This show is as great as everyone says it is, but it’s not an easy watch. I had no idea of the scale of the horror or how close it was to becoming a major extinction event, but for the intervention of a few bold leaders.
What struck me about Chernobyl wasn’t simply that people made mistakes. It was how quickly the fear of blame made every mistake more dangerous. Evidence was denied, bad news was softened, and impossible explanations were maintained because acknowledging reality carried personal risk of being blamed. As a result, millions of lives were put in danger. Then there two of the scientists leading the disaster recovery, Legasov and Khomyuk. They didn’t cause the accident, but both assumed responsibility for confronting it and meeting the reality head-on to save lives.
Product teams often face the same choice, albeit at much lower stakes. Research reveals that customers don’t have the problem everyone expected. An experiment fails. Usage data undermines course that the team had planned. Yet in a blame-oriented culture, the team continues down the same path out of fear. Maybe an executive is invested in the idea and no one wants to be the bearer of bad news. The evidence is there, but following it means ruffling feathers. So people keep chugging along and hope the plan somehow proves itself right.
I’ve always believed in a “win or learn” mindset and in owning mistakes. In a blameless culture, removing the fear of blame doesn’t remove accountability. It gives people the safety to acknowledge reality and the responsibility to act on what they’ve learned. Teams can pivot sooner, improve downstream outcomes, and prevent the same mistakes from happening again.
In a recent interview on Lenny’s Pod, Netflix CPTO Elizabeth Stone shared a similar thought:
“The best people want to know there’s going to be a blameless retro and they’re going to feel so individually responsible that they’re going to say, ‘How do I make sure this doesn’t happen again?’”
That’s the foundation of a healthy product culture: people can confront what went wrong without fearing what will happen to them for saying it. Blame asks who should suffer for the past. Responsibility asks what we owe the future.