John Broder’s story in yesterday’s New York Times, “Blunders Abounded Before Gulf Spill”,  reports on the analysis seeking where to lay the blame for the spill. And it is clear the failure is systemic.

The Lead-in: “The Deepwater Horizon blowout and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was an avoidable accident caused by a series of failures and blunders by the companies involved in drilling the well and the government regulators assigned to police them, the presidential panel named to study the accident has concluded.

The companies — BP, Transocean and Halliburton, and several subcontractors working for them — took a series of hazardous and time-saving steps without adequate consideration of the risks involved, the commission reports in a chapter of its final findings, released on Wednesday in advance of the full report, to be published early next week.” No one was responsible, but everyone was. And excuses abound.

My grandfather had a very important conversation with me at about the age of seven. I was in trouble for taking a doll that my grandmother had made and hidden it under the covers. It was so beautiful and I really wanted to have it be mine. I was easily found out and my grandfather was sent in to straighten me out. When he told me I was being irresponsible, I was ready with a list of places I had been fully responsible. I had done my chores in the garden and the hen house. I had just carried food next door to neighbors my grandmother had prepared. I had a strong sense of myself as a good person and wanted my grandfather to see me that way. He hugged me and offered a lesson I never forgot. “Responsibility is a way of doing everything, not just what others can see, or the average of all of your actions.”

This lesson has influenced my life and work. Responsible means Responsible. Not some practices for responsible, and others are not. Not an officer or dept for responsibility oversight and no one else takes it as core to their work. And certainly not some public relations dedicated to showing how responsible you are. When a business takes on Responsible has to seek to be responsible everywhere, in all things and with all people/groups. It means we have to get ready to change everything.

In our families we would not agree to be responsible some of the time, or in certain arenas, thereby allow ourselves to be irresponsible in others. It is a way of being, not a set of practices.  Responsible means to contribute to the health of all we affect. It is not about harming people or doing less harm. It is not to avoid being bad. It is not responsible to just beat your partner less or even none. Or yell at your children less or not at all. One counts on each member of a family to grow and develop one another and the family as a whole. Responsibility is about working to make it more amazing and vital everyday. To build toward what is possible based on understanding what it takes to be highly healthy and alive.

And certainly, Responsibility is not to just fixing things that are problems. It is too late to be only working of the effects after the fact. Responsible means to find the potential in people, resources, and processes and to bring that out. To make things uniquely better for each person and living entity in a system. To enrich lives of customers. To increase opportunity for workers to contribute fully from their creativity. To express uniqueness, not replicating patterns given by others. To innovate not borrow from others. To engage each ecosystem to be able to regenerate itself.

Responsible means wholeness. Not I will do good for you at the expense of anything person, group or nation. Not I will make trade-offs for some to win more than others. Responsible means to be responsible for the whole and all the life that is in it.