I looked up the definition of irresponsibility. Want to know what it said?  It said, "not reponsible, answerable, or accountable to a higher power". I also found a synonym for irresponsible. You're going to love this.  It simply said, "immature".

Sometimes when I meet with an executive for the first time I will ask for them to tell me a leadership challenge they are currently facing. After doing this now for 15 years, I bet you can guess how many times I hear the response, "the biggest leadership challenge I face is me." (Answer? one man). Most of the time in the first iteration of their story they don't include themselves as a part of the challenge. No surprise for me. I was that way when I used to do individual and family counseling. It was always somebody or something else that was causing the problem.

I attribute this next point to Andy Stanley at Northpoint church in Atlanta.  He said, "I have the right to be irresponsible but you don't have the right to hold me accountable." Being irresponsible means someone else has to come along and clean up my mess. When someone else doesn't take responsibility for being irresponsible it often takes "a village to clean it up". Whether the mess is personal, corporate, civil, in government, in schools, in churches, etc., more than one responsible person is involved in cleaning up one person's irresponsibility. (Can you say Wall Street, Fanny Mae, Freddie Mac?)

Jim Collins, author of How The Mighty Fall, stated one common behavior in stage 3 of 5 stages before the ultimate demise of a company is "when those in power blame other people or external factors-or otherwise explain away the data-rather than confront the frightening reality that the enterprise might be in serious trouble." In his earlier book, Good to Great, Collins described a characteristic of the top leader as one who looked out the window to apportion credit to others when things were going well, and in the mirror when to apportion responsibility when things were going poorly. Irresponsibility brings the demise of a company and a person.

Irresponsibility is "I can't" (vs. I won't), "it's not my fault", "it was her/his/their fault", "I would have done it but...", etc. Irresponsibility is a first cousin to rationalization, blame, guilt, resentment, and avoiding the truth.

Let's wake up and live in reality. Take responsibility. If you're a leader, be one where "the buck stops here". Leadership is about owning up and stepping up.

By the way, if you didn't like what was written in this blog today, it's not my fault.

rb