When I was a kid I blamed my brothers. I don’t remember how Mom and Dad cured that but they did.
Every executive I talk with wants a high level of accountability on the part of their leadership team and employees in the business. Yet the behavior of execs does not necessarily set a good example – even in the best companies. In 2010 Apple replaced Toyota as a case in point.
Consumer Reports has been a big champion of all prior iterations of the iPhone. CR love’s the iPhone 4 but then issued a thumbs down on it until a minor antennae problem is fixed. When this problem was first identified Apple said it was caused by the way the user held the phone. Sounds a lot like Toyota in the early days of their recent quality/safety problems. Worse than that, Apple censored related discussion from Apple message boards.
The iPhone problem was quickly fixed and a more elegant fix was installed and as well all know, everything turned out okay.
As businesses and individual leaders it is easy to become known by what we do and how we do it when the chips are down. Blaming customers publicly is one of those things that is probably always a bad thing to do. I’m the Outsider and that’s what I think