What are your fingers doing?

Typing an email? Holding a book? Something productive?

Or are you pointing them?

Pointing fingers at others is not only a frustrating game, it's breeding grounds for an unbearable working culture and extremely demotivating. If it's always someone else's fault then you probably don't have a very challenging workload. Because we all make mistakes, but the biggest one you can make is not being able to own the ones you own.

If you've ever had a boss or co-worker that truly owns their mistakes, you know the glory of it. You sit in a room and toss this ball of a problem back and forth with no resolution because no one wants to take the fall. But then what happens when the boss joins the room and says, "Wow, that is a problem, and I should have addressed that sooner. Let's work to come up with a solution," there's a completely different mentality -- a remarkably respectable and motivating one -- about both the person and the former problem.

On the other hand, if you've ever had a finger-pointer for a co-worker or boss (I'm sure we've all), you know the intense level of frustration and the "CYA" mentality that infects the entire company like a disease.

Next time you're tempted to point at someone else when there's a problem, think twice. Diseases go away, solutions likely stay.