You’re Doing It Wrong: Having a Scapegoat in your Business

Have you ever worked in an organization where when leadership fails in successfully implementing certain action plans, or fails to deliver results, they put the blame on someone else?

If so, then you’re not alone. A lot of people, including myself, have experienced this. It’s the sad truth.

A religious man in my hometown has told me a story which I think is worth sharing with you…

In the olden days, the Jewish ritual for ridding themselves of sin was where a high priest would bring out a goat, and everyone in the town would gather and place their hands on the head of the goat, symbolically transferring their sins to the goat.

Then the high priest would allow the goat to escape deep into the desert until the goat would suffer and die, and symbolically, along with the sins of the people.

That’s how the term “Scapegoat” came about. It was the goat who was meant to go away to suffer and die carrying the blame for everyone else’s sins.

I found this to be really sickening. Yes, it’s easy to put the blame one someone else, but does that solve the root cause of the problem in the first place?

Like in the goat story, if you have done someone wrong, and you simply transferred all accountability to the scapegoat, were you able to make amends with the person you have wronged? That’s right, hell no!

I hope you’ve learned from that story so you won’t ever be like that. But exactly how can you not be like that?

In my experience, a RACI tool is what works best. An article at The Digital Project Manager explains this in detail, but in summary, here’s how it can work for you:

The Rows outline you the actions that need to be accomplished, the Columns tell you the roles that need to be performed, and lastly, RACI stands for:

• Responsible – the “doer” responsible for executing a specific action.
• Accountable – the person who is held accountable for the actions of the doer. Basically it’s the person whose neck gets choked if the doer makes a mistake.
• Consulted – the person who provides clarity if needed in order for the action to be executed accordingly.
• Informed – someone who needs to be made aware of status updates regarding the action.

If you’ll notice in the Lord of the Rings example above, Frodo was mostly responsible for creating the Fellowship of the Ring together with Elrond, and taking the One Ring to Mt. Doom as it is the only place where it can be destroyed.

Gandalf was accountable for almost everything, except distracting and defeating the enemies.

For the actions where Gandalf was accountable, Aragorn was consulted, however he was respinsible for distracting and defeating the enemies along with Sam.

And lastly, it was Elrond’s responsibility to decide what to do with the One Ring, and create the Fellowship together with Frodo, though he had to be informed of the status regarding getting the One Ring to Mt. Doom, as well as distracting and defeating the enemies.

By applying this tool, no one becomes a Scapegoat who goes away taking the blame for other people’s mistakes.

Hope you found this to be of value. If so, feel free to share! And if you have any questions, post them in the comments below.