Want to stymie action? Try these tried and true techniques:
- FUD – spread enough Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, and paralysis will set in. Risk is everywhere! Be afraid, be very afraid!
- TALK & STUDY – yack, yack, yack… study, study, study… Let’s form a committee! Information is important, and we need more and more and more and more in order to act.
- GOOD AIN’T PERFECT. Ben Franklin (one of our first bloggers) called it “making the perfect the enemy of the good.” We can’t do anything, because the good things we can do are not perfect. Compromise is bad, bad, bad!
- SLIPPERY SLOPE – If we do this innocuous “thing”, then some extreme bad version of the “thing” will happen.
- DEATH BY CONSENSUS – Let’s defer decisions until everyone agrees.
Obviously I’ve been watching Congress debate on CSPAN.
Great nonprofits don’t tolerate such tactics, which stifle creativity and subvert open discussion and rigorous analysis. Great nonprofit leaders energize, listen, debate and decide…and then they act, assess and adjust.
Our government leaders could sure learn from nonprofit leaders!
What do you think?