Pet peeves. Everyone has them. Those quirky little things that drive us crazy. Henry Ford named one of mine. We’ve all seen it before: something goes wrong and the first thing everyone scrambles to do is blame someone.
“It wasn’t me!”
“I told him not to do that!”
It drives me crazy! What’s worse, I’ve done it too! Unfortunately it’s human nature, but that doesn’t mean we can’t change. Think about how much time, money and effort is wasted on placing blame. It’s frightening, really. Just imagine what would happen if say, for example, your surgeon spent all his time placing blame.
Surgeon: “I didn’t cut that artery! Nurse Jennings bumped it with her wrist watch!”
Nurse: “Umm, Doctor, the patient is bleeding out…”
Surgeon: “It’s not my fault!”
The great thing about mistakes is that we can learn from them. You can’t do that if you are worrying about whose fault it is that things went wrong. What’s worse, you are probably losing time, money or both while you are coming up with reasons why it’s not your fault. Instead, try fixing the problem and making sure it doesn’t happen again. I firmly believe that people are much more likely to remember how you took immediate and decisive action to fix a problem than they are to remember who caused the problem in the first place.
That’s not to say you should go around causing problems, but next time, instead of trying to figure out who is to blame, try figuring out how you can fix it first.
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