You Can Put the Blame on Me

I hope I don’t get into trouble one of these days picking lines from lyrics of popular songs for a title for some of my blog posts. Again, as old school with respect to music, I am not a fan of Akon although I admire his following his dream and making a spectacular success of his musical career.

It is not common to see someone accept responsibility for negative outcomes. According to an African proverb – Success has many fathers, failure is an orphan. Anytime something goes wrong, especially in a team, a blame season kicks in and the hunt for the guilty commences. Rather than fix the problem, energy is expended fixing the blame. Everyone ducks under the table, passing off blame from one to the other like a tennis ball. In the corporate world, it is known as “cover your ass”, pardon my use of language. The issue is not achieving the goal and target as planned, the issue becomes fishing out the guilty. Success here is measured in whether you come out blameless or you took the rap.

In this atmosphere, people are afraid to take responsibility. Things drag on endlessly due to lack of who to bell the cat. If you take a risk and succeed, you are a hero. If you take that same risk and fail, you are a villain. There is no middle ground. President Obama authorized the operation to take out Osama Bin Laden on a 50 – 50 chance. The mission succeeded and he became a hero. His handling of foreign affairs got a boost and his second term seems like a given.

If that mission had failed, it would have been an entirely a new ball game entirely. He would have been blamed for not getting approval from Congress, not seeking the cooperation of Pakistani Intelligence, not waiting until he had a 90% chance before putting the lives of American forces at risk etc. His ability to occupy the office of commander in chief would have been questioned. His approval rating would have plummeted and his second term ambition may very well have gone in a puff of smoke. It takes guts to take responsibility for something that can go wrong, or take responsibility when it does.

When we avoid taking responsibility in public, we also carry it over carried over into our personal lives. It is never our fault. Everyone else is to blame except us. If I ask anyone who lost money in the last Nigerian stock market crash, you will get a catalog of blames – my stock broker gave me wrong advice, my colleagues misled me, everyone was doing it, so I joined etc. I know of a guy who took some margin loans to invest in the stock market and when the market went bust, the bank called in their loan. He blamed the bank for loaning him the money! The bank was at fault! If they had not loaned him the money, he would not have lost so much, therefore the bank should sell the shares and take their share of the loss. Very few would admit that their lack of financial education was the reason they took bad advice. In marriage, the other spouse is usually at fault. We have an excuse for every occasion and season.

I am amused whenever I see a blame game in progress around me. If it is in my team, I just tell everyone you can put the blame on me. If people do not do the jobs they are supposed to do, I take responsibility for ensuring they do. I become the driver. That usually brings the blame game to an end and returns focus to the task at hand. I take responsibility for the outcome, and because I do, things start happening. I change my behavior so that the incident does not recur.

If you do not take responsibility for the present, you cannot take responsibility for the future. If you do not take responsibility for the future, that means you will not see the need to commit to making the change that will bring about the outcome you desire tomorrow. If you don’t take responsibility for the future, then all that is left for you to do is to hope and pray. If you have lived long enough, you will know by experience that hoping and praying without action is a waste of time and energy. There are things God will not do for you no matter how hard you pray. If you doubt me, acquire acres of land and pray for God to cultivate it for you, or build a ranch for you.

The best way to predict the future is to make it happen. When you avoid blame, you avoid responsibility and learn nothing from the episode. You miss an opportunity to grow. You effectively shoot yourself on the foot. If you are still dishing out blames, get a mirror to go with it. Take a good look in the mirror. If that does not work, then you can put the blame on me.