doug smith training

What does anyone get out of blaming anyone else? It's easy. It's even reflexive. It just doesn't help. Find the problem, identify the issues, and solve it. There's plenty of responsibility to go around. Work together as a team, and the team will work better together. Team members who give each other the benefit of the doubt do much better when stress intrudes than any team that finds it easy to blame. -- doug smith

When you run into obstacles are you ever tempted to blame someone? The goal is within your site, but something keeps blocking it so it must be someone's fault, right? Maybe not. And even if there is someone to blame, blaming them doesn't get you closer to your goal. Relentless action gets you there. Constant follow-up gets you there. Persistence and patience gets you there. Setbacks are not always rational and there isn't usually one thing to blame. So drop the blame. Move on with the action. Stay curious. Focus on your goal and (most importantly) the people who can and will help you achieve that goal. Because once you've achieved your goal, blame doesn't matter, does it? -- Doug Smith

"It wasn't my fault." "I wasn't even there." "I think it happened on the other shift." "They are always messing things up." Who's to blame? When things go wrong, when a customer gets angry, when a supplier raises prices, when things don't go as you planned. Who's to blame? Will it even help if you could pin that down to one person? Will pouring guilt or punishment on a person solve your problem? Probably not. But people do it all the time. It becomes part of the conversation before we even realize it.  Blaming others is so easy that many people don't even know they are doing it. What if we stopped blaming others? What if instead, we worked together to find solutions, better ways of doing things, and ways to avoid what caused our problem to begin with? It's OK to find constructive suggestions to offer to people who need it. But they need more. And problems need more in order to solve. To arrive at ou