Tangentially, as nonnative speaker I really appreciate and envy that in english there is a clear separation between concepts of accountability and responsibility. I wish more languages would do so apart from English, Japanese as ChatGPT have listed.
Moving from Blame to Accountability (2017)
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Re: Moving from Blame to Accountability (2017)
#12Some parts of big organizations are absolute rot, though. They fail to deliver, deploy broken software, and can’t be relied upon to ever succeed at their jobs.
I have no power to fire other groups, but what I can do is list all the ways the other group will fail and how we have to handle their failures and what that means for the customer. Those groups will never improve, but because I look like a soothsayer, I will get rewarded and promoted.
Is this healthy for the org? Of course not. But I am not the org. If anyone had my insight a few levels up, they would fire incompetent teams and let teams with proven track records take over. I’ve never seen this happen, so I’ll hold my breath.
Re: Moving from Blame to Accountability (2017)
#13Tangentially, as nonnative speaker I really appreciate and envy that in english there is a clear separation between concepts of accountability and responsibility. I wish more languages would do so apart from English, Japanese as ChatGPT have listed.
Dutch has that distinction as well. Shows you not to trust ChatGPT.
Re: Moving from Blame to Accountability (2017)
#14It's both, there are definitely organisations where there is blaming. But it's also very hard for individuals to not feel blamed when given feedback meant for improving the process.
It's definitely a challenge for many if not most people to receive constructive feedback, but my observation has also been that few places are actually good at putting such feedback in a context that actually feels constructive and intended to improve outcomes. Even the most well-intentioned feedback feels negative when it appears to suggest individual level improvement is the solution to larger issues. And my observation has been that many problems in organizations are about more than individual need for improvement.
A fairly common example I like that you've probably heard before is variations on the story of a junior engineer accidentally dropping a production database. Any feedback to that junior engineer about what they need to improve on to avoid doing that in the future is going to feel like blame no matter how it's given since the underlying causes of the problem are at least as much organizational ones.
Re: Moving from Blame to Accountability (2017)
#15Article is trying to support a normative argument, which is fair and seems correct, with minutia in word definitions and different levels politeness.
Accountability is synonymous with responsibility. Identifying who is responsible for a failure is synonymous with blaming. We prefer to use "hold accountable" in formal and polite settings, and "blame" in informal settings, but it has the same meaning.
Using the correct level of politeness and formality is a hygiene factor.
"There has been a failure in accountability, and we're looking into preventing in the future" can be equivalent to (informally and impolitely) "someone here isn't cutting it and we need to figure who that is so we can start getting rid of him".
What the article actually means is that the consequences for failures in accountability should be measured such that it encourages learning, and disclosing problems, and so on. But this needs to happen through demonstrated actions, not language. It's actually preferable to be blunt, honest, and fair: "someone here fucked up; if you can figure who did what, fix it, and coach everybody up on how to prevent it, you will be more respected. if you hide your mistakes you will be less respected, and eventually of little use here."
Re: Moving from Blame to Accountability (2017)
#16This is focused on organizations but I will emphasize how moving from blame to accountability (or ownership) is a transformative stance for ourselves as individuals (as described in Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink). We often try to protect our egos by shifting blame, making excuses or just avoiding challenges altogether because blame and failure are such a negative experience. But instead of self-blame if you inst…
Ultimately, if you are "accountable" for everything in the world, then what you must do is establish control over everything in the world. Anything that cannot be controlled must be shackled and harnessed. Any independent behaviors by others must be extinguished; they must be turned into compliant automatons to be pushed this way or that by force. Nature also must be eliminated. It is illegible; you cannot understand…
What is the purpose of this type of reductionist poopooing? Are you advocating that accountability is undesirable? Of are you just flexing your intellect?
The basic flaw in this thought exercise of yours is, no one is actually '"accountable" for everything' with the power or desire to enact the consequences you listed. That said, there is nothing wrong with modeling that I am accountable for everything and accepting chaos theory as a unavoidable attribute of the world. This means that me being accountable and things going wrong does not necessitate any of the things you listed "independent behaviors by others must be extinguished" as this is just a sociopathic way of thinking on the path to destruction.
Re: Moving from Blame to Accountability (2017)
#17> When something goes wrong in an organization, the first question that is often posed is, “Whose fault is it?”
Pro tip: If you have a manager who acts like this, or even worse, an org, then it is best to find a better work environment. Having said that, these scenarios tend to be in the minority.
One of my best jobs had the department head say to his staff when things go wrong: "I don't want to hear X screwed up. I want to hear why we allowed X to screw up". Why could a junior employee make a change that affects the whole org? What systems are not in place to prevent this? Etc.
Re: Moving from Blame to Accountability (2017)
#18This is focused on organizations but I will emphasize how moving from blame to accountability (or ownership) is a transformative stance for ourselves as individuals (as described in Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink). We often try to protect our egos by shifting blame, making excuses or just avoiding challenges altogether because blame and failure are such a negative experience. But instead of self-blame if you inst…
Ultimately, if you are "accountable" for everything in the world, then what you must do is establish control over everything in the world. Anything that cannot be controlled must be shackled and harnessed. Any independent behaviors by others must be extinguished; they must be turned into compliant automatons to be pushed this way or that by force. Nature also must be eliminated. It is illegible; you cannot understand…
I see a lot of value in this take, and think pushing it to an extreme helps highlight the balancing act that is required.
Also GP's point refers to "Extreme Ownership" by Jocko Willink, and from that title it looks fair to effectively imagine the extreme.
GP mentions how focusing on accountability changes the approach to failures, and I'd totally see people taking the wrong lessons from a project where they didn't stop a colleague from doing something that happened to be a bad decision.
Re: Moving from Blame to Accountability (2017)
#19Tangentially, as nonnative speaker I really appreciate and envy that in english there is a clear separation between concepts of accountability and responsibility. I wish more languages would do so apart from English, Japanese as ChatGPT have listed.
Dutch has that distinction as well. Shows you not to trust ChatGPT.
Does ChatGPT ever say "I don't know"?
Re: Moving from Blame to Accountability (2017)
#20I find out interesting how the word responsibility is rooted in “to respond”. Responsible is not the person who is to be punished for what happened, but who is able to respond to it, i.e. make the best out of it.
This etymology also works in other languages - for instance, in German: “Ver-Antwort-ung”.