Accountability Archives - Page 5 of 8

The Vocabulary of Blame

Scapegoat. This is a person who is blamed for the failures of others.

Fall guy. This is the person who is set up to take the blame.

Take the fall. A person who takes the fall accepts the blame, often for something others did.

Pass the buck. To pass the buck is to push responsibility on to someone else.

Point fingers. People who point fingers blame others.

The blame game. In the blame game, everyone blames someone else.

Heads will roll. People will lose their jobs because of the failure.

Left holding the bag. This person is blamed after the others got away.

In the 1980s Jack Welch introduced a ranking system at General Electric. The top 20 percent of employees were the most productive, and the middle 70 percent did adequate work. The bottom 10 percent were to be fired. The practice became known as “rank and yank.” Welch called it “differentiation” and defended it. “If you want teamwork, you identify it as a value.”

Microsoft used a version called stack ranking. Each employee received a single rating from 1 to 5. The rating “triggered increases in merit pay, bonuses and the awarding of restricted stock units.” In November 2013 Microsoft’s head of human resources, Lisa Brummel, ended the system in an email to employees. “No more curve,” she wrote.

The Matthew Effect

In January 1968 Robert K. Merton of Columbia University published “The Matthew Effect in Science” in the journal Science. The name comes from the Gospel of Matthew: “For unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance.” Merton described “the accruing of large increments of peer recognition to scientists of great repute.”

A Nobel laureate in physics put it simply: “the man who’s best known gets more credit, an inordinate amount of credit.”

The biologists R. C. Lewontin and J. L. Hubby described what happened to their joint work. Population geneticists, they wrote, “have consistently regarded Lewontin as the senior member of the team and given him undue credit for what was a completely collaborative work.”

The Brag Document

In June 2019 Julia Evans advised the readers of her programming blog to keep a “brag document.” She started from a common belief. “There’s this idea that, if you do great work at your job, people will (or should!) automatically recognize that work and reward you for it with promotions / increased pay.” In practice, she wrote, “it’s often more complicated than that.”

Her advice is to write down your own work before performance reviews. “And if you don’t remember everything important you did, your manager (no matter how great they are!) probably doesn’t either.” Work that is hard to see belongs in the document too, “because it’s the most likely to fall under the radar!”

Screenplay By

A Hollywood screenplay often passes through many writers. The screen credit names only a few. Under the rules of the Writers Guild of America, a screenplay credit “is normally shared by no more than two writers.” On an original screenplay, the first writer receives credit if his or her contribution is more than 33 percent of the final shooting script. A later writer who is not a production executive must contribute 50 percent.

When writers dispute a credit, three Guild members with no interest in the outcome decide. Credit affects a writer’s reputation, pay, residuals and future work.

For The Flintstones (1994), thirty-two writers took part in round-table sessions. The final writing credit named three people.

The Winning Pitcher

In Major League Baseball, the official scorer credits one pitcher with the win and one with the loss. Rule 9.17 gives the win to “that pitcher whose team assumes a lead” while he is pitching, with some exceptions. A starting pitcher usually has to complete five innings to get it. The loss goes to the pitcher who is “responsible for the run that gives the winning team a lead.”

Rule 9.12 does the same for mistakes in the field. An error is “a statistic charged against a fielder” whose misplay helped the other team.

The win is a famous number and a disputed one. In 2020 Matt Snyder of CBS Sports called it the “dumbest stat in all of sports.” In one game he described, a relief pitcher who recorded one out got the win. The starter threw four scoreless innings and did not get it.

Whose Is It?

Who owns this? This is the first question about any task. The answer is a name.

Point person. This is the one named person who handles an issue.

Go-to person. This is the person everyone turns to for a certain kind of problem.

On the hook. A person on the hook is personally responsible for a result. If it fails, the blame is theirs.

The ball is in your court. The next move is yours, and nobody else can make it.

That’s on me. The speaker takes personal responsibility for a mistake.

Too many cooks spoil the broth. Work with too many people in charge goes badly.

Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody

“You may have heard the story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody.” An important job had to be done, and Everybody was asked to do it. Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it.

Somebody got angry, because it was Everybody’s job. In the end, Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done. The story is passed around in offices, schools and churches. Its author is unknown.

Do Your Job

“Do Your Job” was the New England Patriots’ slogan in the 2014 season. Coach Bill Belichick shouted it often on the sidelines. He explained it this way: “each of us has a job to do, and the only thing that we can do is do the best that we can.” The receiver Danny Amendola said: “everybody has a role on this team, no matter what it is.”

The Patriots won Super Bowl XLIX against the Seattle Seahawks, 28 to 24, on February 1, 2015. In September 2015 NFL Network scheduled a documentary with the title “Do Your Job: Bill Belichick and the 2014 Patriots.”

Grading the Group Project

CATME stands for Comprehensive Assessment of Team Member Effectiveness. Purdue University developed it with support from the National Science Foundation. Students use it to rate themselves and each teammate in five areas. One area is contributing to the team’s work. The ratings look anonymous to the students, but the instructor sees who rated whom.

In 2015 its developers reported that more than 6,500 faculty at more than 1,200 institutions used it. One course syllabus on Bucknell University’s website multiplies each project grade by a personal grading factor. The factor typically ranges from 0.6 to 1.1, depending on the self and peer evaluations.