Blame, Uncertainty and the Need for a Scapegoat in VACU Environments

As the final whistle blows on the 2025-2026 football season, I found myself thinking about the plight of the team coach/manager. Now there’s a results driven job if ever there was one.

When the team’s winning, the manager is elevated to an almost divine status. An all knowing, all powerful authority. Poor results, and it’s “shut the door on your way out”.

But let’s take a step back and think about this in a different way.

Like it or not, football might be one of the purest examples of how we respond to uncertainty. Specifically, I’m thinking here about blame in VACU environments.

I like football. I’m a fan. I have an irrational emotional attachment to a specific team just like every other fan, and over the years I’ve looked on as my club has created instability through a combination of poor recruitment, financial mismanagement and ownership chaos.

Add in things like injuries, unrealistic expectations and a squad that never quite fits together, and well…you know the rest.

So what’s the answer?

Sack the manager of course.

Again.

This season, the English Premier League has seen 10 managerial departures alone. Near-record territory. And every time it happens there’s a familiar sense of emotional release:

The board have acted decisively.

Maybe it will work. Sometimes it does.

Patterns of behaviour being repeated over and over in my experience usually conceal very useful information. In this instance I wonder if this recurring response exposes something very human. In volatile, uncertain environments, we have a strong tendency to personalise failure and simplify the complex.

Find the person.

Find the mistake.

Find the cause.

Is blame is an antidote to uncertainty because uncertainty is just too uncomfortable to tolerate?

Whether it’s work, or life in general, I’d say most of us are existing in environments that are increasingly complex and unpredictable. I’m not sure if it was ever meant to be thus and if we’re totally equipped to handle it, but it’s where most of us find ourselves.

Yet when things go wrong, how often do we instinctively search for a culprit?

I don’t think there’s necessarily malicious intent in this but I do wonder if blame itself performs a psychological function.

Blame can temporarily reduce ambiguity. It creates the feeling that the problem has been contained and explained.

“We would have been fine if this person hadn’t done X.”

That narrative can feel psychologically safer than:

“We may not have been fully in control in the first place.”

That’s a much harder position to sit with.

Think about what uncertainty generates in most of us – a sense of:

• vulnerability

• anxiety

• loss of control

• self-doubt

• exposure

• unpredictability

Blame can help us move away from those feelings. Quickly.

Blame offers clarity where there may only be complexity.

Blame offer certainty where there may only be probability.

Blame gives us a villain where there may only be a system under strain.

Psychologically, that can feel incredibly attractive.

The difficulty is that blame and accountability are not the same thing.

Accountability vs Blame in VACU Environments

Accountability asks:

“What happened, what can we learn, and what helps us respond effectively now?”

Blame asks:

“Who absorbs the emotional weight of this?”

One tends to support learning.

The other often supports self-protection.

This matters because blame changes behaviour.

When people believe mistakes will primarily be met with humiliation, exposure or punishment:

• information gets concealed

• defensiveness increases

• innovation shrinks

• reporting problems gets delayed

• people start managing perception rather than reality

Psychological safety starts to erode.

And ironically, the less psychologically safe a system becomes, the less honest information it receives about what is actually happening inside it. And so the cycle continues and bad situations become worse.

Complex systems need good information to adapt well.

Blame cultures often distort the information flow needed for adaptation.

Psychological Flexibility and Uncertainty

This is where my old friend psychological flexibility becomes relevant.

Psychological flexibility is not passive acceptance or avoiding responsibility.

It is the ability to adapt to situations and experiences, remain present and still do what matters.

In practice, that might mean:

• tolerating ambiguity for longer

• resisting the urge for immediate certainty

• holding multiple perspectives at once

• responding rather than reacting

• distinguishing learning from punishment

• staying values-guided under pressure

Now if this was easy, simple, comfortable we’d all be doing it. But it isn’t. It takes work, commitment and practice. And I get it, who want’s more work? Not many of us. We’ve all got more than enough to be getting on with.

So we fall back on trying to create certainty because it feels better.

Resort to blame because it’s tidier.

And let’s face it, a bit of punishment can feel emotionally satisfying.

But complex environments rarely produce simple causes.

And sometimes the hardest thing for us all is to acknowledge this:

A Universal Truth

The best of us can still lose control of outcomes in volatile systems.

Now that’s not because nobody cares or because nobody is trying, it’s just that uncertainty and unpredictability are generally never fully removable in the first place.