When we're pointing fingers
We can only see how to resolve our shared problems if we're looking in the right direction...
“When you point your finger ’cause your plan fell through, you’ve got three more fingers pointing back at you”. - Dire Straits, ‘Solid Rock’ 1
When problems arise, it’s all too easy to point the finger at others.
But finger pointing stifles, smothers, and strangles the emergence of a future-fit culture of innovation, agility, and adaptiveness — even when it seems justified.
In fact, especially when it seems justified…
How often have you been trying to solve a problem that involves multiple people, teams, departments, etc. and heard people say “don’t blame me/us, it was them” or “it’s not my/our fault, it’s theirs.” ?
This kind of finger pointing occurs in two types of scenarios.
There’s solid and incontrovertible evidence that another party has done something, or failed to do something, that makes it clear they’re wholly responsible for the shared problem.
One or more departments, teams or individuals is/are convinced “I’ve / we’ve done nothing wrong”, assumes therefore that the reason for the shared problem must lie elsewhere, and picks a presumed guilty party — often based on flimsy, circumstantial, or entirely non-existent ‘evidence’.
Scenario #1 is relatively easy to resolve.
It may require a degree of tact to help the other party see, recognise, accept, and rectify the failure, but the evidence should largely speak for itself. 2
Scenario #2 is much more challenging.
That’s because even though the logic that “I/we did nothing wrong, therefore someone else must be wholly and completely responsible” is flawed, it’s also highly compelling. 3
Typically, type #2 scenarios stem from misaligned 2D perspectives of two or more of the parties involved. 4
To illustrate this, here’s how finger pointing in a former client’s organisation held back a major project, and how a deeper understanding of different perspectives unlocked the 2D3D mindset to not only resolve it, but also improve the collective capacity to avoid similar problems and co-create greater new value in future.
“Thirty years behind the West”
Today we’re used to China being a global economic force — currently the world’s second largest economy. But this wasn’t always the case.
In the late 1990’s a global consumer goods company asked me to help them boost innovation when key product lines were under threat from competitors.
In response, they’d started a crash programme to develop new, more competitive products, and now needed help to reduce time to market.
One of the first people I met was the European Product Manager responsible for one of the main product lines crucial to their future success.
He was based at the company’s central R&D facility in Western Europe, whereas manufacturing and marketing were both based in China.
At our first meeting, he told me straight that their inability to reduce time to market had nothing to do with him and his local colleagues.
Finger pointing at his marketing and manufacturing colleagues, his memorable soundbite was: “the Chinese are thirty years behind the West”.
At a project progress meeting in China a few weeks later, the European Product Manager refused the Chinese Production Manager’s request to cut a two week shipping delay from the programme because it would incur additional air freight costs of $10,000. 5
I turned to the Chinese Production Manager and asked him how much revenue the organisation would lose due to the two week delay in production start caused by the European Product Manager’s refusal.
Now, remember this was the era before smartphones, and very few people had even seen a handheld computer — let alone used or owned one.
Silence fell as the Chinese Production Manager pulled a small handheld computer from his pocket and tapped a few figures into the business model he’d programmed.
The European Product Manager was gobsmacked when his “30 years behind the West” Chinese colleague pointed out that the two week delay would cost the organisation more than $3,000,000 in lost production…
Co-created solutions to our shared problems
Before experiencing this ‘wake-up’ moment, the European Product Manager believed, based on no real evidence, that the problem lay with his “inferior” Chinese colleagues.
But as soon as he escaped the trap of his narrow, biased, and one-sided 2D perspective he saw, for the first time, that:
His $10,000 “saving” came at a cost of $3,000,000.
This cost was well known and understood by his better informed and better equipped Chinese colleague.
“The Chinese” were not all “thirty years behind the West”.
By working with his Chinese colleagues they could together co-create additional ways to reduce time to market even further.
When he returned to Europe at the end of a highly productive week, the Product Manager took three new things with him:
A project plan with a significantly reduced time to market worth more than $10,000,000 in additional revenues.
His very own shiny new handheld computer — that the Chinese Production Manager had personally taken him out to buy.
A 2D3D mindset with a deeper appreciation for the powers of working with his international colleagues as members of a single global project team.
Questions for reflection
Are there people in one part of your organisation who see colleagues in another part as “far inferior to us”?
Who are the people most prone to indulging in the kind of finger pointing likely to be stifling, smothering, and strangling the emergence of innovation, agility, and adaptiveness?
Which specific seeing-being traps are preventing you and your colleagues from creating a future-fit culture? 6
The bottom line
When we’re pointing fingers, our attention ends up directed exclusively outwards — at others — who therefore seem to be wholly and exclusively responsible for shared problems.
It’s only when we pay sufficient attention to also looking inwards — to see how we’re colouring, constraining, and curtailing our own outlook — that we’re able, together, to discover the greatest leverage for solving our shared problems. 7
Solid Rock was the seventh track on Dire Straits’ third studio album ‘Making Movies’ released in October 1980. The verse quoted above is: “The heart that you break — that's the one that you rely on. The bed that you make — that's the one you gotta lie on. When you point your finger ’cause your plan fell through, you got three more fingers pointing back at you”.
Assuming, of course, the evidence is similarly solid and incontrovertible when viewed from their perspective.
This logic is flawed because even though we’re not consciously aware of contributing to misunderstandings, mistakes, and missed opportunities, it doesn’t mean we didn’t contribute unconsciously...
Find out more about how misaligned 2D perspectives stifle, smother and strangle innovation — and how innovative 2D3D mindsets solve this in this six minute video.
The local shipping policy, a legacy from a long-departed financial controller, was that such items were to be surface shipped to reduce the costs that showed up on a local P&L account.
Find out more about how seeing-being traps block the adoption of innovative ‘2D3D’ mindsets, anchor organisations to past orthodoxies and stifle, smother and strangle the innovation and agility on which their future depends in this seven minute video.
Finger pointing is a close relative of the attribution bias that makes others look like maniacs or morons.