Small hassles and extra steps can sharply reduce action.
More quotes“She is careless” closes a case much faster than “our system reliably produces this behaviour”.
Character explanations are neat, moral and wonderfully cheap. Context is irritating. It asks about incentives, timing, tools, norms, power and friction—several of which management might own.
A late employee may be disorganised, or the meeting may collide with a train and childcare handover. A checkout abandoner may lack intent, or the form may demand an account, a password ceremony and their grandmother’s maiden invoice number. A salesperson missing target may need coaching; they may also have the dead territory, poor leads and pricing rules designed by someone who never hears “no”.
Personality still exists. Some people really are unreliable, cruel or lazy. Pretending context explains everything is sentimental nonsense. The sharper point is that behaviour reveals a person in a situation, and we are absurdly keen to diagnose the person before inspecting the situation. Before applying a label, change one condition. Move the meeting. Remove the field. Redistribute the leads. If behaviour changes, congratulations: the moral failing had a user-interface component. If it does not, the character explanation has gained evidence rather than merely confidence.
Blame feels decisive because it identifies a culprit. Design is more commercially useful because it identifies a lever. The choice is between enjoying a judgement and improving the outcome; organisations routinely invoice themselves for choosing the former.