Newsletter 57: Is rewarding heroics making your workplace better? Plus, Project 2025 book delayed, AI’s marketing value is less than zero, Scottish WorldCon triumph, three people to follow and three books to read.
Every heroic workplace act is a sign of failure
I worked in companies for 33 years. I was often the hero, and I reveled in it.
What is a workplace hero?
To be clear, I’m not talking about firefighters, soldiers, or doctors and nurses in the emergency room: those people are actual heroes who on any given day might be required to be heroic to save somebody’s life.
No, I’m talking about garden-variety workplace heroes: people who go above and beyond the usual call of work to do something difficult and amazing.
The software team that finishes coding the application on deadline by working 80-hour weeks for months on end.
The sales group that persuades, charms, and deals its way into a record quarter.
The customer service rep that cobbles together resources and persuades people throughout their organization to somehow solve an unhappy customer’s problem and turn them into a renewal.
The accounting team that works overtime to neatly and professionally close the books on time, paving the way for the public offering.
Companies love to celebrate these folks. If your company has any culture at all, these heroes are getting awards and being mentioned by the CEO at all-hands meetings. They’re getting Lucite trophies with their names engraved on them and plaques with their picture as employee of the month. They’re getting handshakes all around and fancy dinners. If they’re in sales, perhaps they’re getting a company-paid vacation.
And when it’s time for performance reviews, if there’s any justice, they may even get a raise or a stock award.
The message is clear: we, your managers, want all of you to look up to these heroes and aspire to be heroic as they are.
Hero worship looks like this: we love you because you did whatever it took to get the job done.
Permit me to ask the forbidden question: Why is that the most desirable corporate value?
The truth is, behind every heroic act is a screwed-up system.
A coding system that regularly requires 80-hour days is inefficient. Either the workers aren’t communicating well, their tools are deficient, or their partners in the testing team aren’t doing what’s required.
If a sales team regularly has to depend on guile and discounts to close the quarter, either the product and service are deficient, the marketing failing to generate good opportunities, or their own efforts are undermining profits — or all of the above.
If service or product has lots of unhappy customers, maybe they were the wrong people sold the wrong solution — or maybe, whatever they bought is full of bugs and deficiencies.
If accounting has to work overtime to close the books, it’s understaffed or the accounting system is broken.
Heroism is inefficient. It’s a sign that the resource applied to the job isn’t well matched to the work. For every overworked hero, there is an underworked staffer somewhere else in the organization who should really be doing something else — or a whole department full of them.
And heroism has a downside. Heroes get tired. Heroes get burned out. Nobody can be heroic every day without wearing down and making mistakes.
Imagine for a moment the worker who, rather than trying to be a hero, just works to improve the systems their colleagues use. They makes the communication more efficient. They fix the bug that is generating all the service calls. They make the hires to keep the staffing at a level where everyone can work sanely without the threat of being called slackers.
These people are the ones who really deserve to be celebrated, because they are the ones making the most significant overall contributions to efficiency, innovation, worker happiness, customer experience, and sustainable profitability.
I don’t blame the heroes: they’re only doing what’s expected to get that momentary hit of adulation. Good for them. Huzzah!
But for every hero recognized, there’s a deeper problem to be solved, and a more productive way that employee could be working, if only the company ran better.
Smart managers and professionals are finding those deeper problems and making the necessary improvements. They’re sadly unsung. If you run a company, you ought to fix that.
News for writers and others who think
How valuable is the term “artificial intelligence” in a product description? According one study, the value is negative — consumers have less trust in products with AI in the description. AI is neither a feature nor a benefit, so people don’t know what to make of it.
More on the implosion of Scribe Media, a publishing services company: according to Publisher’s Lunch (subscriber link), “a group of former employees has filed a motion for emergency relief, following an effort by CEO Eric Jorgenson to get class members to take individual payouts in exchange for confidentiality agreements and legal release.” Scribe was basically a Ponzi scheme, and these workers were victims; they deserve compensation, and I hope they can claw it out of the “new” Scribe Media.
The New York Times is holding a writing contest for teenagers who can create a how-to piece of 400 words or less. This idea celebrates brevity, clarity, and truth; it’s a far better way to train aspiring writers than fiction “creative writing” contests.
The World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow, Scotland came off without a hitch (subscriber link). This is news, because the most recent previous cons and the associated Hugo Awards have been pretty messed up.
Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, the group that authored the controversial conservative manifesto Project 2025, has delayed his new book’s publication date from September to after the November presidential election. Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America includes a foreword by Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance. Short of fatally flawed manuscripts, printing problems, or ethical controversies, it’s unusual for books to have their pub dates moved, especially books that are timed to benefit from a big event, like a presidential election. Watch the news: I predict the book, or at least Vance’s foreword, will leak at whatever moment political actors think it will do the most damage.
Three people to follow
Chenxi Wang, Ph.D. , security expert and voice for truth and integrity in a moment of cyber anxiety.
Poppy MacDonald , president of USA Facts, an accessible gateway to the vast data resources of the US government.
Bob Buday , thought leadership expert.
Three books to read
Everybody Needs an Editor: The Essential Guide to Clear and Effective Writing by Melissa Harris and Jenn Bane (S&S/Simon Element, 2024). A journalist and a marketer describe how to write for the modern reader.
On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything by Nate Silver (Penguin, 2024). America’s top election forecaster (yes, still) muses on how thinking about probability, risk, and reward has changed the way stuff works now.
Words Onscreen: The Fate of Reading in a Digital World by Naomi Baron (Oxford University Press, 2015). How reading onscreen has changed the way we understand the world.
