Tag: Blame

Blame, Accountability, and Leadership in Lean

Blame is often mistaken for accountability—but in practice, it creates fear, silence, and surface-level compliance. These posts examine blame through a Lean and systems-thinking lens, showing how punishment-based responses undermine learning, psychological safety, and continuous improvement.

Across healthcare, manufacturing, aviation, and leadership culture, this archive focuses less on who to fault—and more on how leaders design systems that either encourage learning or drive mistakes underground.

Anthropic’s Claude Code Leak: Why the Instinct to Fire Someone Is...

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Last week, Anthropic accidentally leaked nearly 2,000 internal source code files for Claude Code, their AI coding tool. Within hours, the code was copied...

Before “Just Culture,” There Was NUMMI: Learning Instead of Blaming

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TL;DR: NUMMI proved in the 1980s what healthcare is still learning today: you can't punish your way to safety. Real improvement comes from mutual...

You Can’t Punish Your Way to Pride: Deming, Toyota, and Learning...

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Fear Drives Compliance -- Respect Builds Pride, Learning, and Improvement TL;DR: Don Ephlin once wrote, "You can't punish your way to pride." That insight still...

What’s Your Organization’s Real Mistake Policy? [Poll]

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Your organization already has a mistake policy--it just might not be the one you think it is. Most companies say they support learning and continuous...

Why ‘Red Isn’t Bad’ Is the Wrong Mindset for Performance Metrics

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TL;DR: Red metrics aren't "good," but they shouldn't trigger blame or panic either. The real problem isn't red--it's leaders getting mad instead of curious....

Blame vs. Accountability: What Leadership Actually Looks Like

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tl;dr: Blame-based leadership creates fear, silences learning, and erodes trust. Great leaders replace blame with shared accountability, psychological safety, and system-focused improvement. I recently witnessed...

Reflections on Meeting Isao Yoshino in Japan: My First Trip in...

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Twelve years later, I realized I had already met the legendary Toyota leader on my very first Lean trip to Japan. Here's what I...

Why Labeling Mistakes as ‘Stupid’ Is the Real Mistake: Turning Errors...

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When discussing mistakes, it's common to hear terms like "stupid mistake" or "dumb mistake" thrown around, especially when reflecting on our own errors. However,...

We’ve Stopped Punishing People for Mistakes. Now What?

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In many organizations, moving away from a culture of punishment when mistakes are made is a significant leap forward. It signals a shift toward...

Transforming Leadership: How to Shift from Blame to Systemic Improvement

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How often do you hear executives blaming employees, including frontline workers, for different problems or poor performance? I don't think that's a good look when...

Ryan McCormack’s Operational Excellence Mixtape: April 19, 2024

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Thanks, as always, to Ryan McCormack for this. He always shares so much good reading, listening, and viewing here! Subscribe to get these directly...

GE Aerospace CEO Larry Culp on Problem-Solving vs. Finger-Pointing Culture

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tl;dr: GE Aerospace CEO Larry Culp argues that problem-solving cultures outperform finger-pointing and blame, leading to better learning, performance, and accountability. Problem-Solving vs. Finger-Pointing at...
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