Markham Lee_

Five Myths About Business Failure in a Downturn

Kelm: at the company in question I was very successful in terms of improving profits, morale within my department, quality of service, etc, but to do so I had to buck the system and almost insulate my group from the larger company. SO it led to a lot of tension between myself and the executives I reported to, ditto for many of peers running other business groups.In other words "serving the religion" was more important than delivering results.

It was an odd situation because I had more incentives to be mediocre via "maintaining the facade" than I did to excel in ways that corrected and/or exposed our problems.

In the end it drove me (and all of my peers at the time) from the company. I.e. maintaining the facade removed the people who could drive change.

Friar - I think the way you reward innovation is to make it priority via sending the message that NOTHING is sacred, your employees have to understand that your mission is to innovate, drive change and constantly find ways to improve the business. Because when you make something sacred employees are afraid to speak-up, and/or feel as if there is no point in trying to fix certain things because management won't support it.

There is a book called "Execution" that puts forth the idea that managers should act like football coaches, in that they should always be looking for ways to improve the organization, raise the playing ability of their talent, etc. It's a good analogy because even though some players, offensive/defensive schemes, etc, stick around too long, in the end the team has to innovate, load up with better talent or die.

-M