I liked my friend John Cutler's "We kind of suck at that right now" piece.

The situation he describes is acknowledging the team's lack of ability on a given topic in front of the team.

To the systems thinker, this is totally fine because it's no one's fault.

To the individuals-first thinker, acknowledging a gap in the team's ability is awkward and aggressive because it implies that someone is failing, because anything that's not going right is someone's fault.

I realize I've fallen into this trap often; I do a bad job at extending the kayfabe since I think by default in systems and most people think by default in individuals.

This also makes me realize that teams that focus on individuals, not systems, are more likely to fall prey to kayfabe.

In those situations, to point out something's not working is to implicitly ask, "who should be blamed for this failure?"

We have a new meme for the hellscape that comes from work environments that assume any mistakes are entirely on the employee: "Hey, Number 17"