<story><title>I Don&apos;t Understand</title><url>http://bjk5.com/post/38101106878/i-dont-understand</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Evbn</author><text>Why does it matter who is responsible for a mistake? Whence this antiquated notion that failures are to be blamed on a scapegoat?</text></item><item><author>zaidf</author><text>Making a clear statement such as &quot;I don&apos;t understand&quot; also is a great signal to your coworkers. It kills confusion and builds trust: I know that if you don&apos;t understand, you will let me know. That is much better than having someone who I have to poke to admit that they don&apos;t understand something.&lt;p&gt;Another personal favorite is stating unequivocally, loud and clear that &quot;&lt;i&gt;This was my mistake&lt;/i&gt;&quot;. It is tempting to just fix the mistake but even if you have fixed it, if there isn&apos;t clear &lt;i&gt;declared&lt;/i&gt; ownership, you probably haven&apos;t addressed the root cause.&lt;p&gt;Doing this keeps you honest to yourself and also removes the awkward air where no one knows who is responsible for this mistake because no one has taken ownership. To pull this off you need an environment that won&apos;t punish mistakes by default.&lt;p&gt;There are absolutely fireable mistakes but if you do this right, the employee should volunteer to be let go because he realizes the gravity of his error.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>zaidf</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Why does it matter who is responsible for a mistake?&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Because the person who makes the mistake is often in one of the finest positions to suggest ways to prevent the same and similar mistakes not just by him, but by others in the future. In all, that adds great long term value to the organization.&lt;p&gt;Accepting &lt;i&gt;responsibility&lt;/i&gt; does not mean &quot;blame&quot; or &quot;scapegoating&quot;. Blame and scapegoating is something done by &lt;i&gt;others&lt;/i&gt; in the organization and reflects on a poor culture than someone accepting responsibility.&lt;p&gt;It &lt;i&gt;does&lt;/i&gt; mean seeing a situation &lt;i&gt;objectively&lt;/i&gt;. If Mary broke the site and she knows why, it helps no one to keep that a mystery. It helps everyone if the environment lets her come forward and say it was her mistake, this is the fix and this is how we will prevent this category of mistakes in future.&lt;p&gt;In fact, in order for this to work, you have to go out of your way to make sure that &quot;responsibility&quot; is not used to blame or scapegoat. If it is, people responsible will stop accepting responsibility.</text></comment>
<story><title>I Don&apos;t Understand</title><url>http://bjk5.com/post/38101106878/i-dont-understand</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Evbn</author><text>Why does it matter who is responsible for a mistake? Whence this antiquated notion that failures are to be blamed on a scapegoat?</text></item><item><author>zaidf</author><text>Making a clear statement such as &quot;I don&apos;t understand&quot; also is a great signal to your coworkers. It kills confusion and builds trust: I know that if you don&apos;t understand, you will let me know. That is much better than having someone who I have to poke to admit that they don&apos;t understand something.&lt;p&gt;Another personal favorite is stating unequivocally, loud and clear that &quot;&lt;i&gt;This was my mistake&lt;/i&gt;&quot;. It is tempting to just fix the mistake but even if you have fixed it, if there isn&apos;t clear &lt;i&gt;declared&lt;/i&gt; ownership, you probably haven&apos;t addressed the root cause.&lt;p&gt;Doing this keeps you honest to yourself and also removes the awkward air where no one knows who is responsible for this mistake because no one has taken ownership. To pull this off you need an environment that won&apos;t punish mistakes by default.&lt;p&gt;There are absolutely fireable mistakes but if you do this right, the employee should volunteer to be let go because he realizes the gravity of his error.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>klibertp</author><text>I understand this the following way: when nobody claims &quot;ownership&quot; of a mistake, everybody (ie. in a team) feels guilty about it, even of they had no control over what lead to this mistake. If someone says clearly that it was his mistake, everybody else may stop worrying and either concentrate on something else or help mistaken person avoid such mistakes in the future.&lt;p&gt;This has nothing to do with scapegoats, but my understanding  can be, of course, completely off.</text></comment>