Wednesday, February 14, 2007

No News is Bad News

I've been too busy to post recently, but I ran across this article on Leadership Under Fire that I had to comment on. I've also added the blog, From Where I Sit, to my Frequent Flyer list. Mike Hyatt (CEO of Thomas Nelson) shares wisdom from the trenches and the corner office well worth pondering.

The specific point that caught my attention was his quote from General Moore that "When there's nothing wrong, there's nothing wrong ... except there's nothing wrong!". His point is that there is always something wrong, and if you don't know what it is, you had better find out. Quickly. This leads to my philosophy about status reporting:

Good news is no news (it's what we all expect of each other).

Bad news is good news (it gives us a chance to address a problem while it is still "new").

No news is bad news (when nobody is worried, everyone should worry).

1 comment:

Pawel Brodzinski said...

While I don't agree that good news is no news (it's good news indeed) and that bad news is good news (it's no news usually) I totally agree with the last one.

No news is definitely the worst possible case. It's much better to know that since yesterday we haven't moved even by an inch than to have no information. And it's so hard to teach people that "no change" is also a good occasion to pass the information...