It’s Always Your Fault
I credit this one to David Heinemeier Hansson and Jocko Willink (who refers to it as Extreme Ownership). The premise is simple enough; everything that happens to you is partially your fault. Examples help…
- You fail a math test. This is probably 98% your fault. You had time to study, you knew the material the test was on, and you were able bodied. Maybe you got sick that week which hurt your ability to study but you also procrastinated. All in all, it’s almost entirely your fault.
- Your Employee Steals From You. Many people may blame the employee in this scenario but, as the business owner in this fictitious example, I would hold you accountable. You hired the employee, you trained them, you perhaps pay them less than their fair due, you ignored their unhappiness and there were tell-tale signs that they were about you steal… Sure, the employee betrayed your trust but that is not 100% on them, it also very much on you.
So, what’s the purpose of this? Are you supposed to be a masochist about everything in your life? Not exactly.
The purpose of this philosophy is to create feedback loops. Think of it this way; you’re a part of all the systems that you’re a part of. Bad luck generally means that there’s a small chance of something going wrong and it went wrong. However, when there’s a high degree that something can go wrong and it goes wrong, that’s not bad luck. That’s bad planning, design, etc. If you call it bad luck, you’re not learning anything to prevent similar outcomes in the future. By taking ownership of a certain amount of responsibility for the outcome, you can review/analyze the outcome and avoid a similar fate in the future. Furthermore, you may be able to apply the same line of logic to other tangential circumstances.
In the Employee Stealing example, now you know how to avoid this circumstance in the future. Since it was your fault, you can start uncovering ways to avoid this pain-point in the future. This might be interviewing more candidates, only hiring friends/family, pay your managers more, install cameras, etc. The goal is to learn and improve from a unfortunate scenario.
Making mistakes is okay but not learning from them is not. Don’t make them twice. It’s more actionable to figure out what you could have done differently to prevent it or like things from happening again.
Dave Emerson 