IT'S YOUR FAULT!

I must confess that I’m fond of guilt.

Do you think I’m prey to one of my usual irony attacks?

Well, you’re wrong: give me a few lines and you’ll see.

The word “guilt” is among the most recurrent and permeates all our lives:

it accompanies the healthy and comfortable habit of judging people.

Guilt helps save time in distinguishing between different situations, in understanding people motivation to act in one way rather than another: it also helps to separate good from bad people, talented and incompetent, faithful and traitors, and so on.

In short, guilt gives a tangible contribution to the thinking economy and reassurance about understanding who is on the right side of the fence.

Even when it’s our turn to take it on the shoulders, guilt provides all its benefits and, I dare say, friendliness: acknowledging one’s faults helps to relax and to start again, building better personal relationships on a more solid basis.

That’s why, when it happens to make a mistake, admitting your error can be helpful indeed.

But it is in the organization’s life that guilt shows
its full economic and social value.

When we are faced with a negative event, the search for responsibility and the identification of the culprit allows many people to reassure themselves about their competence, and that “in the absence of that idiot” the problem wouldn’t have happened.

The scapegoat allows the organization to regain faith in its own infallibility: activities and processes resume their smooth flow and the goals, as always ambitious, remain within reach.

I know what you are thinking: the finding of the culprit does not motivate you to analyze the reasons that led to the problem and does not reduce the possibility that the same event will occur again.

I agree with you; however, I think you should understand, once and for all, that we must give something up.

The idea of an organization that systematically analyzes its own functioning cannot be compatible with the one of an agile and responsive one, stretched like the string of a violin to achieve its goals.

Believe me,

guilt and the search for the culprit are essential to the functioning of the organization.

Don’t you think so?