The Blame Game

“You did not receive your order? Well, I did all I could. But they aren’t doing their job properly.”

“They still haven’t paid your invoice? Strange. They told me last time it would be done.”

“The feature is still not working? I don’t understand. I did submit the service request for you.”

If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s when people don’t take responsibility for delegating badly. They hand over some work to a colleague who does a bad job (or no job at all); they don’t keep an eye on things to see if the work actually gets done; and then they claim total innocence because they weren’t the ones who screwed up. No, it was them! The blame game allows people simply point fingers at their colleagues and do nothing.

It happened again recently. I let my contacts at a customer know about my displeasure at not having received payment seven months after sending my invoice. My contacts then pointed at the financial department, saying things such as, “They told me your invoice would be paid” and “Apparently, they aren’t doing what they promised.” It basically translates to, “They screwed up, not me!”

Well, I don’t accept that.

When you delegate work to someone else, that doesn’t relieve you of the responsibility to check whether they do their job. When you say, “We will do this” then you are responsible for taking action. Even when you delegate everything to someone else, I will look at you when nothing happens.

I don’t look in the direction of pointed fingers. There’s no need to play the blame game when I already know who made me a promise.

Do you want to learn more about delegating properly? Read about Delegation Boards!

Photo credit: (c) 2007 IMGP1683, Creative Commons 2.0