Mr. Slease makes some fine points today in his blog. Having spent some time annealing my thoughts in the same crucible, I felt the desire to share my view on the point. The Truman quote is very good and reminds me of a corollary which I think comes from japan. Or maybe from a Micheal Crichton book about Japan. “fix the problem, not the blame”.
Worries about who gets credit or blame waste a lot of time and concentration points. People fight about these things for two reasons, one good and one bad. The bad one (from the point of view of the enterprise) is vanity or ambition (whether those are the same is another topic). However, Some people will fight for credit because they actual want credentials. Not useless ones like Microsoft certifications but real one like the respect of your Co-workers. These creditials often count for alot of the real power in how things get done.
In any group there’s alway a number of ambitious credit seekers who after being deftly pushed in the right direction via social akido, will assume and communicate that it was their wisdom that saved the day. The martial artist can tend to toil in anonymity, like Caine. When the next situation comes up they may not get listened too as well as the people who speak louder or more persistently. The world would be better without the self-promoters but last time I checked they weren’t going anywhere.
Like I said overall I don’t disagree with the Bill on this or on much of anything really. I just think that you must be careful grasshopper, pay close attention to the way the wind is blowing.
Leave a Reply