The Mindset

A couple of days ago Kathy Sierra wrote about the difference between who companies say they want to hire and who companies actually want as their employees.

When I read Kathy’s post it sounded awfully familiar. Sure, I have seen the exact same phenomenon with my own eyes: companies allegedly looking for smart, innovative, independent people, while in fact they encourage people to be robots. But that was only part of the déjà vu feeling I had. Because companies actually say many things they don’t really mean.

Commitment to quality and professionalism is a common example. I doubt if any of us ever heard a CEO say he couldn’t care less about the quality of his products. On the contrary, CEOs usually say that quality is a top priority. But many CEOs don’t put their money where their mouth is.

And why should they? Long-term thinking does not come easy. It is much easier to manage a company one day at a time. Or at least one quarter at a time. So, whenever there’s a tough decision to make, short-term prevails. Quick and dirty was once saved for “special events”. It was an extreme measure for extreme circumstances. Nowadays, it is a mainstream methodology for many companies. How else can you increase productivity to meet the ever-growing demands of your customers? You have to be quick now and take care of the dirty later. But as every manager in the world knows deep inside — later never comes.

But as long as the financial results of the next quarter are satisfactory, everyone is happy.

So, as a service to our top-management readers, here is the complete list of why quick and dirty is the best methodology for your company:

1. Quick and dirty solutions always work. At least for a while. But chances are that by the time they cease to work, it won’t be your problem any more, will it?

2. You will never need to clean up the mess. You will always have subordinates to clean it up for you, won’t you?

3. Your customers will never notice. When it comes to software products, we are all used to bugs, crashes, loss of data, and extremely unusable interfaces. And we are the perfect customers — we never say anything, do we?

4. Your investors will be happy. Who cares about the long-term as long as you sign contracts and sell products? Investors want to see their money now, don’t they?

5. It always seems like something is happening. There’s a constant frenzy. Everybody is working around-the-clock. You are certainly getting value for your money, aren’t you?

6. That’s what your competitors are doing. You have to follow their lead to be competitive, don’t you?

7. Business reality is too dynamic. You have to be quick (and dirty) to respond to all these changes. You simply cannot make long-term plans in such a dynamic reality, can you?

8. We have innovative people. They can innovate their way around any crisis we come across. This is what true innovation is all about, isn’t it?

9. How can it be wrong? After years of practicing the quick and dirty methodology and getting away with it, there is simply no chance in the world there’s a better way to do things, is there?

10. _______________________. I’m leaving this one for you to fill in, because everyone has a secret justification for doing it quick and dirty no one has ever heard before…

So why can’t you find a single CEO to admit that his company’s motto is delivering quick and dirty solutions? Probably for the same reason no one says he wants to hire robots. It just doesn’t sound good, does it?

This entry was posted on Monday, October 9th, 2006 at 7:04 am and is filed under Professionalism, Vision, Methodology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.