s start with the basics, there are 2 ways to lead, one way with fear and another with hope.  For some reason the movie “The Croods” comes to mind and it is fascinating how it is a good display of both types of leadership.  It is important to mention that both ways could be effective, and both ways have their ups and downs.  Where it becomes really dangerous is when you have a mix of the two in your group/world.  

Some of us aren’t afraid of immigrants, others aren’t afraid of global warming. Wait I forgot the title of this blog, how about?  some of us don’t blame immigrants and some of us don’t blame global warming.

Bringing it to my software world a bit, and the best example there is - not everyone wants to rebuild the product from scratch, AND not everyone wants to refactor every piece of old code.

As a leader you could use fear or hope to achieve goals, but whatever you pick, don't exclude the other side and most importantly don’t blame them.  Your job is to make sure everyone has a seat on the table, everyone has a role to achieve the goal.

As leaders, we have our frameworks, our ways of doing things, our ways of organizing our teams, and our ways of delivering. We could make it successful by listening and showing everyone, regardless of which side they are on, how it could help them and how they could be a positive contributor within the environment we are creating.

We are all part of a family, community, town/city, and a country.  We need to make each of these levels as strong as possible and attacking each other doesn’t help anyone and won’t get us anywhere, trust me, I was born in the middle of a civil war.