[Closed] Mistakes at work: Which do you do, throw blame or fix it?

Shit happens, none of us are perfect.

Things go wrong and need sorted.

How you react to resolving issues when they invariably arise says more about the individuals involved than the issues themselves.

So yes a polite email explaining the situation and offering a solution is a better choice than trying to throw your colleague under the bus

Hand up apologise and get on with things. I would have a very dim view of someone trying to "throw me under the bus"

Are you working in 1983?

The PM sounds like a complete WGBE.

I would go and have a face to face and avoid an email war.

As RichMTB says. Everybody makes mistakes. We are (or should be) judged by how we put them right.

Way back when at my old place the 'unwritten company policy' was to deny, deny, deny and if pressed, really ****ing deny and if anyone tried to grass you - everyone would back you up because a **** up reflected badly on everyone - of course that was RBS and we all know how well that worked out.

Nowadays in my current place, if we accept our failings, no one judges, but we're expected to either sort it out or work together to fix it and we learn from it.

If I was the OP, I'd accept I was the root cause, make no fuss, fix or mitigate and move on - if new-boy project manager wants to kick up a fuss, let them - it goes against instinct but "fighting your corner" rarely looks good.

there won't be an email war, thankfully my bosses don't go in for that crap and I'd go speak to him anyway

[i]New to post project manager has instead fired off an email to the director trying to throw me under the bus and land me with the blame for all of it.* [/i]

I'd be having a face-to-face chat with the PM...

Say what you need to say, and then move onto the 'fix' plan. But make them absolutely aware that it isn't the way 'to make friends and influence people'.

I had a minor balls up a few weeks ago. Hunted out the biggest fish in the chain who could crack my head open about it had she wanted to, owned up, apologised, moved on. Removed all sorts of inter team email bollocks.

I work by myself, so I generally blame inanimate objects.

I generally blame inanimate objects.

the hoover hose carries a lot of culpability in this household.

well on the plus side, you've all found out a lot about your PM.
Lacking somewhat I'd say, old boy.

I make damn sure I don't get the blame for stuff that's not my fault, but that's all really. But then I spent a long time in an organisation where if you weren't energetically blaming someone everyone assumed it was your fault, and where it was totally normal to leave a client in the lurch because the most important thing was the witchhunt (and again, if you said "Let's fix the problem instead of worrying about whose fault it was, that meant it must be your fault")

As I heard someone say "I don't play the blame game. I'm too good at it, games are no fun when you always win"

I'm an own up and try and fix it person. I believe in honesty, and would be having a quite word with the PM if he did that to me.

Used to have what was known as a no blame culture, idea was being pull together fix the problem then sit down and work out what went wrong and how to stop it happening again. Great idea if you work with the right people...

To good an opportunity to miss

Hoof him in the slats .

If its your fault, fess up to it, but make sure you have a resolution plan ready.
If its not your fault, good, but make sure you have a resolution plan ready.
We all make mistakes, its how we sort them out and learn from them that makes us better.

Fix it before anyone notices, or failing that delete the audit logs that show it was me that made the cock up.

Issues require solutions. Problems require root cause analysis to avoid it happening in the future.

Pointing the finger does no-one any good. Analysing what went wrong and learning from mistakes is productive and professional.

#GuessWhoSatAnITILCourseYesterday

Organise a Blame Storming session. Come to the conclusion it was the project managers fault all along, (don't invite him to the meeting obviously!) produce a 1 slide PowerPoint slide to illustrate this fact, e-mail it to the boss and go home early satisfied with your day's work. Bill the customer for the time spent on this critical path task.

Job jobbed.

You cant change the world or others - only yourself.

Sort it out.

If I was the manager I'd be more concerned about what the involved parties are doing to prevent similar cock ups in future than throwing people under busses, so my reply to a rant like that from a PM would basically be 'hi Pm.. fine, what do you intend to put in place to stop this happening again ?'.

spawnofyorkshire - Member
New to post project manager has instead fired off an email to the director trying to throw me under the bus and land me with the blame for all of it.*

So be honest, what's your first instinct when faced with a cock up?

*Very polite email returned to all with a solution to the problem and clarity that this was a collective failure

New project manager is practicing his grassing skills? Put him in his place. This new project manager fails basic people managing skills.

Nobody is perfect and business will expect some sort of cock up once in a while so this is normal.

Yes, put the hand up if you are the one contributing to the problem (nahh ... you cannot be) but if the management or your boss is someone with brain juice left, s/he should know that ALL (everyone on the project) of you cock up ... how many brains in the team? All of them did not see the problem?

Ya, all should get bollockings but nothing more. If I were your boss I would swear and give you lot bollockings but after that back to normal and all coming together to get it right ... I like to swear at people. As much dirty swearing as possible. Especially if you are a posh person I want to swear dirty at you! I like! 😆

Isn't that how you become a PM, by that kind of behavior. I remember working with one, who stated openly he knew he had run a successful project when one or more contractors went financially insolvent.

"It was like that when I got here.." 😉

Depending on what it is cover it up.

A few years back, the only route to get chemicals for the school was to have them smuggled over the border from China in people's cars

I ordered what I thought was 5 ampules of bromine, what I received, mixed in amoung the 3kg of group 1 metals inc 25m ribbon of lithium, and conc acids was a very leaky and smelly bottle of bromine - 500gms of the stuff.

There was no hazardous waste disposal available in country, no way to own up to having it as it was smuggled in, and not something that anybody else other than me would understand.

I hid it on the roof for a few days in a box, subzero temps so not too worried about it evaporating while deciding what to do with it.

Own up, own up after disposing of it, pretend it never happened and leave on roof, or get rid of it.

There were large piles of rubbish around the town in winter due to it not rotting. I thought I could just sling it in there and nobody would notice, but if it did leak, it might make national headlines.

Winds were strong in the evenings so I could pour it off the roof and and the cloud would be carried away, but it may be spotted.

Eventually I decided the best method of getting rid of it was to take a 2 mile hike into the mountains armed with arm length rubber gloves, goggles, a carried bag and telling my wife the rough direction i headed in just in case i poisoned myself.

Trekked around 2 miles in -25 degrees, through waist deep snow, over hills, around cliff faces to a remote area, unpacked the bottle, loosened the cap, and set at an angle so that it was always just heading towards the slightly undone cap. Nearly gassed myself on initially opening it and went home.

Nobody knew, nobody ever found out.

Blaming achieves nothing although that's not to say that sometimes someone will need to be held responsible. Far better to address the issue first then look into what went wrong.

Just be grateful you are not a bike mechanic or driver. On STW mistakes by these people are unforgivable...

Nobody knew, nobody ever found out.

I deleted a database once.

The database manager got in the sh1t. As i shouldn't have had delete access to anything. Especially not the root folder thingie.

Took a couple of days to restore from the backup.

PM here (Engineering)
I've made a few cock-ups over the last 10 years, but more than happy to put my hand up and confess - I've found it generally kills this issue off and speeds up finding a resolution.

However, if anyone tried to blame me for something they've done (or not done) then I'd do my best to finish them.

Blame 'the boy' and fix (again and again and again).

Most of my job entails taking written information and processing it as per our business rules. I've encountered otherwise perfectly competent colleagues who've made some silly mistakes (paying an employee £14k instead of £140.00 for example).

Mistakes happen. We learn from them. As a result of the above, I have very stringent checking processes in place. I have a number of reports and tools at my disposal to check for discrepancies that cannot be explained by an official document. In my role I can check as many times as I like, but I only get to pay people once a month.

I was told early on by my shift boss on my first posting in the RAF. "If you think you've made a mistake own up to it quickly, as it saves a lot of trouble." Good advice I thought.

"If you think you've made a mistake own up to it quickly, as it saves a lot of trouble." Good advice I thought.

This.

Burn everything, leave, new job.

Currently if some of my colleagues make a balls up its "all our problem", whereas if I do, then its mine, and mine alone. It certainly is a good motivator.

I guide/manage a 40 strong tech department and we do make cockups at times. We have a no blame policy as we find learning from getting something wrong is more valuable than throwing blame about. The last issue we had was a huge drain on resource, time and had a significant financial impact - my boss just asked me if it was now sorted, have we worked out how to avoid it again and have we communicated to everyone who would be impacted.

It's the first company I've ever worked for where this has been the case rather than a manager covering themselves by assigning blame and for us it works really well. Our repeat errors have dropped to about 10% of what they were 12 months ago. When I joined 4 years ago we had a blame culture, my then boss and I decided to change that and over the last 12 months I think we achieved it, it sounds very new age but it really works for us.

Always blame the last person to leave/retire.... 😀
Then, when the RCA is conducted, everything is blamed on communication breakdown which then means more and more pointless meetings for all. grrr.

I would have a quiet word with the PM and forward the blame email to all concerned
so they all know there's a dirtbag working alongside them.

Thing is, once someone blames you it is very difficult to trust them again. Unfortunately I have come across this quite often.

I prefer to just own up if its my fault and learn from it.

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I remember back in my (kinda) corporate days of working in a "no blame culture" environment. Yeah, if you made a major cock-up, you might get bollocked for it, but generally, solutions were more important than blame.

However, these days, I spend a fair bit of time on bigger (building) sites where, believe me, the blame culture is alive and well. The second there's a ****-up, everybody gathers round hammering out exactly who's fault it is and who'll be paying for it. 😀