Personal Resposnibility?

One of the things that I heard, and I still hear today is how an IBO can become successfuly simply by duplicating, copying, or following the advice of their upline. The concept is simple, do as you are told and you will succeed. You don't have to be brilliant, you just need the ability to copy and follow advice. I'm sure many Amway IBOs have heard this from someone in their upline. On the surface it seems logical, just do the same things that your upline did and the results will be the same.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. You cannot simply re-create your upline's circumstances and copy it. Your upline likely had a different circle of influence in their lives. They knew and associated with different people and had a different set of skills and/or qualities. Some people are more charismatic and are better at interacting with others. Some people are more convincing and some are not. Some uplines may have worked with a lot of people, thus having many contacts, whereas someone who works alone at nite may not have any contacts. It is not a simple matter of copying. Even if you can get someone "in front of your upline" to see the plan, you still need to talk to people to make this happen.

Upline leaders will often convince their downline that their tools are the key to success. My sponsor used to always tell our group that "tapes sponsor people". Although a tape may have helped sponsor someone, somewhere, I never saw a single person who got sponsored because of a tape or cd. I also have not heard of anyone who got sponsored by listening to a tape.

The issue at hand though, is for hard working IBOs who work the system, do the core steps only to fail. This is where upline then places blame on the IBO rather than the system. The IBO is taught to accept personal responsibility even though the system may have failed him/her. The system will take credit for successes, but will never take responsibility for an IBO's failure. This is a problem. It's like playing a game you cannot win. The system is touted when 1 in 20,000 or so reaches the diamond level, but noone mentions the system when talking about the 19,999 who did not reach the ultimate level.

Why doesn't the system and the upline leaders take personal responsibility for a change?