Responsibility
There is an idea that, “If it’s to be, it’s up to me.” For instance, sometimes we just wait for a job to fall into our lap and we sit by the phone. Maybe we’d like to find the love of our life, but if they don’t walk through our living room, there’s no way we’re gonna meet them. Sometimes we just think life’s just gonna happen and we neglect the work that will increase favorable probabilities for our desired outcome.
But often the harder I work, the luckier I get. The more I have an intention, the more I make plans, the more I follow through, the more good things happen. Responsibility is about Responding and Ability. We make a choice, take action and the likelihood of success is better than when we are just wishing, hoping, and wanting.
Responsibility and Ownership
Zig Ziglar said, “Some people find fault like there’s a reward for it.” There are many ways we do this. For instance,the idea of ‘social comparison’ and having a better status by blaming other people.
Projection is when we feel bad about something we’ve done, so we blame someone else so that we feel better. We want to get rid of the bad feelings so we treat them bad, we blame them, so we don’t have to live with the feeling of how it didn’t work out.
‘Explaining’ can be when something goes wrong, we feel like we have to find a reason,explain it, find the cause, or look for the person that did it. A lot of organizations do this. There’s a process in business called the Five Whys. It’s kind of common now, but one asks “why” five times to try to get to the root cause.
You keep asking “why” until you find out the cause; but a lot of places ask the Five Whos? instead. We want to blame people, we want to find out who’s responsible for this. We should try looking for a better way, a healthier way, a more caring way by looking at the problem with the process, instead of the problem with the person. ‘What caused this?’ instead of ‘who caused this?’