BLAMESTORMING. Sitting around in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.
- Various humourous lists of "new words" on the internet
Blamestorming is a portmanteau of blame and brainstorm - it is far more frequently used as the verb "blamestorming" than the noun "blamestorm".
Now the use of "brainstorming" to describe collaborative problem solving and idea generation originated in 1953-1954 ("Applied Imagination: Principles and Procedures of Creative Problem-Solving" by Alex F. Osborn. He worked in advertising), therefore the term blamestorming must have been coined some time after this.
It's almost a joke word - it's a wry commentary on life in corporate environments - many people are more interested in failing without attracting blame than in succeeding in whatever silly task they have been given. Hey, it's less work to fail, and avoiding blame may be more important than increasing some distant company profit statement.
Blamestorming, strictly speaking, is a group meeting where all members of the group throw out ideas until a version of events is settled on where none of the people present are in any way responsible. However it can also apply outside of the meeting room, to any response to a problem which concentrates on what went wrong at the expense of fixing the problem. This is not the most important thing, unless covering your behind is more important to you progress. Oddly, some people really seem to get something out of unproductive running around in circles, screaming and shouting at everyone when problems occur. Personally, this approach annoys me no end.