Indifference is Death

The first blog post I did in 2003 was titled "Microsoft, Ever Think Some of Your Customers Hate You?" Max McEwean is coming back to Redmond next week to talk to Microsoft employees, in a talk titled: "Indifference is Death: Responsibility, Leadership, & Innovation."

Here's the description.

"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference." - ELIE WIESEL

Indifference n 1: apathy demonstrated by an absence of emotional reactions [syn: emotionlessness, impassivity, impassiveness, phlegm, stolidity, unemotionality] 2: the trait of lacking enthusiasm for or interest in things generally [syn: apathy, spiritlessness] 3: the trait of remaining calm and seeming not to care; a casual lack of concern [syn: nonchalance, unconcern]

Intel’s employees are getting bored (Andy Grove just said so) and that boredom has led to missed deadlines, reduced innovation, and poor quality. With indifference comes a casual lack of concern for whatever happens next. The original tech-super-kids have huge organisations, huge egos, huge stock-piles of cash but dwindling reserves of employee purpose and pride.

Problem (and answer) is that the only way of justifying super-profits is to innovate and deliver solutions stuffed with what those customers really want to buy. The greatest danger to that kind of successful innovation is employee apathy. People get apathetic when they don’t think that what they do makes a difference. We stop running when the second mile is not appreciated. We don’t speak up when we know its career limiting. We don’t suggest when we know our ideas will be stolen, mistreated, and never acknowledged. We are working too hard and thinking too little. We need space. We need fun. We need cool. We need a change.

The cure for apathy is to share power and free people to be never-endingly curious. Curious people don’t get bored. A curious company will never stop innovating. So what do we need to do to convince smart people to be self-directed? People will only share responsibility when they share authority. Quality only happens when everyone is involved and when improvement ideas are allowed to flow unimpeded. Let everyone give a damn and then they will.

BIO:

Max Mckeown, Europe’s unorthodox answer to Tom Peters, is back in Redmond. In 2002 he delivered the most popular lecture of the year with more than 10,000 people attending in person or viewing the web cast. Since then this charmingly opinionated, sometimes violent, and ludicrously well informed genius has been busily changing his world and even found time to work on business excellence with EMEA. Last time he spoke about “Why People Hate Microsoft” and this time he moves on to tackle “Indifference, Leadership and Innovation” with the best ideas from the boldest organisations on the planet.

Comments

[Abelmon Bastos (BRA)]

Well... Wiesel is right and you're right when you said the answer is to innovate, share power and that "People get apathetic when they don’t think that what they do makes a difference"...

Now, John, the time is to think about Freedom... Just think about Free Software: all their innovation, all their shared power, and all the difference it can makes in the world.

It's clear: FS is the future, it's concrete and real.

That's no way Microsoft can change it... And if M$ try, it will fails. It's better joining FS and makes the big difference. Fear is weakeness: "embrace change".

[Wena]

hi there...haven't seen ya blogging in awhile.

btw, i got my promotion to a manager. :) thanks to your tips and all. :)