Tuesday 30 July 2013

Punishing success and rewarding failure

We plan to punish success


CEO Stan texted me after he spoke to Wifey over this weekend: "Glo-prepare a plan to reward failure; she read another article-Stan."

CEO Stan's wife (Wifey) had indeed read yet another article called "The Importance of Rewarding Failure". This magazine article praises the value of failure as a learning experience.

After I skimmed the article, I reached the conclusion that rewarding failure is in line with my core value of being Stan's valued business partner. That is almost erotic.

"What a pile of cr-p" my father Pierre Elliot Ramsbottom would say. I can almost hear him, "What does all these words mean, Gloria, for Heaven sakes?", Dad would have asked were he alive today.....

We certainly have had enough failure to reward! Mais oui! 

  • none of our Russian staff speak English well
  • the Indians speak 40-50 dialects, all at once
  • HR is the most-hated function
  • No one knows what a blockchain is and isn't
  • Internet of things and bigdata nerds have overdosed on their smartphones and need digital detox
  • Cynthia Axe will need to trim "several" hundred staff whilst boosting engagement
  • key customer sends us hate mail "on a regular basis", whilst Comrade Carl thinks that our product is a pearl.
So, in the framework of my HR thought leadership, here is the "rewarding failure" plan, which makes lemonade out of lemons, as it were. I love the expression, "as it were".


1) All our engineering staff will have a weekend in Damascus. We have provide each with a T shirt with the American flag inscribed with "we love democracy-sometimes".

2) Our Sales Team will spend a week in Pyongyang, to get a knack about towing the party line.

3) We will take the lowest performers from all groups for a fun weekend in mid city Detroit. 
Miss Cynthia Axe will join them as project manager. Miss Axe has failed to garner the love of our staff in the framework of her role as Head of the Early Bird Retirement Plan. Stan calls her "your most dismal failure, Glo"

4) Software delivery time slips will be be celebrated in a pizza pie slinging match. 

Cynthia Axe will chain all engineers to their chairs, and Stan (and Miss Axe) will throw pizza pies. It will be wow wow wow wow time. That's four wows.

5) To the employee with the most failures, we will provide a coach, who also is faith healer and believes in appreciative inquiry.









2 comments:

  1. All over your globality Gloria. Continue the good work.You may also tell us a tiny bit more about appreciative inquiry!!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Mister Patrick,
    Appreciative inquiry is neither global or sustainable.
    If you wish, I can send u a text about this.-en anglais.
    Gloria

    ReplyDelete

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