Taking responsibility - professionally and personally

I would first of all point you in the direction of an item that I wrote way back when I was starting out on this blog. The item was called "Personal Responsibility" and is dated November 2nd, 2010.

Two years down the road my views have not changed much. We should take responsibility for our lives and our decisions. At the same time though that requires an economic circumstance where that is possible, not one where there are far more applicants than jobs, more cheap labour than adequately paying employment, and not one where people are written off as "too young" or more significantly "too old"!

Realise also that not everyone is a born salesman, not everyone likes running their own business (many do not), and gambling is something many of us would choose to avoid - except for buying the occasional not-too-expensive lottery ticket.

Which means that the alternatives to being employed are limited.

Which means we have to create more decent paying jobs for people who are keen to work hard, and jobs appropriate to their skills.

I am somewhat strange in my outlook on life in that I happen to think that professional responsibility is as important as personal responsibility. Which means if you are doing an important job, and not doing it well, then you should admit to the fact.

In this world though would you do that? Given the rarity of jobs out there, would you throw something in because of your inability to deliver?

In 1979 I did just that. If I ever had been a good teacher, I did not think that I was any more. The stress had eaten away at me, my ability to deliver the goods had seemingly disappeared, and given my responsibility to both the kids and their parents I recognised that it was time to leave.

One of the down sides to this is that the personal responsibility side (the need to maintain yourself without help as far as is possible) suffers while facing up to the demands of professional responsibility.

Yet how many people are there out there in important, or not so important jobs, who would recognise that they could not deliver the goods professionally any more (if ever) and should find summat else?

And for people in that situation who are married with children? What should they do?

We might want to believe that the private or public concern employing the individual in question would deal with the situation as kindly or as harshly as they saw fit.

But this does not always happen. When I left teaching I could quote a number of colleagues who were obviously less effective than I was. In over 20 years in IT I saw a good number of people who did not have the necessary talent to work in the industry. And some of the managers that I have seen, especially in the UK! How they ever got appointed in the first place??!!

But if the choice is staying, as bad as you are, or condemning yourself to a situation where there is no way that you can make ends meet! There is not much of a choice, is there?