Where the Credit Lands

Where the Credit Lands

Why big wins rarely reward the work that made them possible

Closest to the Finish Line

When a something goes well, the credit usually goes to the person who was nearest the finish line. As the deal is completed, it's the account executive who receives the praise. When a product is launched, it's the project leader who makes the presentation. And when the system gets through the outage, the person on call that night ends up being the one everyone remembers. These situations are real and the individuals who carry them out do in fact earn real credit. Yet a major achievement is almost never the result of a single moment or a single person; it is merely the visible tip of something that has been built over months, typically by people who were never thought to be mentioned.

The Two Years No One Saw

Think about what actually comes before a major achievement takes place within a complex organization. A negotiation is successful since someone had been spending two years developing the relationship with the client, well before it was known that a deal was going to happen. A product is launched on time because an engineer identified a flaw in the architecture eighteen months before it would have resulted in a public failure. A crisis is handled smoothly because a manager had already won the trust necessary to get people to act quickly, a trust that had been earned over years through ordinary and unremarkable decisions. When the significant result finally arrives, most of the work that led to it has already been forgotten, if it had even been noticed at all.

Proximity Isn't Contribution

This does in fact pose a real problem for the way that organizations assign credit. If we judge contribution on how close someone is to the final outcome, then the individual who was in the room when it happened is the one who is remembered, while those people who made the landing possible are not. The employee who closes the deal should receive recognition, just as much as the one who has nurtured the relationship over two years with no deal having been reached. The person who presents the final product is the one who is seen, whereas those who had spotted the early design flaw, settled the dispute with the vendor, and kept the timeline intact throughout are often not. It has long been shown by researchers that employees contribute to organizational effectiveness through behavior that goes well beyond their formal job description (Organ, 1988), and that true acknowledgment is important for motivation and for how well the workplace actually functions (Brun & Dugas, 2008). The fundamental issue for leaders is not whether we give people enough recognition; it is whether we have learned to go far enough back when tracing a major outcome to see who actually built it.

A Different Question

That means we should ask a different kind of question; rather than just inquiring about who delivered the result, it is more useful to find out who laid the foundation upon which that result was built. Who made the initial decision that prevented a larger problem later on? Who had spent years winning the trust that enabled swift action when it was needed? Who provided the institutional memory that ensured the team didn't repeat an old mistake? And, most significantly of all, whose name is never mentioned when people tell the story of how the win was achieved? The leaders' choice in deciding who to credit ultimately determines what the organization comes to value: recognition, assignments, evaluations, development opportunities, and even promotions all depend on our perception of who is responsible for a success. If credit is only given to those who were present at the outcome, organizations end up rewarding timing rather than contribution, while the people who actually built the success from the beginning receive no recognition. Research into relational coordination shows precisely this kind of dynamic, demonstrating how shared goals, shared knowledge, mutual respect, and genuine communication lead to improved performance in work that involves people working closely together over time (Gittell, 2002).

Rewarding the Years, Not Just the Moment

A key duty of leadership is to go beyond the point at which an outcome becomes apparent and to consider what had taken place earlier. Although results are important and those who achieve them in the end should receive proper recognition, almost any significant outcome has a history that is much longer than what was mentioned, and some of the most important parts of that history occurred a long time before anyone decided to put them in writing. The finest leaders develop the ability to see not only the person who is at the finish line but also the people who constructed the track beneath them. While organizations are good at rewarding the moment, excellent leaders also give recognition to the years that preceded it.

References

Organ, D. W. (1988). Organizational citizenship behavior: The good soldier syndrome. Lexington Books.

Brun, J.-P., & Dugas, N. (2008). An analysis of employee recognition: Perspectives on human resources practices. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 19(4), 716–730. https://doi.org/10.1080/09585190801953723

Gittell, J. H. (2002). Coordinating mechanisms in care provider groups: Relational coordination as a mediator and input uncertainty as a moderator of performance effects. Management Science, 48(11), 1408–1426. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.48.11.1408.268