Honesty

If you think honesty, integrity and fairness are really nice but there’s little place for them in business, then we’re not the company for you. Let’s start with honesty. What’s honesty? Honesty is telling the truth. It’s not padding estimates. It’s not hiding real problems. Certainly, no one should broadcast every problem they have to everyone; but deliberately hiding problems, padding estimates, forcing a bad decision onto a subordinate or simply disguising issues and concerns to make yourself look good doesn’t do anyone any good.

As a manager, I need to make decisions. What do I use to make those decision? Information! So we set up a culture where people have to pad estimates to protect the constant multi-tasking, we hide problems to make yourself look good in front of bosses who control our salaries and we cover it up with 70-hour weeks, constant fire-fighting and a feeling like we didn’t accomplish anything.

Not in my company. Here, we tell the truth. I need to make decisions and if the only information I have is lies, then I can’t make the right decisions. If you screwed up an estimate, tell me; we fix it. If the technology you selected didn’t work; tell me, we’ll fix it. And DON’T PAD ESTIMATES. That means you’ll be late sometimes. That’s okay, it also means you’ll be early sometimes. The aggregation of all those late and early finishes balance out and we get stuff one faster!

I don’t embrace honesty because it’s nice. I embrace it for pure greed! It makes me richer!