Don’t Blame the Wheel for Missing a Turn

Management gurus keep saying everyone must own the business result. BCG wants every company to build an “ownership mindset” at all levels. Each employee must feel responsible for the firm’s outcomes. Patrick Lencioni, in The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, calls “inattention to results” the worst sin a team can commit. He wants us to give up our own goals for the shared number. They want the bottom line to belong to all of us. I disagree. Fanny and Alexander (1982) by Ingmar Bergman Nothing burns like being judged for what you didn’t do. Aristotle held that “on voluntary passions and actions praise and blame are bestowed, on those that are involuntary pardon, and sometimes also pity.” Later thinkers, from Kant to Thomas Nagel, turned the same instinct into the control principle: “we are morally assessable only to the extent that what we are assessed for depends on factors under our control.” Adam Smith agreed that reward belongs only to “actions of a beneficent tendency, which proceed…