The Blame Game

This is all your fault!

Have you ever been blamed for something? I have been blamed for plenty of things. I have blamed others for plenty of things as well. We live in a culture of blame and shame. The two go hand in hand. Everyday at my work there are systems that fail or problems. Often management requests that an RCA (root cause analysis) be done. We all quickly grab our pitchforks and the witch hunt begins. We are super quick to "throw each other under the bus".I believe this is because of the notion that if someone else is getting blamed then I am safe from judgement. There is an all seeing eye like the eye of Sauron from The Lord of The Rings that scans everyone in the department and we live in fear that the gaze will fall upon us. I have actually heard this exact comparison from my manager as he attempted to motivate me to move quicker so the gaze would not fall upon me. 

Ughh! what the hell!

Today I witnessed several blaming's/shaming's. One of my projects missed a minor deadline today. A simple task was not completed in time. People were freaking out over this inconsequential event. I quickly looked to make sure I had filed a ticket for the task to be completed. To my horror and dismay I had filed the ticket incorrectly. 

I MADE A MISTAKE!

Can you believe it? I for one am shocked! I did not know I was capable of screwing something up! 

I discovered the mistake while I was on the phone with my project manager. Guess what I did? I blamed him for the mistake. Yep I totally did. I told him it was his fault because he had been talking to me when I filed the ticket so he had distracted me causing me to do it wrong. How lame am I? Here is the real shocker though. He humbly took the blame. He simply said yep your right Its my fault. Ill try to not distract you in the future. He then quickly asked what could be done to remedy the situation. I was so stunned that I quickly pulled back my blame. I told him I was just kidding and that it really was my fault. He didn't really care. How awesome is he!

A little while later I received a text message from someone I know. He told me he was frustrated and that he just wanted to "check out of reality". The reason he wanted to check out was because he is having a bad day, things are not going his way, and to top it off his wife is blaming him for the death of their only vehicle. The blame game begins another vicious round. Something bad happens we all quickly look for a reason or a person to blame. When life sucks we want someone to blame. That makes it easier on us to not accept responsibility The truth is simply that sometimes life does suck. Bad things sometimes happen to good people. How you choose to react to the suckage is what separates the men from the boys.

What a waste of energy and time. It happened. learn from it. Mourn the loss if necessary. Move on. Its that simple folks. Easier said then done right? I agree. It takes time, patience and perspective to get over it sometimes. However it can be done.

Blame. there really is no reason for this. I find that I am my hardest critic. I do a better job than anyone can of piling blame guilt and shame on myself. Also it is very bad. It does not help me. It hurts me. Sure I can learn from my mistakes but there is no reason to make myself feel any worse. What would it be like if we all just freely admitted our mistakes and our peers told us that it would be ok and well figure out a way to fix it? It would be Awesome! However I think the real power comes from dropping our own pitchfork and refusing to participate in the blame game. We have the power to choose in every circumstance how we will act. 

We can be a positive force for good. 

be good :)