To Err is Human

Office dynamics fascinate me. I feel like Jane Goodall living amongst the chimps. I'm one of them, but at the same time, sometimes I feel like I'm not quite assimilated yet - still watching from the sidelines.

Today's topic is accountability. It seems like a lot of actions are motivated by people pushing responsibility out of their hands. In fact, I recently learned a new acronym for this: CYA (Cover Your Ass). That way, if there is a mistake, hopefully you'll be able to dig through old email chains or other forms of communication and push that mistake onto someone else. And when a mistake does get called out, replies are often littered with "we felt...", which also diffuses responsibility.

Today I was called out for a mistake. I had no one but myself to blame it on. But I wouldn't blame it on anyone else even if I could. I was always taught to own up to my own errors, so much so that it might even be a fault in the business world. So yes, everybody knew it was my mistake.

However, on the call with the client, my manager took ownership of the error. There was no "we screwed up", no finger pointing, not even an attempt to cover it up. Everyone from my company knew that it was my mistake, but no one on the client side knew the difference. Perhaps it is a common business practice that accountability eventually travels up the hierarchy, but I'm certainly not used to having other people take the blame for something I did wrong.

Common business procedures aside, I've taken this as a cue that I should be more honest about my own mistakes. This resolution might end up hurting me in the future, but I don't want to be one of those people who make vague statements about errors without attributing responsibility of those errors to anyone. It's not who I am nor is it someone I would want to become. I'd rather take ownership of my own mistakes because I feel better knowing that I deserve whatever consequences might befall me from those mistakes.

Though on the flip-side, my manager's prospective is to celebrate the acknowledgment of errors. Because once a mistake is acknowledged, it's much easier to learn from it. I've never heard that before, but I can certainly get behind that perspective.