Hire or Fire the Crazies?

You know that “Hero or Villain?” blog I wrote on September 10 (see http://www.harari.com/blog/index.php?/archives/2007/05.html)? I’ve gotten incredulous responses from readers. They find it hard to believe that a company (Kaiser Permanente in this case) would fire a firebrand front line employee who took it upon himself to demonstrate that a multimillion dollar IT investment might actually be a corporate albatross. I am disarmed by their innocent reactions. Reality flash: It happens too often that those talented, innovative and impatient individuals who challenge the ineptness of the status quo are reprimanded and punished, which leads them to polish up their resumes and head for greener pastures, leaving the conforming drones behind to take orders—leaving the “C” suite executives wondering why things are falling apart. Just to muck up the waters even further, consider another little case—this time the polar opposite of what happened at Kaiser. I want to credit Fast Company magazine for this vignette about a little company called Slim Devices, which makes state-of-the-art audio devices that let individuals transfer digital music from their computer hard drives to speakers in their homes. One of the cool things that Slim Devices does is to encourage customers to suggest product ideas, changes, and technological tweaks on interactive online forums. Many of the customers are real techno-geeks, and one of them posted a piece of software that would enhance Slim’s functionality with Real Networks’ online music service. Unfortunately, his contribution was illegal, since it was based on cracking Real’s code which protects data transmission over the Web. Here is how Fast Company described the next delicious scene: “The author of the Real plug-in lived just a few blocks from Blackketter (Slim’s Chief Technology Officer) in San Francisco. Blackketter went over to his house and said, ‘That’s a really good hack, man’, but told him it wasn’t legal. Only mildly daunted, the hacker put the plug-in on his own Web site rather than Slim’s. Then, sure enough, an email came from Real Networks asking him to take down the posting—and in classic Silicon Valley fashion, to visit Real the following week for a job interview (my emphasis). Slim managed to hire him first (my emphasis again), then eventually worked out a legal relationship with Real and incorporated the plug-in into its players.”So there it is. Kaiser fires the crazy who made value-adding waves. Real Networks and Slim Devices race to hire the crazy who made value-adding waves. Which approach do you think is better in today’s nutty marketplace? Which approach does your organization take? As Slim vice president Patrick Cosson notes: “You can’t be heavy handed and kill the creativity. But you have to manage the chaos and resolve disputes.” Sounds good to me. Vive le crazies!