The anatomy of blame

Why do the signals keep failing between London and Reading?  

As we sit in the Dead Zone (somewhere around Slough), for the fourth or fifth time in so many months, I wonder: Why? 

Why? 

It’s can’t be a simple technical problem; if it were, they would solve it.  (‘They?’) Perhaps it’s a complex technical problem. 

Of course, I have no idea of the answer.  But somewhere in my head, as helplessness turns to rage, I can’t help feeling that the real problem is that someone, somewhere, is to blame.   

When we feel powerless to solve a problem, we tend to respond in one of two ways.  We can resist, or we can blame. 

It’s all to do with ownership.  If we feel powerless, we tend to place the problem in what Stephen Covey calls our Circle of Concern.  That’s where we put all the problems over which we feel we have no control.

One way of dealing with powerlessness is to resist.  Resistance arises when we want to take ownership of the problem, and something’s stopping us.  Resistance includes the desire to do something; to take control.  Without the desire, what are we resisting?  It’s the friction between that desire and some other internal force that causes the resistance. 

But in the Dead Zone, it’s hard to feel any sense of ownership at all.  And so, instead of resistance, powerlessness turns to blame.

Blame is very interesting.  We usually solve problems by intuitively matching external information to mental models.  If we can’t pattern-match – because the problem is novel or complex – then we look around for any mental model that convinces.  And our minds default to an old, old pattern, in which the problem has been deliberately created by some mysterious conscious entity.  That pattern-match then offers a very clear solution: punish the perpetrator.

Blame is magical thinking.  Stressed by uncertainty, we ascribe malign intentions to our partners or co-workers.  We hatch conspiracy theories.  We blame the government, the gods, or Fate. 

Blame overrides any rational perception that there cannot be a conspirator at work.  We shout at the dog when it ‘refuses’ to obey.  We kick the computer when it crashes. Blame sees no difference between people, animals and objects.

The principle seems to be:

When no cause is discernable, assume personal intent.

Blame is the dark side of ownership.  We wish to allocate responsibility for a problem, but we may well not want to take responsibility for it.  It's so powerful a response to powerlessness that it can be manipulated by those in power.  The usual tactic is to create a scapegoat: Jews, gays, Romanians...  There’s never any shortage of candidates. 

Blame is the great monster lurking at the heart of problem-solving.  It arises from a deep part of our humanity: the need to invoke some agent or agency that has caused the inexplicable to occur.  If we can name someone or something as responsible for our suffering, we feel better. 

The phrase ‘blame culture’ often refers to our sense that, in some organizations, allocating blame becomes institutionalized as a problem-solving method.  In a blame culture, problems may remain unsolved, but people feel a primal sense of satisfaction knowing that, when things go wrong, we can point the finger and gain some sense, however transitory or illusory, of justice.

Russell Banks’ novel, The Sweet Hereafter, dramatizes the way a search for retributive justice can feed on a sense of helplessness and become institutionalized in a society that promotes litigation as a way of solving problems. 

In Atom Egoyan’s film of the novel, an isolated Canadian community has been torn apart by a tragic road accident that has killed most of the town's children.  Mitchell Stevens, a lawyer, visits the victims' parents to profit from the tragedy by arousing their anger and launching a class action suit against anyone they can blame.  Stevens sums up his position when trying to convince one of the parents to sue:

 

photo: hart.com

“Mrs Otto, there is no such thing as an accident.  The word doesn't mean anything to me.  As far as I'm concerned, somebody somewhere made a decision to cut a corner.  Some corrupt agency or corporation accounted the cost variance between a ten-cent bolt and a million dollar out-of-court settlement.  They decided to sacrifice a few lives for the difference.  That's what's done, Mrs. Otto.  I've seen it happen so many times before... It's the darkest, most cynical thing to imagine, but it's absolutely true. And now, it's up to me to make them build that bus with an extra bolt, or add an extra yard of guard rail.  It's the only way we can ensure moral responsibility in this society.  By what I do.”

Especially in Ian Holm’s wonderfully understated performance, Stevens becomes a case study in how the manipulator becomes manipulated: a study in how blame corrodes, not only the blamed, but also the blamer. 

How, then, do we escape the blame cycle?  First: acknowledge that blaming is a natural, intuitive response.  Second: challenge the response. 

If you are blaming someone for a problem:

• Stop generalizing: what makes this situation different?
• Separate the problem from the person. Tell them that you are doing so.
• Agree a definition of the problem.
• Discuss who should take ownership.
• Offer help.

If you are being blamed for a problem:

• Separate the problem from yourself.
• Lower your emotional arousal before responding.
• Decide coolly whether you are responsible for the problem’s existence.
• Look for help: someone who can see the problem coolly from the outside.
• Decide the appropriate response: to hand over the problem, to take responsibility for the problem, or to commit to constructing a solution.  

And what if we are working in a blame culture?  Can we avoid being infected?  It may be hard; but we can decide not to contribute to it. We can choose our conversations; we can choose whether to take part in the gossip and the backbiting, or to avoid it.  Above all, we can follow Stephen Covey’s advice and concentrate on the problems where we have some control.  We can seek to increase our Circle of Concern to our Circle of Influence.

 

There’s a very good piece on escaping the blame culture here.  This post is based on my book, How to Solve Almost Any Problem.  I run courses on problem-solving. You’ll find an outline here.