The German poet Thomas Bernhard said that we are constantly looking for those responsible for making everything more acceptable to us until, if we are honest, the responsibility always ends with ourselves.

I often see entrepreneurs who, when faced with a problem, focus on looking for culprits (team, customers, government, ...) instead of looking for causes. Following Thomas Bernhard's argument, this leads them to blame themselves and get frustrated with the fact that they cannot solve the situation, whether it is the team's lack of use of a particular tool or customer complaints about the new pricing policy, among others.

Blaming, besides being unfair (blame rarely falls on one person), is useless, as it distances the diagnosis and subsequent decision from what caused the problem, whether it is poor communication of the reason for the use of that tool in the team or an incorrect definition of what the customer values. The causes are complex, and that is why we run away from them, although if we were to get down to it, we would find lasting solutions and not superficial band-aids to cover the wound.

Oriol López 2023

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