Managing Change Management issues strategy tactics best practices

If there were a secret elite society for managers, similar to that of the Free Masons or Rosicrucians, then at the very highest levels of this Management Order you’d be privy to powerful management secrets. One of those them would be,

You can accomplish much if you don't care who gets the credit.
                      Ronald Reagan

There is no end to what you can accomplish if (or when) you don't care who gets the credit.
                      Florence Luscomb

There is no limit to the good you can do if you don't care who gets the credit.
               General George C. Marshall

There's no limit to what a man can achieve, if he doesn't care who gets the credit.
                        Laing Burns, Jr.

It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.
                       Harry S. Truman

It is amazing how much can be accomplished if no one cares who gets the credit.
                       John Wooden

Despite the unintentional irony of the attributions captured in the sidebar, this concept is an incredibly powerful one. It’s also a difficult one for many managers to understand, embrace and exploit. It’s also costly when they don’t.

Many years ago, when I was young, naïve and a lot more hot headed than I am today, there was an office crisis one late Friday afternoon. A critical legislative deadline had snuck up on us “unexpectedly.” (A polite way of saying that management hadn’t been paying attention and let one slip though the cracks) On the coming Monday, meat products were legally required to be labeled in Metric measurements; otherwise the grocery chain would be subject to financial penalties.

After our manager explained the situation to us, several of us volunteered to put aside family plans and work the hot summer weekend until the computer systems were modified, tested and installed.

On Monday we were able to sell meat by the metric meter… (Actually by the kilo, but I couldn’t resist the alliteration, and besides, we used to sell sausages by the foot.)

On Wednesday afternoon a special “Rah Rah” meeting was held to thank our department for pitching in and helping the company avoid significant penalties. My manager stood up, and without identifying a single person who had actually worked over the weekend, took all the credit. She of course, had not worked the weekend. She couldn’t program and besides, she had family plans to honour.

A week later I resigned, having found another job a day or two after the “Blah Blah” meeting. As I said, I was hot headed and impetuous. As you can tell from my re-telling, the story still heats my blood.

This is perhaps too obvious an example of unnecessary credit grabbing. If the manager had taken the stage and pushed away all credit from herself and called all her staff to the stage to praise them publicly, is there any doubt who would have won in the long term?

Here’s a less obvious example. A manager notices an innovation in another department which is enjoying great success. The manager who noticed, but did not come up with the idea,puts together a proposal for rolling out the innovation to all corners of the company. The proposal is accepted, great success is achieved, and the manager who wrote the proposal, in the inevitable “Rah Rah” meeting, takes all the credit, making no mention of where the idea originated.

If you don’t see any “wrong” with that, then you’ve got lots of company. Thinking up an innovation does take genius, but selling people on an idea, getting everyone to accept it, and then rolling it out across the company is exceedingly difficult work. It takes more than the momentary flash of inspiration to implement an idea; it takes a tremendous amount of long term dedication and persistence. Anyone who succeeds at that task is entitled to all the credit which comes their way.

That’s true. It’s also short sighted. There’s no harm, and a lot of advantages to sloughing off the credit and pointing to the originator of the idea and proclaiming for all to hear, “None of this would have happened if not for Bill’s brilliant idea! Bill, come up here and take your bows. We need more people like you!”

Here’s where the illogical higher mathematics of “Credit” comes into play, the more you give it to others, the more it remains your own.

There’s another level to this idea, one much more difficult to embrace. Assume for the moment you have a truly brilliant idea, but neither the resources, nor the influence necessary to make “it” happen. What do you do?

If you really want to see the idea take off, then you give it to someone who can make it happen. By “give it”, I don’t mean write up a proposal and hand it to someone else. I mean you identify the person who could make this happen and you bring them to the point where they come up with the idea. To a point where the idea becomes theirs – lock, stock and barrel. You take no credit for it.

Objections to this final step are many. The idea of allowing someone else to take credit for your idea is a difficult one to swallow. Look what I did when credit was stolen from me so long ago… I quit my job. With that deep seated sense of ownership to “credit”, how can I possibly justify the advice of putting others in a position to take credit for your ideas? Because it would be your choice. We can choose to do this when we know that we can’t deliver the final achievement, and the person we’re handing the opportunity to, can.

Think of credit as a coin of immense value, people will do almost anything to get it, so… if we want to get things done, and we’re willing to give up credit, then we can “achieve” the very best of everyone around us. We do it by giving the credit of achievement away.

© 2005 Peter de Jager – Peter is interested in all things related to Management, but especially Change Management. Contact him at Pdejager@technobility.com

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