I was sitting in on a Webcast the other day and people watching were encouraged to maintain a dialogue during the Webcast by posting questions and comments to a moderated board. The purpose of the board was to encourage ideas on how to start up new businesses and maintain them despite the challenging economic environment.

One of the people who was watching and posting decided this would be a good forum for him (or her) to broadcast their own agenda, that of blaming past business decisions for creating the mess that the economy is in today. He (or she) blamed the global economy for the mess the local economy is in. Blame, blame, blame — blah, blah, blah.

I tried to be diplomatic and asked the person to “get over it” and move on. OK, so I could have used more tact but it just isn’t in my chemistry. The problem was, there were people who wanted to share ideas and learn about starting a business and here was the one sourpuss throwing water on the fire. Fortunately he (or she) decided to leave because no one was paying attention to his (or her) posts.

So let me ask you this, do you tend to fix the blame for a problem more often that actually offering a solution for it? Do you blame your competition for lowering the professional bar for HVACR businesses in your community? Do you blame an employee for a rash of callbacks that have left you beside yourself?

If you do, try this: do something about your competition by maintaining your own high standards, without lowering yourself to his or her standards. And the callback problem? Send your employee to training or have a senior employee ridealong for a few days to help.

Don’t blame everyone and everything else for things you can correct yourself.