> Leaders should set a principle and expectation of a blameless culture. When something goes wrong, it’s a wonderful learning opportunity, to be studied and used to continuously improve. An example of this is the concept of a blameless post-mortem.

I understand this idea. I've read several books on the subject and worked to integrate it into several teams now. I think it's an admirable goal.

But the blameless culture idea becomes counterproductive when taken to extremes. I've been in a couple "blameless cultures" where a small number of people were clearly to blame for every project falling behind, but every retrospective was about how we could have organized our work better, or planned better, or been more clear about the expectations. No, at some point, the only way we're going to ship better is to shine some light directly at the one poor performer on the team that everyone knows is to blame. That doesn't mean being mean or rude or calling them out in public, but something must be done.