When it comes to responsibility, what can we learn from politicians and others?
Angry, by Terry Freedman
People who should know better always seem to be blaming someone else for things going wrong. I think that understanding what has gone wrong and why is potentially quite useful. It’s even useful to know who has screwed up, and how. (I’m thinking now about the recent farce regarding students’ exam grades.)
But it never seems to me to be done in a spirit of honesty and humility, just one of passing the responsibility on to someone else. It strikes me as being very childish.
Still, we can learn much from politicians and other people in positions of, erm, I hesitate to use the word “authority”, but you know what I mean. On 14 September some years ago I wondered aloud what it would be like if ICT co-ordinators adopted the same kind of language as politicians. Some of the terminology may be dated, but (unfortunately) the general principle still holds.
Enjoy:
If ICT Co-Ordinators Were Politicians…
To refer back to the question with which I opened this post, “When it comes to responsibility, what can we learn from politicians and others?”, I suggest the following:
An ability to accept no responsibility for anything.
An ability to always find someone else to blame.
An ability to speak in ways that obfuscate rather than elucidate.
None of this is new, of course.
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