Accountability Matters!
04/19/04
Larry Page, Google, Cofounder and President for Products, knows that accountability helps generate excellence in an age of constant change: "We do a simple thing that in retrospect was brilliant: We wrote a program that asks every engineer what they did every week. It sends them e-mail on Monday, and concatenates the e-mails together in a document that everyone can read. And it then sends that out to everyone and shames those who did not answer by putting them on the top of the list. It has run reliably every week since we started, so for every week of our company's history we have a record of what everyone did. It's good for performance reviews, and if you're joining a project team, in five minutes you can read what your team members did the last few weeks or months."
Sometimes simple habits really matter. Grades matter; getting bad and good grades spur either shame or a sense of personal achievement. Incentives based on results matter; being paid for performance gives focus to your day. When I read of schools taking away the stigma of failure or giving everyone in the class an "A," I wonder what these youth will do when they enter a global economy that requires excellence, the fortitude to persevere in the face of frustration, and the ability to do what it takes to produce results. Getting a bad evaluation in your job doesn't just hurt your self-esteem; when you don't perform in an accountability culture, you lose your job. When you have to write down what you eat before you eat it, you tend to lose weight. When you have to report weekly what you are doing with your time to add value, you work hard to make sure you have something worth writing in your weekly report. What are you doing to bring accountability into your team's work habits? For now, maybe we all ought to do a google search to see if we can find out where we can buy this software program they created.
A PAULSON QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"Getting a bad evaluation in your job doesn't just hurt your self-esteem; when you don't perform in an accountability culture, you lose your job." --Terry Paulson, Ph.D.
MONDAY'S MIRTHFUL MOMENT
Loren Ekroth (www.conversation-matters.com) provides this week’s mirthful moment—Metaphors in the essays of high school wordsmiths! Enjoy these “Analogies and Metaphors Found in High School Essays:”
Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two other sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.
He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.
He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
When you keep your eyes open for mirth, you just may find it! Hope this kicks off your morning and helps get your mood adjusted for the week. Now, get busy MAKING CHANGE WORK and have some fun along the way!...