The Blame Game: It’s not me, it’s you!

Episode #158 The Blame Game: It’s not me, it’s you!

I’ve been waiting for a while to uncover one of the most insidious and unfortunately most common, leadership behaviours. Blaming others when something doesn’t go to plan.

It happens in a variety of ways. Leaders often blame one of their team members when they don’t deliver. Peers point the finger at each other when a project spanning multiple teams runs into trouble. Some leaders like to cast the blame on what they call ‘unforeseeable events’, when they don’t meet their targets. And sometimes, people who don’t deliver on their accountabilities blame their boss for not giving them sufficient resources. The list goes on.

Culturally, this is a cancer that has to be eradicated. When a leader tolerates the blame game, as part of the performance evaluation cycle, excuses become the norm and organisational politics find fertile ground.

But if you refuse to entertain the blame game, things become much simpler and people will eventually be forced to accept the accountability that comes with their role.

• I’m going to open up with a few examples of what the blame game looks like for both our political and our business leaders.

• I’ll revisit and update, an old episode of No Bullsh!t Leadership

• Then I’m going to explore why weak leaders and low accountability cultures open the door for the blame game

• I’ll finish with some tips for creating the right culture. No blame, no excuses

what the blame game looks like

There are plenty of real life examples of what happens when leaders allow a culture of blame to fester. If it’s not treated, it quickly becomes part of the culture of a team, an organisation, or even a whole professional vocation.

Consider politics. I normally like to stay away from government and politics, but it provides such a stunning example of leadership failure that I can’t help myself in this case. And look, I’m not being selective here. It’s all flavours of political persuasion. Unfortunately it seems to infect the whole system of government, and sometimes, the administrations that support them.

The whole political process relies on the blame game. There are very few outliers who don’t play that game. Almost every politician alive, regardless of their political affiliation, knows the rules. It’s a key cultural marker of that profession. Have a think about how the political process works. When good things happen on a politician’s watch, they take credit for it, regardless of whether it had anything to do with their own decision-making or policy settings.

The classic example is economic performance. When the economy is going well, the political leader of the day will say that it’s because of their leadership and policies.

Now more often than not, we know that’s complete bullshit. The forces that govern economic performance are often out of the hands of political leaders, and it always takes longer to move the needle than people think. Just consider the impact of immigration and birth rates on gross domestic product. Population growth drives rises in GDP, which in turn, supports economic prosperity. But it’s a slow burn. A change in immigration policy by a government isn’t going to change GDP anytime soon. And unless you are China, governments have very little influence on birth rates. The other fact that drives growth is GDP per capita, which is a measure of workforce productivity. This also takes a long time to make a shift in a positive direction.

Any politician that boasts about positive economic performance in their first six to twelve months of governing, is usually taking credit for something that they had nothing to do with.

Imagine though, when those same results are negative. The political leader of the day is more than happy to blame their predecessor, the pandemic, the trade decisions made by other countries or other factors that they say are outside of their control.

Let’s face it, if you take credit for the good, you also have to accept accountability for the bad. But we’ve become so desensitised to this that we tend to believe any crap a politician puts out there if we are of the same political persuasion. And we disbelieve it if they’re on the other side of the political divide.

This is our confirmation bias in action. Watching our politicians through COVID has been really instructive. When the decisions are popular, they take credit for those decisions. However, when something goes wrong, they’re really quick to throw the medical experts who advise them under the bus.

The classic standoff, between federal and state government responsibilities, which at least in Australia I defy anyone to understand fully, provides fertile ground for blame shifting and a lack of accountability.

Now think about this same phenomenon in the context of business. Many CEOs will adjust their performance targets when things outside of their control occur in a given performance assessment period. These negative events are often put in the category of one-off or extraordinary items and excluded from the underlying results.

This way their bonuses are protected from much of the downside risk. I’ve seen some past masters at this manipulation in my time. Somehow there are certain CEOs who always make bonus, regardless of company performance and they get paid accordingly. I’ll admit there have been times in the past when I’ve actually been the financial beneficiary of these manipulations, as the bonus criteria apply to a component of every executive short-term incentive payments, the spoils flow downhill, just of course to a lesser extent than they’re accumulated at the top.

The key point here, is there’s actually a well-worn and structured system for blaming external events for poor performance and moving the goalposts to account for this. It has tacit approval throughout boardrooms and executive offices, the world over. But on the other hand, think about how many times you’ve seen a CEO or Board adjust the targets to make them more difficult to achieve when an unexpected piece of good fortune that wasn’t anticipated in the plans actually comes through. It is rare if ever that this happens. As I always like to say, there’s a lot of luck and timing in this CEO caper, so you just need to take the good with the bad.

A recap of some of the leadership failings of Theranos

I just want to give you a quick update on a very old episode of the podcast, the relevance of which will soon become obvious. Way back in Episode 31: Don’t Shoot the Messenger, and we’re talking April, 2019 here, I examined some of the leadership failings of Theranos, the Silicon Valley darling that fell from grace when the Wall Street Journal uncovered a massive fraud relating to its supposedly revolutionary blood testing equipment.

The CEO, Elizabeth Holmes, and the COO, Sunny Balwani, were indicted and are said to face 10 charges of wire fraud and 2 charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, carrying a maximum prison sentence of 20 years.

Back in Episode 31, I highlighted the internal culture that had developed inside Theranos of bullying and intimidation, which is one reason that the fraud was able to be perpetuated for so long. In that episode, I called Holmes “a pathological liar with a compelling vision”. Nothing I’ve seen, heard, or read since then has given me cause to reassess that rather harsh judgement.

The leaders of Theranos created a culture of secrecy and bullying. If anyone inside the firm spoke out, even internally, about the problems that were inherent in the technology, they were silenced. They were labelled as being disloyal. But truth and loyalty are not antonyms. Challenging the things that you know aren’t right, isn’t disloyal and shouldn’t be punished. If it is, that’s the sign of a really sick culture. But this is what Theranos managed to create.

The reason I bring this up now, and in the context of this episode, is that the blame game is alive and well in the Theranos proceedings that we’re seeing now in court. Even back then, when I recorded the episode, the excuses were flowing thick and fast. In early indictment proceedings, the COO Sunny Balwani, when grilled about the abject failure of the testing equipment, offered the defence that he was not a technical specialist.

How could he have possibly known? According to his defence team, he was simply failed by his technical experts. It was their fault. Now, remember these are the same technical specialists who, when they raise the problems with the technology, Balwani silenced either through bullying or removing them from the organisation altogether.

Last week, the trial of Elizabeth Holmes finally got underway. Balwani’s trial will be deferred until next year, which is normally a sign that the defendants have parted ways, in terms of their defence strategy. Low and behold, early discovery of the case for the defence has outlined a novel strategy, put forward by Elizabeth Holmes, who by the way, has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Her excuse? Holmes claims that she was in a controlling and abusive relationship with Balwani. She states that she’s not responsible for the decisions she made as head of the company, because her mind was impaired by manipulation, by Balwani. The pattern of abuse and coercive control allegedly continued over the approximately decade long duration of Holmes and Balwani’s relationship, including, during the period of the charge conspiracies. Citing the syndrome known as ‘intimate partner abuse’, the lawyers claimed that Balwani completely controlled Holmes, erasing her capacity to make decisions.

As a result, Holmes effectively lacked the ability to deceive her victims. This is known as the Svengali Defence, taken from the classic 1930s film of the same name. This is a blinder. This has got to be the granddaddy of all blame strategies. It’s not me, it’s you.

why weak leaders and low accountability cultures open the door for the blame game

Let’s consider the dynamics that occur when as a leader, you allow a culture of blame to thrive. The longer I went through my career, the more I came to believe that excuses are irrelevant. Every single excuse just started to sound to me like the dog ate my homework.

But I want to make a very important distinction here. Things inevitably go wrong, regardless of how well you’re managing your portfolio. We can’t anticipate every possible eventuality. Sometimes, the risks we’ve identified actually materialise, and we have to work out how to deal with them. Or maybe an unforeseen resignation by key person leaves us with a capability gap. Or maybe a supply chain issue creates delays that are beyond our control. It happens to the best, it happens to the rest.

But the distinction between good management and excuses is down to one thing and one thing only. Timing.

When these things do occur, if you take accountability for the problem and proactively look for ways to resolve it with your team, that’s what we call excellent leadership. If you go to your boss when these things happen and explain the situation, what you’re going to do about it and how expectations might have to be shifted, that’s great leadership performance.

But if you cover up, avoid, or hope that things that magically improve, then when they don’t, and you fail to deliver, guess what? The dog just ate your homework.

Now knowing this, why wouldn’t every leader behave the right way, all the time? Instead of hoping that something will change and leave it until the last minute to address.

Well, I guess a lot of the time, you know from experience that your boss doesn’t want to hear bad news. And all of a sudden here we are back at Episode 31. Culturally, you have to be really strong as a leader, to proactively manage a boss above you, who you know is going to shoot the messenger, and blow up, when you have to tell them something they don’t want to hear.

Weak leaders will avoid and just hope that they can delay the explosion for as long as possible, relying on the, ‘not my fault, boss’ defence.

As you can see, there are two sides to this. If you’re the one who has to deliver the bad news, when things go wrong, you have to do so irrespective of your own boss’ mood swings, and lack of composure. And you have to do so in a way that says, “I’m not making excuses. I’m taking accountability for stepping into the breach and fixing this. I own it. And my job is to navigate the organisation through to the other side of this problem”.

Equally for your people, you have to encourage and reward those who choose to take the path of strength and proactiveness. And to make it clear that post-fact excuses carry no currency. This absolutely rubs off on your team.

THE IMPACT OF BLAME CULTURE
& TIPS ON HOW TO CREATE A CULTURE OF NO BLAME AND NO EXCUSES

Let’s just have a think about what it does to people when you let a culture of blame prevail. Blaming events beyond your control is one thing, but blaming others for your failings, is a particularly insidious version of the blame game. This draws a few very unhealthy symptoms through a team.

#1 Distrust

If you’re the type of leader who blames others for failings, that you should own, your people are going to see that immediately. They’ll also instinctively know, that if you ever need to spare yourself any consequences, you’ll be prepared to throw them under the bus at a minute’s notice. All of a sudden, trust is decimated, and the team dynamic changes markedly. People start positioning themselves to shore up their own job security, and they’ll be prepared to blame others, just as you would blame them.

The only advice I have for you on this point, is this, don’t do it.

Even when there are valid reasons for something, or you have a reasonable excuse, resist that temptation. Deal with every individual you work with openly and honestly.

There’s one subtle exception here. If someone who isn’t in your direct team, isn’t playing ball, with a deliverable that you’re relying upon, make it very clear that because of the criticality, you may be forced to escalate that issue to your boss.

But how you do this is all important. You don’t go behind the person’s back and bitch and moan about them. Instead, you tell them in advance that you have to escalate the issue so that your boss can make a decision on the relative priority of your work commitments and give you both guidance on which priorities should prevail. Even better, offer to escalate the issue, together. “Hey, why don’t you come with me so that we can talk to the boss and get some clarity”. That normally shakes things up a bit and moves people to action.

#2 Unhealthy competitiveness in the team

Healthy competitiveness is awesome, and probably one of the defining characteristics of a high-performing team. This is about challenging each other. Wrestling with ideas to seek the best outcomes and solutions and having a drive to be first amongst equals.

Unhealthy competitiveness involves backbiting, undermining others, and playing a political game of impression management with your boss. I believe that any boss who falls for this is doing their people a major disservice, but even the best of us can get sucked in by this occasionally.

My advice here is pretty straightforward; don’t entertain excuses when a leader blames other people for their own failings. If they blame someone in their own team, at any level, it’s pretty simple. Your answer is this. “You are accountable for everything that happens on your watch, so you need to own it”.

That’s it. “Isn’t this a little harsh, Marty?” I hear you ask. Well, no, I don’t think so, actually.

Accountability comes with leadership territory. If there are failings below you, it’s usually because you haven’t done the work to develop the right leadership, or maybe you haven’t set stringent enough standards. Perhaps you haven’t weeded out your under-performers. You may not have set expectations and objectives correctly. Or maybe, you simply took your eye off the ball.

Whatever the case you own it. And when people come to you to blame others, shut them down immediately. If someone tries to blame Pete for something, your immediate response should be “Well, have you spoken to Pete? And if so, what did he say? I’d be interested to hear what Pete has to say. Why don’t we reconvene this meeting when Pete’s available to us?” And that should nip the blame culture in the bud pretty quickly.

#3 Reduced accountability

The third and final repercussion, from allowing a blame culture, is reduced accountability.

I speak about the power of strong, single point accountability all the time. This is the key to execution excellence. Letting people squirm out from under their accountability, by making excuses and blaming others, will weaken your organisation’s ability to perform.

People gain confidence in leaders who take control in difficult times and shoulder their accountability appropriately. If they see their leader trying to avoid accountability and blaming others, they lose confidence in the whole process.

If you want to drive performance from your team, you have to lead from the front, but you’ve got to be a little careful, leading from the front doesn’t mean doing your people’s jobs for them. It means being the ‘poster child’ for the types of behaviours you’d ideally like everyone around you to demonstrate.

When all is said and done, leaders have to eat their own dog food. If you want your team to deliver, you’d better be showing them how.