No matter where life takes you from a business or personal perspective, understand that it is your responsibility to figure out who to blame. When it comes to business, the owners have to understand that is typically always their fault. From a personal perspective, there are so many variations of this issue around blame that we cannot cover them all. However, as it applies to business and what happens to that business, you don’t have to look much further than the owner(s) to assign blame.
How is This?
No matter how big the business is, the owner(s) take the blame for everything. It is the responsibility of this group to hire and fire. The ability to create sales and market all falls within the owners’ reach. When these owners assign responsibility to another person to take the reins, they still take the burden because authority never goes away. As long as that person decides what happens with the profit & loss statement at the end of the year, they take the blame.
Why is This?
You can have 10 levels of authority in your organization, where you have assigned CEOs, COOs, CFOs, and so on, but you still hold the blame. It is your job to lead if you want to see profits at the end of the year. We take quite a bit of time during our initial client meetings to make this very clear. Owners need to understand the accountability of assigning someone else to take control of a specific job function. They are the ones that will lose money in the long run, so we want to ensure they agree to this. It helps our meetings run more efficiently! Owners start by investing their capital into a company and because of this, they expect to see a profit. As they continue in business, they will hire or hire out responsibility, but they still expect to see profits. This is why they are to blame.
We are in the midst of one of the worst financial collapses in recent history. For now, it appears to be short-lived, but still bad regardless. It is frightening to the entire world. I don’t believe there is one person that is not affected somehow. Businesses are beginning to realize that their existence is fragile if it hasn’t looked after itself. Take responsibility for your business economics and more importantly accountability and move forward. Nothing ever gets resolved by placing blame, but it sure helps understanding who is to blame!