This is really good advice, to which I'd add: 1) Don't lose track of the outcome, "being critical can easily put others in a defensive stance and make it hard

This is really good advice, to which I'd add: 1) Don't lose track of the outcome, "being critical can easily put others in a defensive stance and make it hard to get that information", this also applies to the phase after you've gathered all the necessary information and need to fix it, if you've been too fast and loose with the blame cannon, good luck getting anyone's help afterwards fixing it or earning any respect for future work. 2) From the OP "This is when we should take a pause before pointing out something is wrong", this might sound weird bringing this up, but Mindfulness techniques as often also employed in CBT, which encourage you to observe the immediate thoughts, e.g. in this case fish out the blame cannon and let rip, but instead acknowledge them and don't act on them are great for developing this "pause". 3) From a Systems Thinking pov, complex adaptive systems often evolve in many small steps, rather than are designed so I'd extend your "But more often than not there is a good reason" to more often and not there may be many good reasons all bubbling away in the melting pot of despair. As an example my last company tried to implement the Spotify Squad model and it was a disaster, but it wasn't just one decision by one person that sunk it, it was a whole combination of decisions taken over time and feeding off each other, many taken by people who didn't even work there any more.