“The moment you stop asking who is to blame and start asking what you can learn, you have exchanged the burden of the past for the power to shape the future.” – MJ Martin
The Long Road of Blame
There is an old saying, frequently presented as a Chinese proverb: “He who blames others has a long way to go on his journey. He who blames himself is halfway there. He who blames no one has arrived.” Its precise origin is difficult to establish, but its message captures something profound about leadership, maturity and personal responsibility.
Blame is attractive because it provides an immediate explanation for disappointment. The project failed because of the contractor. The business struggled because of the economy. The government failed because of another government. The employee performed poorly because management provided inadequate direction. Sometimes these explanations are even correct. But identifying who caused a problem and solving the problem are entirely different exercises.
Blame is like staring into the rear-view mirror while driving. The mirror contains useful information, but you cannot navigate successfully if that is where you keep your eyes.
Halfway There
The second stage is more difficult: looking inward.
Psychologists describe a related concept as “locus of control.” The American Psychological Association distinguishes between an external locus, where outcomes are perceived as arising primarily from outside forces, and an internal locus, where people perceive their own agency and abilities as important determinants of outcomes. (APA Dictionary)
For leaders, this distinction is enormously important. When something goes wrong, the productive question is not simply, “Who did this?” It is, “What could I have done differently?”
Did I communicate clearly? Did I hire the right people? Did I establish realistic expectations? Did I recognize the warning signs? Did I provide sufficient resources? Did I make a decision too slowly?
This is accountability rather than self-punishment. The APA defines accountability around being answerable for behaviour, decisions and judgments. (APA Dictionary) Taking responsibility therefore does not require accepting responsibility for everything. It means examining honestly the portion that belongs to you.
Beyond Blame
The final stage is more sophisticated still. “Blaming no one” should not mean abandoning accountability. People make mistakes. Organizations fail. Governments make poor decisions. Fraud, negligence and incompetence exist. Responsibility still matters.
The distinction is between assigning responsibility to learn and assigning blame to punish.
Imagine a Canadian municipality investigating a major infrastructure failure. An immature organization searches for the employee who made the mistake. A more mature organization asks why its procedures allowed one person’s mistake to become a system failure. The first approach produces a culprit. The second produces a safer system.
This distinction matters in Canada because public confidence ultimately depends upon institutions demonstrating that they can recognize problems and improve. Statistics Canada actively measures Canadians’ confidence in institutions as part of its broader examination of social well-being and trust. (Statistics Canada) Accountability therefore has consequences far beyond the individual. It is part of the architecture of trust.
Arrival Is Not Surrender
There is also a danger in taking the proverb too literally. Some circumstances genuinely are beyond our control. Psychology distinguishes between personal agency and external circumstances for precisely this reason. (APA Dictionary) Wisdom is not believing that everything is your fault.
Perhaps “arrival” means something different.
You acknowledge what happened. You determine why it happened. You accept your share of responsibility. You hold others appropriately accountable. Then you stop investing energy in blame and invest it in improvement.
That is maturity.
So consider three questions. When something goes wrong in your business or personal life, is your first instinct to identify who caused it or what can be learned from it? Can a leader accept responsibility for an outcome without accepting blame for circumstances genuinely beyond their control? And perhaps most importantly, when does accountability stop being productive and become punishment?
The destination described by the proverb is not a world without responsibility. It is a state of mind in which responsibility has replaced resentment, learning has replaced accusation, and the question “Whose fault is this?” has finally given way to the far more powerful question:
“What do we do next?”
About the Author:
Michael Martin is the Vice President of Technology with Metercor Inc., a Smart Meter, IoT, and Smart City systems integrator based in Canada. He has more than 40 years of experience in systems design for applications that use broadband networks, optical fibre, wireless, and digital communications technologies. He is a business and technology consultant. He was a senior executive consultant for 15 years with IBM, where he worked in the GBS Global Center of Competency for Energy and Utilities and the GTS Global Center of Excellence for Energy and Utilities. He is a founding partner and President of MICAN Communications and before that was President of Comlink Systems Limited and Ensat Broadcast Services, Inc., both divisions of Cygnal Technologies Corporation (CYN: TSX).
Martin served on the Board of Directors for TeraGo Inc (TGO: TSX) and on the Board of Directors for Avante Logixx Inc. (XX: TSX.V). He has served as a Member, SCC ISO-IEC JTC 1/SC-41 – Internet of Things and related technologies, ISO – International Organization for Standardization, and as a member of the NIST SP 500-325 Fog Computing Conceptual Model, National Institute of Standards and Technology. He served on the Board of Governors of the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) [now Ontario Tech University] and on the Board of Advisers of five different Colleges in Ontario – Centennial College, Humber College, George Brown College, Durham College, Ryerson Polytechnic University [now Toronto Metropolitan University]. For 16 years he served on the Board of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), Toronto Section.
He holds three master’s degrees – in business (MBA), communication (MA), and education (MEd). As well, he has three undergraduate diplomas and seven major certifications in business, computer programming, internetworking, project management, media, photography, and communication technology. He has completed over 80 next generation MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) [aka Micro Learning] continuous education programs in a wide variety of topics, including: Economics, Python Programming, Internet of Things, Cloud, Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive systems, Blockchain, Agile, Power BI, Big Data, Design Thinking, Security, Indigenous Canada awareness, and more.
Martin in a volunteer, a photographer, a learner, a technologist, a philosophizer, and a romantic optimist.