Business Insight Zone

Somewhere in the Godfather epic comes a scene in which Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) gets up from a dinner table because his host has given the definitive word that he won’t be acceding to the Godfather’s demands. I wish I could find the exact quote, but Hagen says something like this:

“My employer always insists on hearing bad news right away.”

So should we all.

Two things have me thinking about this:

1. Blogging pioneer Dave Winer posted two tweets on Friday in which he noted Microsoft’s change from “its early days, [when] they welcomed criticism, and used it productively” to its current incarnation, which he regards as “dilbert disease everywhere, 24-by-7.” Now, Winer might not be the world’s #1 expert on Microsoft, but what he says here jibes with what I’ve seen and heard about the company — or at least the company as a whole, since I know that there are plenty of individuals and teams within Microsoft who welcome the open exchange of ideas.

It seems almost inevitable that organizations — even ones known for great innovation and savvy — reach a point at which bureaucracy overwhelms them. That, or they buy into their own myth, the same way that the prima donnas (of both sexes) in the world of show business come to believe that they really are beyond reproach. Hey, it’s a piece of human nature, apparently, and from all I can tell it transcends cultures and centuries.

It’s still to be avoided. The best performers in any field stay open to criticism. They keep looking for ways to improve. They welcome criticism because criticism might tell them something they should know so that they can get better at what they do, or so they can refine their ideas.

Contrast this to the managerial mentality captured in the panels of Dilbert. We all laugh at the pompous, clueless managers in Dilbert because we’ve all known managers of that ilk: too convinced of their own rightness to be open to any other views. The sad thing about managers like this is that they never grow, and they crush most chances for growth in the people who work for them.

2. This isn’t just an abstract concept to be applied to Microsoft or to business managers as a class. Indeed, I’m trying to apply it directly to myself. Case in point: In the week of Christmas, I had a couple of exchanges with a mystery commenter (he or she didn’t leave a name) on the subject of climate change. I tried to answer the commenter’s points one by one, but for whatever reason the commenter didn’t weigh back in to rebut (or to grant) my arguments.

There’s a (big) part of me that would like to equate this commenter to Dilbert’s manager — pompous, full of it, and ready to bluster . . . right up until the moment I stood up for myself and started marshaling inconvenient facts. Ah, but then I recall my father’s admonitions to be humble. It’s easy for me to think I’m Mr. Smarty Pants — and be just as wrong as Dilbert’s boss.

So, please, an open invitation to my readers, now and in the future:

• If you think I’m screwing up my facts or my analysis, please tell me.
• If you think I could be writing this blog better, please tell me.
• If you think I do a certain thing very well and want to me to do more of it, please tell me.
• Heck, if you think I tried to sell a bill of goods to the mystery commenter on the climate-change issue, please tell me.

Mind you, I’m not a little kid, and I hardly think I’m a pushover. If I think you’re wrong, I’ll tell you so — politely — just like I did with my mystery commenter. But I do crave that sort of critical engagement. The comments and correspondence generated by this blog reassure me of my audience’s smarts — and those are smarts from which I’d dearly love to benefit.

The short version: may we all avoid the Dilbert syndrome. Please help me to do so.

Category: Management, The working life