The reason why that product owner from a Slovenian company had to take 16 of her colleagues to a review meeting is simply the fact that she wanted to take as little responsibility for her decisions as possible. I don’t really blame her, though. Her cowardly behavior is the eventual result of stigmatizing mistakes, an all too well known policy in the European corporate culture. For all I know, this woman could be a “killer” manager, who has simply lost incentive to be “killer” in an environment that wouldn’t give her a second chance. When employees spend their younger years in such environments, their attitude shifts from “I will do whatever it takes to succeed” to “I will do whatever it takes not to screw up”.
Substitute European for Puerto Rican. Or any nationality, really. It’s how things work when you have so many middle managers in a corporation.
