The Blame That Doesn’t Point a Finger

You can walk a unit, a shop, or a control room and hear it in one sentence.

“This place is messed up, but they won’t listen.”

Nobody named a name. Nobody raised a voice. Nobody wrote a person up. It can sound like honesty. Sometimes it is half honest. The place may well be messed up. People may well have stopped listening.

It is still blame.

At Failsafe we define blame plainly: to find fault with, to hold responsible, to place responsibility on someone. You do not need a pointed finger to do all three. “They” will do it. “Leadership.” “Night shift.” “Corporate.” “The ones who won’t change.”

The sentence does three pieces of work at once. It finds fault with the place. It holds other people responsible for the listening. And it places responsibility for change on anyone but the speaker. That is blame's hidden attribute. The speaker has already excused himself from the scene he is describing.

“This place is messed up, but they won’t listen.”

Blame that looks like insight

Most of us know the loud version. Someone gets named. A crew gets labeled. A report ends with a person. We ban that, and we should.

The quieter version is harder to catch because it often arrives dressed as experience.

• “I’ve told them.”

• “They won’t change.”

• “That’s just the way it is around here.”

• “I don’t have a part in this. I already see it.”

Seeing a problem isn't the same as being outside it. In a lot of places, the people who can describe the mess most clearly are also helping keep it alive. Not by sabotage. But by a habit. A conclusion. A decision to stop putting evidence on paper because “nothing ever happens.”

That habit has a name in our work. Latency. It is a small part of the culture that contributes to things that go wrong. It is concealed, but it is not weak. It is active. It is “the way I am,” “the way we are,” and “the way things have always been.”

“The way it is around here” can be a complaint. It can also be an unfinished confession. The hidden sign is which way the speaker turns after he says it. Toward his own part, or toward the people who will not change.

Three Examples

Stop reporting. A reliability lead walks a processing unit and sees the same PMs have been deferred for two years. Leadership isn't ignoring it. The work loses the argument. Outage window. Crew size. The items land on next year’s list, and next year’s list becomes the year after that. He wrote the deviations. He wrote them again. Asked what he does with it now, he says he stops reporting it. “They never do anything with them.” He is right about the deferrals. He is also describing how latency has gotten into his own practice, which he now shares in. Evidence dies in his notebook. The hidden part is not a refusal to listen. It is “I did what I could, that's their decision.” He has placed the responsibility for the hard choice on them, and removed himself from the record.

The lineup everybody knows. An operator has a near miss on a valve lineup. First sentence: night shift will not follow the procedure. He has told them. He used the lineup the crew invented three years ago, because the written steps do not match the valves in the field. He taught it to the last two new people. He is holding the night shift responsible for a practice he and others maintain. A procedure not followed is the end of a good catch, but it also hides his role in how things are around here and ignores the need for the procedure to be updated.

The procedure that lives in two forms. Engineering says operations will not follow the procedure. Operations says engineering will not come to the floor. Both can point to a real frustration. Both are finding fault and holding the other side responsible. Neither has sat with the evidence of the last three times the job was done. “The way it is around here” is doing the work of a cause statement, and nobody owns it. Each side is sure the mess belongs those on the other side of the plant.

None of these people sound like they are blaming. That is the attribute. Hidden blame does not need a target you can put in a chair. It needs an audience that is absent, a future that has already been decided, and a speaker who is only a witness.

What the sentence protects

“This place is messed up, but they won’t listen” protects three things.

It protects innocence. If I can diagnose it, I must not be part of it.

It protects effort. I already told them. Telling counts as finished work.

It protects the story. Once the others are the ones who will not change, I do not have to look at what I have normalized, stopped writing, stopped attending, or taught the new person on day one.

Latency loves a good narrator. A narrator can describe the merry-go-round with real accuracy and still refuse to admit he is on it. The spinning is “the way it is around here.” His feet are somehow on the ground.

The turn

Latent Cause Analysis does not ask you to pretend the place is fine. The deferrals may be real. The procedure may not match the valves. Leadership may have stopped reading the deviations. Those are evidence questions, and they deserve evidence.

What it will not allow is the exemption.

After the evidence is on the table, the people who contributed answer two questions in the present tense:

What is it about the way we are that contributed to this?

What is it about the way I am that contributed to this?

Present tense, because it is still causing problems. Generic, because it is a pattern, not a one-time excuse. Spoken by the person, not assigned to him by someone else.

That is the difference between a complaint and a latent cause. A complaint says they will not change. A latent cause says something like: I stop raising issues once I decide no one will act. I teach the workaround and call the written step the standard. I describe the culture as if I watch it from the parking lot.

None of those sentences punish anyone. They make the hidden part visible, which is the only way it can be dealt with. We ban blame so people can tell the truth. We require introspection so the truth includes the speaker.

A test you can use this week

The next time you hear it, including from yourself, do not argue with the first half. The place may be messed up. Ask about the second half.

Who is “they”? What did I stop doing once I decided they would not listen? What have I taught, tolerated, or quit writing that now counts as the way it is around here?

If you can describe the mess and exempt yourself from it, you have not left blame. You have only hidden it.