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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   23587 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026

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whenever I see those sorts of "after action" reports I can't help but read between the lines and suspect that over-emphasis on $LATEST_SHINY_THINGS as the underlying culprit to these sorts of things, which is to say that when there are too many priorities, then nothing is a priority.

Too many Shiny Things, and too much "distributed responsibility". After all, "safety is everyone's responsibility", right? But to paraphrase Incredibles, when everyone is responsible for something, nobody is. And to return to a different subsection of the Navy...

"Responsibility is a unique concept; it may only reside and inhere in a single individual. You may share it with others, but your portion is not diminished. You may delegate it, but it is still with you. You may disclaim it, but you cannot divest yourself of it. Even if you do not recognize it or admit its presence, you cannot escape it. If responsibility is rightfully yours, no evasion, ignorance, or passing the blame can shift the burden to someone else. Unless you can point your finger at the man who is responsible when something goes wrong, then you have never had anyone really responsible."

Strongly agree. Sure, there's too much external pressure that creates and distorts the excessive and conflicting priorities and too little time to actually attend to all of them, but it's still always a "leadership failure" when the inevitable Bad Things happen. The solution to the problem of too much bureaucracy is, of course, more bureaucracy.

There was another great quote about "When something happens, and a leader tells you they are 'not responsible', believe them. That is to say, they are correctly claiming to be irresponsible".

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