Blame games vs. solving problems
Thinking about lessons from root cause analysis processes
It recently occurred to me that many people handle their personal or political disagreements in exactly the wrong way. My perspective here comes from extensive involvement in root cause analysis (RCA) of complex failures in large engineered systems. (I’ve previously written about the related issue of distinguishing fixes from mitigation).
Two principles that are crucial for doing root cause analysis well are: (1) that it’s a blameless process rather than a search for scapegoats, and (2) that all perspectives and opinions should be examined for how they may contribute to the overall analysis.
At work
At my job, we mostly get this right. After years of practice, there is a sensibly positive culture around our root cause analysis meetings. We usually get a pretty good discussion, after which people wind up agreeing on the cause and the action items. On occasion, we have some minor issues with people focusing on “cool but ultimately unimportant” stuff like some obscure technical detail of what went wrong. Someone needs to nudge the discussion back to the “uncool but important” stuff, like some dull process having some dull glitch that meant we didn’t catch the problem.
Calling it “blameless” doesn’t mean that there is no responsibility assigned, or that there is no accountability. Frequently, it’s possible to identify that some person either did something they shouldn’t have, or failed to do something they should have. If that person had behaved differently, the problem would either not have arisen or would have been much less severe. A good RCA makes clear both what the consequences were and exactly what went wrong. However, the primary focus is on understanding and improving. In that context, the reason that it matters who made a mistake or what mistake was made is that we want to find a way to avoid similar mistakes in the future.
An implicit understanding is that in most of these cases, the problem is not specific to the person who made the mistake. That means that it wouldn’t make any difference if you removed that person, because some other person could make the same mistake. Errors and misjudgments are treated as system issues, not personal flaws. We want to find ways to adjust our systems and processes so that typical (flawed) humans don’t cause failures.
Similarly, it wouldn’t make any difference to harangue, harass, or shame the responsible parties. Those kinds of action are unlikely to yield a meaningful improvement, and may in fact be counterproductive: for example, a blamed person may leave or become ineffective. Other people, who could have been in the same situation, may become either inappropriately fearful or inappropriately smug. Whenever there’s a focus on blaming a person, there’s a failure to genuinely consider how to avoid having a similar problem recur.
The effectiveness of our usual practice became clear to me in one recent meeting that was a rare exception. Everyone seemed to be on one “side” or the other, and there was a noticeable dynamic of “don’t blame me, blame them.” It was a challenge to convey to the assembled group that I didn’t really care about their squabble. Instead, I cared about the breakdown in our systems and how to avoid a repetition. It was fine with me if both sides continued to privately blame each other, but they had to reach some kind of agreement about what went wrong and what to change, and they couldn’t have two different versions of that.
Personal or political conflicts
In contrast, a personal or political argument often seems to be focused exactly on blaming the other party, presenting only one point of view, and dismissing the other party’s point of view. When we contrast that behavior to what happens in a “good” RCA discussion, it’s probably not surprising that such an approach to a conflict fails to avert future similar conflicts. Sometimes, that’s okay: maybe the participants just want to vent at each other, or reinforce their existing biases. Or maybe some third party has organized the argument for their entertainment. But it’s sad when there’s a situation where one side is genuinely trying to understand and improve, while the other is scoring points or pointing fingers.
In contrast to the positive blameless culture around my company’s RCA meetings, a generic personal disagreement or political argument typically has no shared goal to override the default blame game. Indeed, it may well be that for one or both parties, placing blame on the other party is a goal, and understanding or acknowledging their different perspective might well interfere with that goal. (There is some overlap here with my previous writing on “my way or the highway” ultimatums.)
Can we do better? We can identify some useful questions:
Is there something (a problem, a conflict) that we are trying to understand together?
Is each of us genuinely interested in understanding and fixing it, or are we primarily seeking to be heard and/or to blame the other?
Is each of us willing to accept the possibility that we are wrong and/or at fault for at least some part of what has gone wrong (or is still going wrong)?
Unfortunately, these questions are not a reliable fix for the problem. First, a lot of arguments start in ways that don’t really allow for a careful consideration of prerequisites like these. Second, there will likely be situations where people give insincere answers to these questions, either as a conscious tactic or because they lack sufficient self-awareness.
Nevertheless, these questions seem like they could help set a tone, and help the parties distinguish blaming or venting from genuine cooperative work to understand and improve.