Comments on: "Trust, but Verify"

By: Jessica Fenlon

Jessica Fenlon — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 18:05:46 +0000

P.S. Valuable post!

By: Jessica Fenlon

Jessica Fenlon — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 18:03:43 +0000

We each are responsible for our own achievement kung-fu. Gotta shift attitude a bit to get into a rhythm of making excellence. Its an attitude outside of reward & punishment.

Its not about what you get (short term paycheck) its about what you give (what I am creating for my community). Its about cultivating a practice of making excellence all the time.

It is the kung-fu of walking away from being driven by impulse (i.e. responding to short term discomfort/difficulty as a problem-solving schema). Am I reacting to some input? Or am I consciously creating according to a higher set of values I have decided to act on?

Some people poison themselves by routinely avoiding accountability (a short-term solution to the discomfort of being confronted by others about the difficulties they are making for others). What this means is, don’t cheat. Not because its wrong, but because it turns you into a cheater. Treat yourself with respect.

By: Ric Dragon

Ric Dragon — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 17:20:10 +0000

Makes me think of some of Dan Ariely’s talks… about how most people will cheat a little. May understanding that tendency helps?

By: Whitney

Whitney — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 13:59:44 +0000

Is the answer of finding one or two external people, like a Board of advisors, you voice your goals to and they help keep you accountable, check in, and see how you’re coming? A support network? I find that with the fitness stuff, having a trainer I am obligated to see twice a week, having measurements taken in regular intervals, and having periodic bigger goals keeps me on the right path. There’s enough checking in to be helpful and measure progress, but not enough to seem badgering or in my face. Very much a trust and verify model.
I think this same metric can work for all of us in the entrepreneurial space- we just have to find the people who are willing to meet on a reglar basis to be this accountability group.

By: Bernard Dahl

Bernard Dahl — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 23:42:56 +0000

Right… I edited the sentence and took out “reward”. Kinda ruins my point. crap. ;-)

By: Bernard Dahl

Bernard Dahl — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 23:41:05 +0000

Such a valid “thinking out loud” topic. Your question on the subject of rewarding quarterly results could be turned around; often fear guides the (in)actions and judgment of people – the fear of being punished for NOT meeting quarterly or monthly results.

Both sentences share the words REWARD and RESULTS, perhaps those are a good place to start – perhaps they shouldn’t be so closely intertwined – I wonder if that is at all possible…

By: CT Moore

CT Moore — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 21:41:41 +0000

Because I’ve worked in places where passive-aggressive micro-management (PAMM) was the rule, I want to share an insight about how being mico-managed or constantly checked-up on affects your work ethic.

I think the reason your work ethic suffers is because when someone doesn’t trust you even when you have given them no reason not to, their opinion stops mattering to you.

It’s kind of like they “entrusted” something to you, but don’t “trust” you, so they mustn’t trust their own judgement (or something). And how can you trust someone who doesn’t trust themselves.

Who knows, maybe there’s even a marketing component to it — i.e. giving them a throwaway option. You know they’re going to pick at something even if its perfect, so you give them something obvious to speed up the process and make your life easier.

By: JK

JK — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 19:40:20 +0000

That’s cool that you linked to him. It wasn’t there in the version of the post that was in google reader. That happens when you revise posts sometimes after publishing, the revisions don’t appear in the feed or something.

By: Julien

Julien — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 18:58:46 +0000

@JK: Heh, not much of a coincidence really. I saw his post and it got me thinking because of the way my father always said it, so I wrote something. :)

I actually linked to him in the post, in case you missed that.

@John Meadows: I’m not sure a reward system such as we have can be at all dismantled. There’s something to be said for intrinsic reward but when you can walk away with, say, 5 years salary in 6 months or something due to a way that bonuses are structured, why wouldn’t you? You’d be stupid (unless it were unethical).

Never mind that when we do see examples of hard work, etc, they’re usually unsung heroes, ie people that aren’t rich or famous. What are we telling people about the value of hard work if we aren’t praising them?

By: John Meadows

John Meadows — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 18:46:21 +0000

I think you hit the nail at the end of your post, where you mention connecting reward with work ethic, and we don’t see much of that today. If we look around us today, we see senior management compensation completely out of touch with reality, government bailouts to fund billions in corporate bonuses, athletes winning by cheating and drug doping, etc. In short, there are very few positive role models that people can look to to see a connection between honest, ethical effort, and success. Many people feel powerless to change their lot, regardless of how hard they try. They feel the deck is stacked against them, and so think “why should I try any harder than I have to.”

By: JK

JK — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 18:02:16 +0000

Weird. Derek Sivers had a post yesterday about the same thing. With the same title. http://sivers.org/trust-but-verify