FINDING FAULT TAKES A HARD LOOK OUTWARD

Finding fault is one of the first things to do when things go wrong, as long as you don’t find yourself.

And that takes practice.

If you’re to blame and you know it, the job just got easier.

Ask, “Why would I do that,” after a spectacular screw-up and you won’t get many answers.

Why?

Because who else would commit such a spectacular mistake? It has to be someone else.

I’ve been watching ‘Engineering Disasters’ or something like it. Bridges fall down, buildings fall down, and afterwards the investigators discover why.

But there’ never a name or finger pointed at a company or contractor. Just the evidence.

“The connecting bolts were to small to carry the load.”

“They skimped on cross-bracing.

“They didn’t let the cement set up long enough.”

Somebody did something wrong, but who?

A Small Disaster

A crew was once loading up a carriage full of building material from an overhead loft.

Small loads until the last one.

It was late, they needed to get the job finished and move on, so the last load was overloaded.

One man ran the overhead boom, the block and tackle rig that lifted the load and moved it out over the bottom floor where the rest of the crew waited to unload.

Another man steadied the load.

Once it cleared the loft the balance man yelled down to clear the floor.

As the last worker cleared, the load tipped and dropped everything where the crew had been.

The two men at the top looked at each other with matching expressions of “What did you do?”

They had trouble finding fault with each other, but it was no problem for the ground crew.

They knew it was one of them.

Finding Fault Is A Hard Job

People who find fault right away usually have lots of experience on one end or the other.

The chronic scre- up has it figured out ahead of time.

It’s never them.

This is where accepting responsibility happens.

It’s an even harder job than finding fault.

When the boss pushes for fast results and things go wrong, do they step up?

When someone backs their car into your car, do they acknowledge their role?

Here’s a big gray skid mark:

If you get a new router and part of the set-up is downloading an app, but you can’t download an app because you don’t have the same internet once you started the set-up, who do you blame?

Say you got started and nothing worked because you mixed the power sources. Or you bought an adapter to change coax to ethernet because you live in a coax house, not one wired for ethernet.

And the first adapter doesn’t work. The second adapter doesn’t work. And you start getting fried because everything you read talks about a simple three step install for a 600% power boost that you were skeptical about, but sounded perfect.

Once you saw the numbers you dreamed of a fast internet, the fastest. But you’re still in the slow lane, first with no internet, then a worse connection than you had before.

Who can you blame? If you followed the advice of a Facebook software engineer the way some people follow the advice of Facebook doctors, it’s you.

Could someone please call Joe Rogan, or John Stockton, or Arron Rodgers for help?

Last bit: Do you know why people have so many kids around the world? Because adults need someone they control to blame.

Prove me wrong.