Wisdom from Harry Truman

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

I love that.  I would add that it is amazing what you can learn when you don't care who gets the blame!

Comments

[kate]

Your Truman quote reminded me of the movie and story behind Flash of Genius. Kearns spent years fighting Ford to recognize him for his intermittent windshield wiper invention. What would would have happened had he pursued other inventions?

[Kevin Rutkowski]

I agree with this quote, and it is very closely related to the post about performance reviews.

Unfortunately, many companies pay is directly tied to who gets credit. This makes it difficult for people to not care about who gets credit (or blame).

When I took a class on lean software development from Mary and Tom Poppendieck, they discussed a method of evaluating people based on the results one level up. For example, front line workers are all rewarded equally if their department performs well. Managers of departments are rewarded equally if their division does well. This encourages more teamwork than the typical evaluation methods.

http://www.poppendieck.com/

[Michael Sporer]

Bob;
I'm a big fan of Harry Truman, and I love that quote. We need more organizations that embrace a shared credit/shared blame environment. You can get that when you have a stringent "No Asshole Rule".

Mike