Inspiring Quality Work

Often times we find a worker who performs little, produces nothing, and rarely of any quality. Whatever the reason, they soak up money and force other people to do the work that they are not doing. Sadly, most of the times we shun them and poke fun at their lacking. We reduce our expectations and remove them from the critical path just to protect ourselves and the success of a project goal. This is hardly the way that the situation should be handled. Instead, lets borrow a page from Christ's teachings and consider applying them to solve this problem.

At the next project meeting, sit down with the team and tell them a variant of a parable found in Mt. 25. Here is my variant:

A program manager had six tasks and two weeks to complete them in. He had three workers who could complete these tasks, each with their own skills. He gave one worker three of these tasks, another two and the last one task according to their abilities. He then went on a business trip and did not return until the time was nearly up. When he returned, he called a project meeting to find out what had been done. The first worker exclaimed, "I've done well. I not only completed my three tasks, I found a way to generalize the problems so that we can solve problems just like these from now on very easily!" to which the program manager was very pleased and sent letters to the worker's boss exalting him and recommending him for a greater position of power. The second worker exclaimed, "I've done well. I've completed two tasks and additionally performed testing to ensure their quality and documentation to help others understand how problems were solved." to which the program manager was also very pleased and send letters to this worker's boss exalting him and recommending him for a greater position of power. The third worker then said, "I knew that you wanted this task done so I completed it, but did not do anything else for you did not ask of it." To which the manager was furious and exclaimed, "You wicked and lazy worker! You did nothing more than what you were given. You did not even consider how to perform additional work. You can not be trusted with any more than what you are given and told what to do." After this, the manager wrote letters to this worker's boss scolding him and recommending that he be let go from the project and shunned by others.

As you can see, this parable adoptation teaches that the lazy worker will not be rewarded but the productive worker who takes initiative will. This will encourage workers to go above and beyond for the reward of career advancement, and discourage workers from simply doing very little of poor quality in fear of career regression.

Its amazing that this simple parable lays the foundation for the morality behind a capitalistic form of economics where competition (both external and internal) are righteous, and other forms (socialism) that reward laziness or forbid scolding of those who do not pull their weight are wrong. After all, the good program manager is the one who raises others to become future other program managers. Making new leaders is the quality of a great leader.