And BTW, I take full responsibility for everything, which means nothing.
“Make no mistake, though they are the ones leaving, it is I who must remain and endure the heavy burden of their failure.”
But make no mistake, though they are the ones leaving, it is I who must remain and bear the heavy burden of their failure. It is my fault, I trusted them to get the job done, but that is the price of leadership."
Incredible writing by Mike Judge and co, it's satire that's literally too real sometimes.
Not cleaning up their messes, of course. That’s still on everybody else. They’re too busy contending with this harsh reality of not being right all the time.
Which means if anyone says they take full responsibility, they’re either saying “I’m a big fat narcissist” or that they imprinted on narcissists, so all of their mentors were.
Kind of a stretch, no?
When it’s a teen pregnancy or injuring a pedestrian, we know what “taking responsibility” means. For layoffs there are no actions, no alteration of life paths. Even the money for severance really comes out of someone else’s pockets. It means nothing for the person saying it. Everyone else suffers the consequences, not the speaker.
Claiming you’re to blame is the only penance. That only makes sense to people who won’t normally do that. Which is people who think in narcissistic personality traits are normal. IE narcissists and people they groomed.
Responsibility for a bad thing means that you are ultimately to blame, so if you take responsibility, you should either step down or present a detailed action plan. Otherwise you're saying "I messed this up and I also don't know how to fix it but I don't intend to stop being the leader"--which is (ironically) a very irresponsible stance.
Nope. Not unless there are actions to backup the words. Some kind of actual sacrifice that helps actually cleanup the mess.
E.g., do the CEO & Execs give back all bonuses and substantial salary for the past X years these bad decision were made, and keep working for $1/year until they are fixed? Do the CEO & Execs personally make calls using their own personal & professional capital to find new jobs for those they are firing?
If not, it is just performative bullshirt.
It may lead to change. It may not. But it’s important part of normal apologies.
I suspect what you are missing is specific action - what is this person specifically going to do differently?
“I take responsibility, so I’m returning my dividends from the last two years and making my salary 0 until things improve”
One team of engineers costs between one and three million dollars a year.
Words are important. “I take full responsibility” means what, exactly? To me it sounds incomplete. Like the phrase “you are very important to me”. There’s something missing there. “You are very important to me, so I will make sure this doesn’t happen again”. Or, “I will try to flush the toilet after I pee on it”. Something.
Ok, you take full responsibility, so what?
I went through that release and did a quick search for mistake and/or responsibility. No hits. Do you know why that is the case? Well, apart from legalistic part that would suggest he is guilty of something, there is a psychological part that is unfortunately best explained by actions of a fictional psychopath Dennis Reynolds[1]: 'only "take responsibility" in a very non-specific manner'. It works, because while Plaid CEO did apologize ( no 'apologies' in article, but there is a 'I am truly sorry.'), but nothing specific.
However, the way our brains function, we infer the admission of mistake and taking responsibility from that one phrase.
It is very annoying that it works, but it does work.
[1]https://itsalwayssunny.fandom.com/wiki/Wolf_Cola:_A_Public_R...
We used to have all the money and land. We still do, but it’s not as fun now.