Nobody Gets Fired for Saying Nothing

I read a piece in Fast Company by Mark Crowley about a senior leader who had mastered the art of playing it safe. In meetings, the man never offered an opinion until he could see where the room was headed, then carefully agreed with it. He never stuck his neck out. He only championed ideas that had already worked somewhere else. Crowley’s read was that he had chosen protecting his position over actually leading.

I recognized him. Not the person, the pattern. What’s this got to do with running an O&P practice? In a company of nine or fewer people, there is no committee to hide behind. When someone goes quiet, nothing fills the space. The front desk person who has stopped verifying benefits at check-in keeps skipping it. The tech who has been skipping steps on the fabrication checklist keeps skipping them. The referral source who sends you incomplete orders keeps sending them. The practitioner who is brilliant at the bench and careless in the chart stays careless, because the one person with standing to say something decided this month wasn’t the month.