They find ways to find others mistakes like a bull in a china shop

Finger pointing

So that they can be released and procrastinate in the mist of chaos and uncertainty every time they find others mistakes so that they can escape from the pain and the acceptance of their own failure. The easier way is to point fingers at others and play the blame game. These people are very much visible with egoistic messages and, communication thinking that whole issue and/or problem is because of all other functions, people, situations and they think that they are smart in the whole world and always harping on past glory, which no one had witnessed. Most of the time they abuse others, unhappy, cynical, egoistic, self praising, and shrinking ownership when it comes to self delivery, and non-value added nature. The important issue is that they procrastinate on their personal growth as well.

During my consulting experience, I have found myself in this scenario at various companies and also I found myself in the scenario of ‘finding mistakes’ with different people at different layers with all type of companies (big, small, national, international) and with many dignitaries. Let me narrate a brief story: An engineering company hired me to improve the situation of order position and to improve customer focus. I started analyzing issues, complaints, responses to complaints, corrections and prevention. At that stage, I must have come across at least fifty top people who are responsible in the ladder of leadership team and I realized that each one playing the blame game, that too very tactfully. Customer service function was saying ‘If engineering function made products with more reliability these issues should have been stopped’. I wanted to draw attention to the issues that directly related to Customer service were about 15%. The engineering function was commenting on customer service function ‘If they could have serviced timely we must have been spared’. The BIG ‘IF’ factor and the dependent factor to blame each one and each team was efficient to dust off the failures on other functions. The story goes on, I met the human resources, accounting, billing, manufacturing and marketing functions. Nothing surprised me. Everyone was pointing out others mistakes so that they could all appear flawless at their end. No one was ready to take the pain; most were not even ready to face the problem and accept responsibility. The matter of fact is that most of the complaints were not attended fully, some were never responded to in time and a candid cover story was maintained which said ‘the customer is just exaggerating, we need to educate them. That is the main root cause’. Eventually after prolonged discussion based on real facts and figures, we could start the process of improvement.

Similarly, in our daily lives, when we face any challenges or failures and we choose to escape from the reality or ignore the reality, it stops our growth in professionally and personally. We stop growing as a human being. One of the least talked about prerequisites for success is strong sense of urgency. Without it, we sabotage ourselves and our dreams. With it, we can handle mistakes with perspective, and have the ability to admit them, benefit from them and correct them with real sense of urgency.

Our past success ‘the eye of a needle’ is stopping our new growth

A machine tools company was facing an issue worth of 5 Crore(INR) and the turnover of the company was about 125 Crore(INR). One of my friends joined this company as a production engineer and later due to his good work; he was promoted to the production head position and eventually he became plant head. The 5 Crores(INR) issue cropped, which was a big challenging and competitive issue. Now he has to resolve the issue. At that time he called me as a consultant to resolve the issue. From a cost point of view, issue was not that big deal; however the issue had a repetitive ripple effect. If not attended to, the company may have to go through a big financial crisis. However, this gentleman still believed that his past performance would help him to resolve the issue. He conveniently stated that ‘When I was a production engineer there were no quality issues, and we were managing all issues single handed. I do not know why people cannot prevent these issues.’ By stating this and believing it, he does not own up to the current burning issue and neither showed any sense of urgency to resolve the issue. He was trying to find a scapegoat and an escape point from the reality and accountability.

Harping on the past your success will only tickle your funny bone; this is like someone is sitting down on a basket of eggs. We always try to be complacent by bringing our yester year’s performance such as ‘we won the village tournament’; ‘we played an important role in municipality politics’ so now I am relaxing. I had worked hard all my life, it is time to sit back and relax. The biggest trap of them all – sense of completeness and achievement. M K Gandhiji brought freedom to India as a country at about 60 years of his age. He worked tirelessly on the vital issues of a nation, which were not directly related to him. In India, Anna Hazare, a social activist was doing the same in the hope of a better future and better nation for the next generation. They have shown a sense of urgency to bring freedom and justice to the future generations not harping on the past success. Past is history, future is tomorrow, but our today determines our tomorrow. 

The reality is in front of you, so do not run away; show a real sense of urgency and work to win today. It is not a Nano technology; they are simple and basic principles. Often, we fail to recognize that our past success is stopping our growth; our complacency leads us to retreat into a safe haven within – where one feels happy and at peace. Learning to accept changes must be constant and thereby taking actions that warrant us to leave our safe heaven far behind and accept challenges, learn, improve and constantly push one’s limits of achievement, success and happiness.