Do you want to hear the truth?

Doing the right thing is harder than I ever imagined. Doing things right is also harder than I ever imagined.

From How to Change the World, an interview with Jeffery Pfeffer:

Question: How do you get a company to behave in a truthful manner?

Answer: You start by having leaders tell the truth—which includes admitting what they don’t know and what they have done wrong. It is impossible to manage successfully if you don’t know what is actually going on. But a lie takes two people: the person who tells the lie and the individual who signals that s/he wants to hear it. So, you don’t want to punish people for surfacing problems or telling you bad news. You don’t want to “shoot the messenger,” but thank them for bringing issues and concerns to light.

Question: How do you turnaround a company?

Answer: As the late Peter Drucker said, there is no business without a customer. Turning around a company is mostly about providing people a great value proposition—giving them more than they expect. Better products, services, more attention, than the competition...