Indifference is Death: Responsibility, Leadership, & Innovation

September 23, 2004
Max McKeown

“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 Microsoft-style 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 Microsoft will never stop innovating. So what do we need to do to convince Microsoft of the ability of 57,000 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.

Speaker Details

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.