The BP oil leak mess provides a relevant metaphor for leading organizations through troubled times. The message is simple: blaming is not leadership – it is an escape from true leadership.
The US government, in response to political pressure, is blaming BP and spending more time grandstanding than trying to help get to the root of the problem. BP is blaming its vendors and other oil companies are now blaming BP. The state government is blaming the federal government and local municipalities are blaming the state. Democrats are blaming Republicans and vice versa.
In the meantime, the oil continues to gush and gush and too few people are focused on the root cause – first finding a way to stop the bleeding, and then to solve the underlying systems issue of minimizing the dangers of deep sea drilling.
True leadership involves ignoring the escape into blaming and having the courage to help people focus on the basic root cause.
In an era of layoffs, cutbacks, and economic downturn, blaming corporate “greed,” lack of government regulation, or the concept of free-market capitalism does not deal with the basic, root cause issue. That issue is the need to embrace the fact that we live in an interdependent global economic environment and that the paradigm in regard to long term, stable, employment security has irrevocably changed.
The lesson that came out of the total quality movement is operant: blame the system, not the individual. True leaders do that.
