
A Carrick Mat, a fine example of a decorative mat made from a single cord. The ends are tucked neatly out of sight. The mat can be pulled apart by the ends of the cord, but when they are joined, pulling any part of the mat might distort it somewhat, but the mat will maintain its integrity.
So it is with blame when blame is part of the fabric of organizational culture. Suppressing blame-based behavior is not an effective means of driving it from the culture. Instead, we must find ways to motivate all members of the culture to alter their own behavior. Compelling abstinence from blame-based behavior patterns does not work.
Photo (cc) Brian Ronald, courtesy Wikipedia.
When organizations undertake to change their cultures, the cultures sometimes behave as if they were unwilling to change. They can behave almost as if they had minds and wills of their own. Because this phenomenon is especially noticeable when we're transforming a blaming culture, it's useful to understand how blaming cultures "fight back."
An organizational culture is a blaming culture if blame plays a significant role in regulating behavior to ensure compliance with organizational expectations. Blaming cultures have difficulty reaching high levels of performance, in part because their people generally fear taking even reasonable risks. For example, a fear of being blamed for insubordination can cause an employee to refrain from questioning a superior's decision, even when that decision ought to be questioned. For more examples of the traits of blaming cultures, see "Top Ten Signs of a Blaming Culture," Point Lookout for February 16, 2005.
When we try to reduce the incidence of blaming in a culture, we encounter special challenges. Here are three examples of what makes changing a blaming culture so difficult.
- Blaming becomes covert
- Those advocating for removing blame as a management tool are likely to encounter supervisors who are accustomed to "killing the messenger." Change agents might sense progress when people deliver bad news without being subject to retribution, but the reality can be rather different.
- Supervisors might not immediately "kill the messenger," but they might eventually get around to it. For example, they can delay the execution for months or years to make it seem unrelated to the message delivery incident. The actual execution can take on any form, such as termination during a layoff or reorganization. In some cases, retribution can be delivered not by the offending supervisor, but by a proxy.
- Discussions of blaming are taboo
- In a blaming When blaming is a cultural
trait, changing the culture
is especially challengingculture that's attempting a transition, questioning incidents, procedures, or policies that are illustrative of the former blaming approach to behavior management can be interpreted as blaming and criticism. People who raise these issues are sometimes criticized for manifesting the old behaviors. The old ways remain in place because we regard questioning them as examples of the old ways. - It's axiomatic that we cannot change what we cannot talk about. Unless we can openly discuss the costs and constraints of the status quo, coming to consensus as a group about ways to transform the status quo can remain out of reach.
- Change is blamed for hiccups
- All change entails loss. All culture change degrades organizational performance temporarily, as people try new ways of working together. But in blaming cultures, the habit of blaming leads to blaming the change itself for the temporary productivity loss.
- Instead of accepting the loss as a cost of change, the change is criticized for the loss. That can lead to rejection of the change on the basis of degraded performance.
Once blame settles into an organizational culture, it provides the culture and its people with all the tools they need to defend the status quo. Top
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Related articles
More articles on Organizational Change:
Now We're in Chaos
- Among models of Change, the Satir Change Model has been especially useful for me. It describes how people
and systems respond to change, and handles well situations like the one that affected us all on September
Eleventh.
Outsourcing Each Other's Kids
- Outsourcing is now so widespread that it has achieved status as a full-fledged management fad. But many
outsourcing decisions lack the justification that a full financial model provides. Here are some of
the factors that such a model should include.
The True Costs of Cost-Cutting
- The metaphor "trimming the fat" rests on the belief that some parts of the organization are
expendable, and we can remove them with little impact on the remainder. Ah, if only things actually
worked that way...
Organizational Roots of Toxic Conflict
- When toxic conflict erupts in a team, cooperation ends and person-to-person attacks begin. Usually we
hold responsible the people involved. But in some cases, the organization is the root cause, and then
replacing or disciplining the people might not help.
What Keeps Things the Way They Are
- Changing processes can be challenging. Sometimes the difficulty arises from our tendency to overlook
other processes that work to keep things the way they are. If we begin by changing those "regulator
processes" the difficulty can sometimes vanish.
See also Organizational Change and Emotions at Work for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
Coming March 29: Time Slot Recycling: The Risks
- When we can't begin a meeting because some people haven't arrived, we sometimes cancel the meeting and hold a different one, with the people who are in attendance. It might seem like a good way to avoid wasting time, but there are risks. Available here and by RSS on March 29.
And on April 5: The Fallacy of Division
- Errors of reasoning are pervasive in everyday thought in most organizations. One of the more common errors is called the Fallacy of Division, in which we assume that attributes of a class apply to all members of that class. It leads to ridiculous results. Available here and by RSS on April 5.
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