Puppies and Deming: Why Everything Is Your Fault (And That’s Good)

After 16 years of cat ownership—who owned who is left to the reader—we got puppies. Our first ones. Super cute. Endless snuggles. Also: puddles and piles (if you know, you know).

A mindset that helps us through the messy and destructive moments is:

“Everything is your fault.”

Dogs do dog things. And if that dog thing isn’t something I like—it’s on me for allowing an environment and opportunity for that to happen. If I want different outcomes, I need to change the setup. Their actions are a reflection of my own.

Which naturally reminded me of W. Edwards Deming.

He estimated that 90-95% of organizational problems stem from the system, not the individual (Out of the Crisis). The Deming Institute explains it this way:

“the system that people work in and the interaction with people may account for 90 or 95 percent of performance.”

Dog trainers understand this. Cesar Millan’s tagline isn’t ‘fix the dog’—it’s ‘train the human.’ Which makes you wonder whether more business leaders should stick to goldfish instead of dogs. But I digress.

This connects to a bigger idea: attribution theory—the way we make sense of outcomes. The stories we tell ourselves about success and failure. If I blame chance, others, or unfairness, I become powerless—trapped by forces outside my control. But if I recognize my part in it, it gives me a lever to change things.

For example, if I get angry at one of the pups for chewing my shoe, we both have a bad day and the cycle is guaranteed to repeat. If I realize he couldn’t have done it if I had put my shoes out of reach, the cycle is broken.

This simple principle holds true in business and life in general.

When everything is my fault, I hold the leash. I choose where we go.