[btilly]

Something like this appeared in Good to Great. In a study of CEOs who lead their companies to significant improvement that lasted after the CEO stepped down, they found a common personality characteristic. The best CEOs constantly were watching for problems, took responsibility (aka fault) for everything that went wrong, credited everything good to others, and then anything that could not be credited to someone they said was luck.

This is a useful attitude. As news goes up the corporate ladder, it inevitably is colored in the most positive possible light. (http://www.davar.net/HUMOR/JOKES/SHIT.HTM is a funny, but true, take on this phenomena.) You need a constant vigilance for problems at the top to counteract it. And the common willingness to rest on your laurels and deflect blame elsewhere is not going to lead to that willingness.

[killahpriest]

Reminds me of Kevin Rose blaming Digg's failure on waking up one day to realize that everybody in his company was a B/C employee.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2352521

[te_chris]

So he collectively blames all his staff for his failure? Nice, really nice.

[daeken]

No, that's missing the point. The quality of your staff is 100% your responsibility as a CEO; if you realize that everyone is B or C level, then you've failed as CEO.

[te_chris]

No, it's not. It's a false rationalization of your (lack of?) ability as a CEO to motiviate the best performance out of your staff to write off all your staff as 'B' and 'C' players.