Why pointing fingers is unhelpful

is natural: it is tempting to fault someone else for a snafu rather than taking responsibility yourself. But blame is also corrosive. Pointing fingers saps . It makes it less likely that people will own up to mistakes, and thus less likely that organisations can learn from them. Research published in 2015 suggests that a Shaggy culture (“It wasn’t me”) shows up in share prices. Firms whose managers pointed to external factors to explain their failings underperformed companies that blamed themselves. Some industries have long recognised the drawbacks of fault-finding. The proud record of in reducing accidents partly reflects no-blame processes for investigating crashes and close calls. The National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates accidents in America, is explicit that its role is not to assign blame or liability but to find out what went wrong and to issue recommendations to avoid a repeat.