How often in golf when I am putting, do I blame the greens for my missed putt? Too fast, too bumpy, too ….. Each of us has the propensity to blame to someone or something outside ourselves when things go wrong. Marketing blames sales, sales blames engineering, etc.
This disability is a byproduct of the another disability called "I am my position." See a previous blog. When we focus on our position we do not see that our actions extend well beyond the boundary of that position. Often we also blame the competition, the economy and anything else we can think of.
Peter Senge in his book, The Fifth Discipline, identifies this concept as one of the learning disabilities of an organization. How often in your organization do you blame someone or something else for your problem?
The best putters realize that it is their job to look beyond just putting a good stroke on the ball to putting the ball in the hole.
As Pogo says, "We have identified the enemy, he is us."
