It is tough to decide where to begin this post. The low hanging fruit would be to look at the chaos being caused by the political world. But we could also consider the world of sports that has started to falter in light of golf tour issues, baseball team over-spends, paying “amateur” athletes, and cable network jockeying. There is the whole issue of foreign country alliances and the Russian attack on Ukraine. Then we watch as mass shootings continue in a helpless US; religions question how they relate to the LGBTQ+ community; and the wealthy absorb a hugely disproportionate amount of the nation’s bounty. There is much wrong in this world and we contend that much of it stems from a lack of “accountability”. When politicians ignore facts and spread lies they are not held accountable. When sports teams use the unfair advantage of their market size to “monopolize” their industry no one (MLB Commissioner) stops them. When countries unmercifully attack and kill innocent civilians and the rest of the world doesn’t seem to care, no one answers for that failure. Even when everyday managers make mistakes like not bolting a door on an airplane no one pays the price. We seem to live in an era where everyone has a short and long term goal. In the short term we all want to be home for dinner; in the long term we want to be able to retire. It appears that there is pride or fear of being held accountable enters into the gap between tonight’s dinner and eventual retirement. Said another way, who cares if I don’t do my job right? No one will give me any grief over being too lazy or incompetent to do it to the best of my ability. Pride in workmanship was for years “the driver” or motivator; and then fear of being fired or demoted was the reason for putting forth effort to do the job right. But, in today’s world, both of those incentives seem to be dying. Remember the next time you see a major failure and follow up to see whether the incompetency is determined and punished. The good news is that most people still work with what was called “a work ethic”–meaning they want to do the job right. But lately it seems that major failures are becoming more frequent and more disastrous.
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