Diffusion of responsibility is insulation from feeling shame because no one person is singled out.

· Bits and Bobs 10/27/25
  • Diffusion of responsibility is insulation from feeling shame because no one person is singled out.
    • When I started at Google, there was an executive who would do stochastic shaming.
    • He wanted everyone to do OKRs every quarter.
    • On the due date, he'd randomly sample PMs and look for people who hadn't done their OKRs, and then send email blasts to all PMs shaming those handful of people.
    • The fear of stochastic deep shame was way more effective at encouraging action than the same amount of shame diffused across a population.
    • "35% of you haven't done your OKRS yet" wouldn't inspire action.
      • In fact, it might make people feel safe in numbers to not worry about it.
    • But the danger of "Jeff Smith is a bad PM because he hasn't done his OKRs yet" absolutely would.

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