Good leaders take more than their share of the blame and less than their share of the credit. Unfortunately, most leaders take more than their share of the credit and less than their share of the blame. They are not respected. When errors do occur, are you ready to support heroic efforts even in the face of failure?
After only two weeks on the job, Jim had made a critical error that took the company computer system down. He went to his boss immediately and said, “I think I just made a big mistake.” She replied, “I’m sure it is not as big as you think it is.” He confided, “I think it could be bigger.”
Her eyes got large as Jim described the system crash and his lack of a data backup. In the midst of problem solving, her boss entered in low-brain function, that sub-cortical reptilian area that runs on more emotion than intellect. For fifteen minutes she was yelled at for Jim’s mistake.
Jim was sure he was history. All Jim could think of was at least his resume was current; he wouldn’t even have to admit that he had ever worked at this company!
She took the heat for Jim’s mistake. Not once had she even mentioned his name. It would have been tempting. All she would have had to do was to point her finger at Jim and say, “There HE is. He’s new, and he’s defective!”
After the division manager ran out of steam, he said, “This shouldn’t have even happened!” Jim’s boss replied, “It did, and I take full responsibility. This is my department. But every minute we are spending here means we are that much later in getting the system back up.” The division manager left the room, leaving Jim alone with his boss. She did not look at him. Instead, she stared at the door, closed her eyes and took a couple of deep breaths. She opened her eyes, a smile formed on her lips, she looked at him and said, “Don’t do that again.”
He all but fell over his own words of apology. She stopped him, “I think you are going to remember the importance of backup. And if this continues to be a problem, we will have a different kind of conversation. But you took responsibility for your mistake. Most of the time I have to search to find them. I respect what you did. You’re the kind of person I want working on my team. Now, I’m going to need your help to get this system back online.”
Jim asked me to look at his business card and said, “You can’t see it, but every day I write in invisible ink — ‘SLAVE.’ I would do anything for that woman!”
Leadership may not be as complicated as we make it. The late Bear Bryant, the great football coach, shared the same truth Jim’s boss lived when he said: “I’m just a plowhand from Arkansas, but I have learned how to hold a team together. How to lift some men up, how to calm down the others, until finally they’ve got one heartbeat together, a team. There’s just three things I’d ever say: If anything goes bad, I did it. If anything goes semi-good, then we did it. If anything goes real good, then you did it. That’s all it takes to get people to win football games for you.” Those are wise words on leadership no matter what kind of team you lead.
Copyright © 2006 by Terry L. Paulson. All Rights Reserved
Beating the Blame Game: Real Leaders Take the Blame and Give the Credit
Beating Crime with Printers
Perhaps it would be naive to think that the 21st century governments would stop at monitoring your every move on the street. Pause for a minute to contemplate what the next level of tracking could include. The answer is laser printers. If you think a document from your colour laser printer doesn't carry your name, think again.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) claims that it has cracked the tracking codes embedded in Xerox Corporation's DocuColor laser printers. Such codes are simply one of the numerous ways manufacturers employ technology to help governments fight currency counterfeiting.
The United States government is allegedly involved with a number of other companies in separate anti-counterfeiting programmes meant to prevent currency from being scanned and printed. The U.S. government, however, is not the only country teaming with the printing industry to fight counterfeiters. A few experts believe that the Dutch government is also using similar anti-counterfeiting methods through Canon’s encoding technology.
Researchers in the U.S. have uncovered patterns of yellow dots arranged in 15 by 8 grids and printed repeatedly over every colour page. The dots, however, are visible only with a magnifying glass or under blue light, which causes the yellow dots to appear black. The code appears as a grid of microscopic yellow dots, each less than a millimeter in diameter. These millimeter-sized dots appear about every inch on a printed page, nestled within the words and margins. By analyzing various test pages printed by supporters worldwide, researchers found that some of the dots correspond to the printers' serial numbers, and other dots refer to the date and time of the printing.
Consider two documents – one carrying the author's name and one meant to be anonymous. By comparing the codes, it can be determined whether the two documents were printed by the same printer, even if Xerox reveals nothing about a customer's serial number. The EFF is now studying printers from other well-known manufacturers with similar tracking codes, but whose keys remain secret.
Unlike inkjet printers, laser printers, copiers, and fax machines fire a laser through a mirror and series of lenses to embed the document or image on a page. Such devices range from a little over £80 to more than £1000, and are designed for both home and office use.
Peter Crean, a senior research fellow at Xerox, says the company pioneered this technology about 20 years ago because several countries had expressed concern about selling the printers in their country. The move aimed at allaying fears that their colour copiers could be easily used to counterfeit bills.
It is believed that since then, many other companies have adopted the practice. According to experts, several printer companies secretly encode the serial number and the manufacturing code of their colour laser printers and colour copiers on every document those machines produce.
Laser-printing technology makes it extremely easy to counterfeit money and documents, and the dots, according to supporters, in use in some printers for decades, allow law enforcement agencies to identify and track down counterfeiters.
However, the same dots could also be employed to track a document back to any person or business that printed it. Although the technology has been present for a long time, printer companies have not been required to notify customers of the feature.
If this practice disturbs you, don't bother trying to disable the encoding mechanism of your printer—you'll probably break it. The coding device is a chip located deep into the machine, near the laser. It embeds the dots when the document is about 20 billionths of a second from printing.
Although nobody has an estimate of how many laser printers, copiers, and multifunction devices track documents, experts believe that the practice is commonplace among major printer companies. The U.S. Secret Service would agree that it finds the printing industry quite helpful to law enforcement.
According to sources, counterfeiting cases are brought to the Secret Service, which checks the documents, determines the brand and serial number of the printer, and contacts the company. Some, like Xerox, have a customer database, which they share with the government.
Many people are apprehensive that the American government’s tracking initiative could lead to a serious breach of privacy. The government has already succeeded in persuading more colour laser printer manufacturers to encode each page with identifying information. Without your knowledge or permission, an act you assume is private could become public. A communication tool you use in everyday life could become a tool for government surveillance. And what's worse, there are no laws to prevent its abuse.