A culture killer is what ruins workplace culture in spite of your every effort. When we were researching our new book, Some organizations react to any setback by assessing blame. This blame laying is a true culture killer, an early stage along the way to producing a true culture of fear. The unspoken rule in blaming cultures seems to be:
Shit doesn’t just happen; it is somebody’s fault.
When the laying blame culture killer is at work, it is not a matter of what went wrong, but who caused it. It is not possible to have a mishap without a culprit. A blaming culture is unpleasant to work in, but that’s not the only reason to avoid it. A far more serious reason is that when blame is automatically assessed, the natural tendency for self-critical appraisal is thwarted. And self-critical appraisal is perhaps our most powerful way of learning.
When a healthy culture team has failed in some way or other, someone is sure to start the conversation about why it happened with a line like, “Okay, where did we go wrong?” When you hear that, you can bet that learning is about to happen. If the answers begin to sound familiar, then a second question is warranted: “Why didn’t we learn from the last time this happened?”
Missing a goal might be a catastrophe, but it should never feel like a disgrace. The only disgrace would be not to learn from it.
The opposite of blame is trust. For some insight on the ever-illusive matter of trust, take a look at Tom DeMarco’s video on the subject: Giving and Gaining Trust.
Tom DeMarco’s speculative novel, 
How workplace culture affects workplace performance: We know they’re linked, but now we know a bit more about how and why: 
Two coauthors reflect on some of the unexpected implications that a reader may detect in what they’ve written. 
