It’s the client’s fault.

It’s the project manager’s fault.

It’s because of the budget, the political situation, the committee to which you’re pitching.

You didn’t have enough time.

You didn’t have enough money.

You didn’t have enough information.

It’s natural for us to want to shift the blame. It’s even more natural for us to avoid having the blame be put on us, especially when there’s good reason for that burden to be worn elsewhere.

But talking about blame is pretty useless. It doesn’t say who did anything right, or how to do anything right, it just says where things wen’t wrong. That’s good to know as it helps us avoid repeating ourselves in the future, but maybe do that after the project.

Here’s the thing though. When we don’t worry about the blame and instead worry about the solution, we still end up with a solution. Worrying about who or what to blame still leaves us with the problem.

And the benefit to quitting all this talk about blame is that there’s no more talk about blame.

Shifting conversation and ideas away from blame means you can get to work. Whoever or whatever is being blamed isn’t a burden but now a limitation against which you need to innovate.

Instead of worrying who or what is at fault, figure out a solution. You’re a designer. You’re a developer. That’s what you do – you solve problems. Don’t waste time celebrating the bad luck or stupidity that is _blame_.

If you can’t do anything about what’s at fault (low budget, moron committee, etc), then whats the point in blaming them?

What does it achieve besides your own validation that you didn’t do something wrong? It doesn’t show that you were right, or that you’re skills are good enough, just that nothing went wrong because of something you did or didn’t do.

But the things you can do something about? Making good stuff.

That you can do, and it’s a far more valuable an investment of your time.

Best of all, if something does go wrong and everyones playing the blame game and you avoid it, instead choosing to get everyone, or at least yourself, focusing on getting good work done, then you will become (and will be) the one who keeps their cool. You’ll be the one who handles crises, who makes gold out of dirt.

That’s kinda cool, don’t you think?