Tuesday, 7 January 2020

Tree Growers and Pit Diggers

On 31 December 2019, the BBC news website ran an article by Business Reporter Dearbail Jordan in which he quoted rotating chairman of Huawei Eric Xu as talking about “tree growers and pit diggers”.

 Xu defined “pit diggers” as "Those who prioritise short-term gains and pass problems on to their successors.”  “Tree growers”, however, are "[Those] who put long-term success ahead of short-term gains by continuously contributing value to the company.” 

 In an ideal world, we want all our people to be “tree growers” and not “pit diggers”.  Our problem is that our performance management methodology often encourages the “pit digger” mentality as people are rated mainly on their annual performance (some even on their quarterly output).

 If we’re seen to reward short-term thinking, or to penalise longer-term thinking, we shouldn’t be surprised if the “pit-digger” approach then prevails. Our general corporate culture is, sadly, skewed towards short-termism, in no small part due to the fact that we’re expected to produce a continuous stream of positive results for “senior management” or “shareholders”.  One wonders, however, if people ask themselves whether such positive streams can be kept going ad infinitum.  

 In the end, something will happen to knock the business sideways. Similarly, in government, the same short-termism prevails as democratic governments are usually elected for periods of five years or so.     

 In an ideal world, we have a mixture of short-and long-term goals.  We are rewarded when we take on problems and wrestle with them.  The lessons of struggle and failure are (as long as we learn from them) more valuable than continuous success and not taking any risk. 

 What can we do as leaders to make sure that: a) we aren’t “pit diggers” ourselves and b) that we identify those in our organisation who are?  Answering in reverse order, ask colleagues: everyone knows who the person (or people are).  

 As for the first part of the question, we need to balance our activities between long-and short-term goals and to look at performance metrics that support us in measuring “tree growing” activities and results.  

I have spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With more than 20 years in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management.  I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email. My website  provides a full picture of my portfolio of services.  For strategic questions that you should be asking yourself, follow me at @wkm610.

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posted by William Martin @ 10:13

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