Thursday, August 15, 2013

"Glass Half-Empty" - managers should focus on things that aren't working

From Adam Bryant's interview with Sunny Gupta, CEO of Apptio, in the New York Times:

We have this phrase that I use a lot: “glass half-empty.” My marketing guys wanted me to change it to “continuous improvement.” But I said to them that “glass half-empty” is not gloomy. It’s all about how, every single day, maybe 85 percent of things are going right, and there are 15 percent that aren’t going right. And if we have an hour, I’d rather focus on the 15 percent that are not going right, because that’s how you become great.

It’s hard for people to get behind that principle because my sense — having managed a lot of people — is that human beings are generally driven by a desire to be recognized every single day. And I absolutely believe recognition is important and you’ve got to recognize people. The culture has to be set right from Day 1 that we are going to recognize you, but our culture also has this maniacal focus on the things that are not working. People can get frustrated because they feel like you may be attacking them or always asking them about the things that are not working.

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