Blame or No-Blame Culture?

 

There seems to be an increasingly thirsty trend by the media of holding people to account. Is this a positive or a negative trend? Is it conducive to better governance to find a scapegoat and should it always be right to have someone to blame?  Then having fingered the culprit the individual is therefore expected to resign and if not the cry from the baying journalists goes up  -  Sack him ..... Fire her.....

My experience of life, happiness and success is to suggest that the balance of commonsense and ultimately behaviour has shifted to satisfy the media’s thirst for news. 

Surely the happiest and most successful organisations in both private and public sectors are run by leaders; and true leaders practice the principle that “the buck stops here”.  Real leaders take responsibility for the failings of their followers; therefore the clamour for resignation or sacking surely can lead to the demise of the leader that most people have chosen to work for.

Working in an environment of a blame culture, is not only sheer misery, but in the long term creates a no-decision, no-creativeness, no-ownership, no-responsibility and a no-action environment. Summed up as - nobody does anything that could possibly lead to a mistake.

Most of us who have been fortunate enough to achieve ‘success’ got there by making mistakes.

So when should somebody resign or be fired while in a position of leadership?