"Punish Inaction"

I've become a major fan of Dev Patnaik's book Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy I'm looking forward to interviewing Dev tomorrow for an upcoming People and Projects Podcast episode.

Don't wait for the interview--get the book now and start reading.

While prepping for the interview I came across what I expect to be my favorite quote for this entire month, from a recent article Dev wrote for BusinessWeek.

The quote is credited to Stanford University engineering professor Jim Adams who said, "Good companies reward success, punish failure, and ignore inaction. Great companies reward success and failure and punish inaction."

This hits on a common theme in both my interview with Michael Roberto about his book Know What You Don't Know: How Great Leaders Prevent Problems Before They Happen and in my discussion with Ralph Heath, author of Celebrating Failure: The Power of Taking Risks, Making Mistakes and Thinking Big: we too often seek first to punish failure instead of learn from it.

Yet the even greater wisdom of the quote has to do with how we deal with inaction. You be the judge. How have you seen inaction most often handled?

Tolerated? Expected? Ignored? Seriously. How many times have you said, "I thought of that years ago!" as someone makes money off an idea you had in the shower but went down the drain because you didn't take action.

"Punish inaction."

Do you want to excel at delivering projects and leading teams? Take those strong words to heart today. And don't just consider the inaction of those on your teams and the stakeholders you work with.

You and I both need to look in the mirror to consider the inaction that has been holding us back.

Do you want to make big things happen this year? Reward success. Enthusiastically learn from mistakes. And develop a disdain for inaction.

P.S. Have you still not taken action on getting a copy of Dev's book? :)

Labels: accountability, Books I Love, executives, innovation, learning, managing stakeholders, mistakes, podcast, project management, teambuilding, teams

posted by Andy at 1:52 PM  

Training the Darth Sidious Way

This week I facilitated leadership training with participants from across North America as well as Europe. Each day we had a different group of people join us in Chicago, which means someone from the U.K. would spend more time getting to and from the session than they would in the actual training itself.

Every indication was that people loved the classes. But I couldn't help but think about the time issue....

Think about how much time we waste... Waiting. Commuting. Hurrying up....just to wait.

Remember in the Star Wars movies when Darth Sidious would pop into a discussion as a hologram for a little pep talk with Darth Vadar? How different would things be if we had such technology? How would that change the way we look at business, meetings, office layouts, even cities?

What would the impact be to the travel industry? Training? Whatever industry you are in?

I've not shown up in a hologram yet but I've presented in meetings using state-of-the-art video conferencing technology (sometimes referred to as telepresence). It's impressive now but just a shadow of where things are headed.

I enjoyed watching this clip from a Cisco meeting where John Chambers has an on-stage holographic conversation with two guys who are 14,000 miles away. Even if you only watch the first couple minutes it will give you a sense that the technology might not be, well, light years away!

By the way, if you want to invest in your own skills (and those of your team) yet don't have much time or money, check out our e-learning offerings! It's the next best thing to beaming me to your office!

Labels: e-learning, innovation, time management

posted by Andy at 9:14 PM  

"I'm not cheating! I'm showing my genius!"

I couldn't help but see the irony of two headlines on my browser homepage this morning. The first is a reference to Bernard Madhoff, that he will plead guilty to swindling people out of billions of dollars through his Ponzi scheme.

How refreshing. Finally, a criminal who isn't claiming he's a victim....

The second headline reads "Why Student Cheating Has an Upside."

What?

The article talks about the disconnect between students who insist that being honest and honorable is important yet overwhelmingly admit that they lie to their parents and teachers as well as cheat on tests.

As author Martha Brockenbrough suggests, those who care about our future leaders should find this discouraging. "Kids are shredding their ethics, but not that many feel bad about it." In fact, many "reported that they thought cheaters were more likely to succeed in life."

Brockenbrough relates how cheaters are getting more clever. Indeed technology is providing opportunities to cheat in ways that were not available when I walked the halls.

Yet she goes further: there's an upside to all this cheating. It demonstrates creative genius! Though she points out she's not advocating cheating, she goes on to equate clever approaches to cheating with innovative advances for mankind.

Interesting. When do we cross the line from a healthy break from status quo to becoming a cheat. After all, aren't we encouraged by Marcus Buckingham to "break all the rules?"

Bernie Madhoff is a genius. He kept his scam going for years. He had an innovative approach but it ended up inflicting serious pain across a wide swath of people around the world. Creative genius? Sure. Cheat? Absolutely.

Innovation looks at status quo in a new way and makes the workplace, the world, or a product better, often for the long term. Cheating provides a shortcut to personal gain (or a way to avoid short-term personal pain) with long term negative consequences.

And those consequences are not just experienced by the cheater.

I take exception to the students who think cheaters are more successful. Though it could appear that way in the short term, just look at the headlines to find another cheater soon to be behind bars.

Tempted to cut a corner today? Feeling compelled to exaggerate contributions to accomplishments on your resume? Wondering if you should just slather some lipstick on a status report to management about a project that is really a pig?

Let's not kid ourselves. That's not creative genius. Let's call it what it is: cheating.

Labels: accountability, choices, innovation, integrity, Lipstick on a Pig

posted by Andy at 7:34 AM