Whose Fault Is It, Really?

Assigning blame is often the simplest task in the modern professional workplace. Pointing fingers comes almost second nature when something goes wrong.

Sometimes, it's meant to be an exercise in pinpointing target areas that need to be addressed. And that's a good thing; problems can't be solved if they aren't first identified and acknowledged.

Other times, it's pure animal instinct. We tell ourselves that we just want to solve the problem, but the problem could actually be ourselves. And pointing those fingers elsewhere is more self-preservation. It's a cop-out, the refuge of the weak.

The finger-pointing game.

The tragedy is that Management isn't immune to this; quite often, they're the ones most guilty of this. Sure, I could fill pages talking about the bosses I've encountered who simply refused to accept responsibility for things going south. And arguably, their sin is greater. After all, the higher up the ladder you are, the greater the responsibility.

However, in the spirit of this blogpost, I'm going to direct this at myself.

The last few years have been the first time in my long and storied career that I was ever in a position of leadership, in the sense that people looked to me for guidance. And I'm not proud to say there were some times I fell short, especially when it came to accepting responsibility. In these cases, my first instinct was to be annoyed with my co-workers for screwing up.

Case #1: The Painfully Simple Mistake

One of these cases happened when a co-worker sent me a CSV data file to upload into a system I had written. Now, mistakes in data are common, and what can I say, they happen. This co-worker sometimes sent me files with hundreds, sometimes a couple thousand rows, and if there were mistakes in the data, I shrugged it off, quietly cleaned it up and got on with it.

The problem was, the latest CSV file had only five rows in it. And all of them had the same mistake. Now if a thousand row CSV file has mistakes, I'm inclined to be forgiving. But if you can't get five lines of data right, this is not something that can be explained away by incompetence, because my opinion is that nobody is that incompetent. Rather, this tells me that the guilty party has lost interest in staying employed.

Only five!

Thus, I had to be very firm in my communication. We were two years into using this system, and mistakes like these just were not acceptable, especially not when the mistake in question happened in a five row CSV file. I felt like an asshole after that, because there is no way to point all of that out without insulting the other party's competence, no matter how politely and charitably the email is worded. I simply don't have the soft skills for that level of diplomacy.

But then arose the question: whose fault is it, really?

I could have said something when mistakes were occurring in bigger files. That way, I could have been understanding but firm. Instead, I chose to clean up quietly and the result was that they got comfortable thinking they could just hand me rubbish and I would just make it work. In effect, I let the situation escalate till there was no way for me to be nice about it. Whose fault was it that I'd been painted into that corner? Mine. I have to accept some degree of culpability.

Case #2: The Lack of Understanding

There was a certain tech process that needed to be done yearly. One of my colleagues, further down the hierarchy, was tasked with carrying out the process. Towards the deadline, there was a bunch of emails as he posed certain questions regarding the process, to different departments. This would normally be my area of expertise, but being swamped with more urgent matters, I elected to spend my time on those matters and let others answer those queries.

A week from the deadline, I found that there was a mistake in the process. My colleague suggested remedies, but his suggestions proved to me that while he had memorized the process, he did not actually understand the process and what had gone wrong. Consequently, his suggestions would never have worked. I made my exasperation known.

Again, whose fault is it, really?

Did he do anything wrong? Technically, yes, due to an unexpected variation in the conditions, he proceeded to carry out the process incorrectly. He had failed to understand the process. But see, understanding the process wasn't his job. It was mine. At my level, as the undisputed programming expert in that very non-technical company, I was supposed to be providing the proper guidance. Understanding the process was above his pay grade. At his pay grade, all he could actually be expected to do was show up to work on time, do his job, and leave on time.

I should know. I've been where he is. The fact that I'm no longer at that position was because when I was in that position, I did more than was expected of me. However, that should be an individual choice. He did his job. It was me who was guilty of negligence. And being in the position I am now, I need to own it.

The crown's heavier
than it looks.

They say "heavy is the head that wears the crown". Well, what I was wearing wasn't exactly a crown, but it had been my responsibility, as head of that department, to either ensure that those executing the process understood the process, or step in before something went wrong. I had done neither. This was my screw-up.

And if I were to honestly examine my own exasperation, I was actually more annoyed with myself than with him. And rightfully so.

The Takeaway

I've often pissed on people in positions of authority who seem incapable of acknowledging their own culpability in any sort of mess that occurs. This has shown me, upon introspection, that I'm not automatically immune to this foible. It takes both conscious effort and humility.

Titles aren't just words. The onus is on the holder of said title, to provide that title, via action, some legitimacy.

Own your shit, yo.
T___T