I got an email a couple of weeks ago from a friend asking me to remove a reference to someone talking about a project who was taking credit for the project without doing any work. Although I completely understood her frustration, I really didn’t want to remove the quote. It just so happened to be the best quote I could find to underscore the importance of the project. And I needed to drive home the importance of the project (one technique is to reference third party quotes – something I learnt in writing term papers) to my audience.
Conundrum!
Was it really that damaging to the project to give credit to someone who is a big talker instead of a big doer, especially when his big talk is of value to spreading the word about the project? And if it was a collective project that no one person could lay claim to, did it matter that I even quoted him in my presentation? And finally, if the quote itself was helpful to me getting the point across to an important group of stakeholders and removing it was going to make that task more arduous, why remove it?
Is credit really that important?
Well, yes and no. The things that make giving credit important are:
- Communities are often meritocracies. Therefore, those who are recognized as contributing gain whuffie. This whuffie leads to them being able to accomplish more. If the wrong person gets credit, this person could potentially use his/her whuffie for evil instead of good.
- Getting attention for an idea often leads to monetary rewards. Clients who don’t do their homework and take a quote or a clip of someone taking credit for a project that isn’t their own and hire him/her for money make credit important. If the people doing the real work end up broke and desolate because Mr. Talky Pants reaps the rewards for their hard work, this is an awful outcome.
So, I understand the request for me to not promote Mr. Talky Pants. He shouldn’t reap the rewards or be able to use the credit towards promoting his not-so-desirable agenda.
At the same time, I watch as a great deal of time and energy is spent by really smart people on who gets credit for what. There seems to be a direct co-relation between the amount of complaints about being ignored and those who start ignoring the person complaining:
Why? Well, even if the complaint is totally valid, nobody can do much about it. And if you tell someone who has used a quote or mistakenly given credit to the wrong person that they shouldn’t be, it just makes them feel bad…and they’ll relate feeling bad to you. So they may stop giving credit to that person, but they won’t feel obliged to turn around and give it to you.
I know. I’ve been the person complaining. And I know it came across poorly and more than a little whiny. My ego had gotten in the way of the real end goal.
What I realized in the aftermath of me spending a great deal of time and energy worried about who is stealing my thunder is that:
- It isn’t my thunder in the first place. Ideas are rarely (if ever) formed in a total vacuum. I didn’t just suddenly come up with something and it happened. Lots of people had great ideas before me that were built on until I merely added a dimension to it.
- Ideas are meant to be spread, not egos. And the idea WAS being spread. That was the point. Not whether or not I was hoisted up as being the biggest hero in the universe. Why would that matter? It’s not about me. It’s about the idea and how it helps others.
- If that was my last good idea, I’m screwed. So why focus on it? Instead, shouldn’t I be focusing on what is the next big idea?
- I should be more concerned about the ideas that I’ve had that weren’t spread. There is a good area to focus on. Why didn’t they resonate with people? Should I work on my own communication skills? Maybe my research is wrong.
Ideas aren’t very tangible unless they are acted upon. And in order for an idea to really take flight, you need all sorts of people to make it happen. You need:
- A creator (or creatorS) – the raw idea people.
- A catalyst (or catalystS) – the people who take an idea into actionable territory.
- A champion (or championS) – the promoters who are good communicators and have a good network to promote the idea through.
Credit really belongs to all of these players. An idea without execution is worthless. A great idea and execution that nobody knows about will go nowhere. The trick is to make certain we aren’t focusing on one piece of the innovation at the end of the day. We need to change our dialogue from being about the myth of the lone inventor (hat tip to Scott Berkun’s awesome The Myths of Innovation) to the reality that everyone has a role to play, even if it isn’t something we inherently value (like marketing or product management).
I like your point of view about ideas and their originators. I never really thought about it but it makes lots of sense.
If I have great ideas and I’m not spreading them around or even worse, not being spread at all, are they really that great? If I’m letting others spread my ideas, at least I know they might be great. I agree the better solution would be to spread my ideas myself… or if I’m not a good communicator, maybe it’s better to partner with people that are better at sharing ideas and share the credit with them?
One thing is sure, the good ideas I had and kept for myself don’t look that great today.
Recently I’ve read about someone who had a great idea and got pushed away from a project because he wanted too much credit. He lost the credit and wrote publicly and negatively about the experience. Now he has zero credit and sounds pathetic. There’s probably a lesson to have had were he would have ended up as a winner instead of a whiner.
A great read and one I agree with. Great ideas are great but they become better when they spread and are promoted. I’ve meet to many people who are afraid someone is going to steal their ideas. If you’ve had one great idea, odds are that you’ll get another one. I think you need to spread more of your ideas out there for the world to see and hear.
I help out when I can help out and worry last about getting credit for the work. It’s great when people acknowledge the work you did but that’s the last thing on my mind. I helped out because I wanted to and not because I wanted the credit. I think to many people go after the credit and not for the simple act of helping someone out.
If credit is not important, 1) why do your blog posts say “by missrogue” and 2) why do you require commenters to include their name?
@Ari Less than credit, the names offer accountability. For instance, if I was to invite someone else to blog here, I’d want them to have their name on it so people know it is their opinion, not mine. But I think you may be splitting hairs with your comment. Trouble maker!
Hm.
Now you’ve given me something to think about on the proverbial “other hand.”
I’ve always said that I don’t care if someone takes credit for my work or ideas as long as they let me *do* or *create* or *implement* them. Pretty much a ‘you can tell the world it was all you as long as you give me the wherewithall to set it in motion’ attitude.
Until recently that is. I’ve seen people (not just one, mind you) crediting my work and ideas to someone else (not anyone one specific person) and turn around and tell me how brilliant that person was. It turns out it’s hard to swallow when a third party wants you to agree to someone else’s worthiness of praise based on something that you originated.
Do we create ideas in a vaccuum? Heavens no. I make a point of praising those whose ideas, contributions, or actions provided the foundation for my own.
But what are we to do when Mr. Talky Pants not only takes credit for our work/ideas/projects but also takes credit for that of other people? I might swallow my pride and resort to my “I don’t care as long as Mr. TP facillitates what I’m doing” but what about when he takes credit for your work? or someone else’s I care about? Do I stay silent?
I’ll be honest, I don’t.
I may be a martyr to my own ideas and getting them ‘spread around’ as you put it, but I’m far more defensive of my friends. If Mr. Talky Pants claimed to be the originator of the term whuffie, I’d stand right up and say “ahem… you don’t look a thing like Tara.”
@Lucretia
You raise a good point. Even though fighting for your OWN credit looks a bit childish, I don’t think there is anything wrong with fighting for your friends’ credit. For instance, I used the quote by the Mr. Talky Pants, but I made sure I credited everyone else working on the project in my talk (and at the end of the presentation). I also make sure I correct anyone who I hear/see mis-crediting. For instance, the other day, someone blogged that Robert Scoble was one of the founders of BarCamp. I know that isn’t true, so I left a comment in the post to let the blogger know that it was Matt Mullenweg, Ryan King, Andy Smith, Chris Messina, Eris Stassi and Tantek Çelik (I think I got them all) and Ross Mayfield provided the space. I made sure the proper people got the credit and because I’m only a friend, the blogger thanked me and updated the post.
But yes…you are right. We need to help our friends out by correcting those that credit Mr. Talky Pants wherever we see it happen.
And to Ari’s point, credit isn’t totally unimportant…it’s just not the MOST important thing. It’s still good to credit the source. I always try to. I may even OVER compensate at times.
I totally agree with your thoughts on complaining!
, but its a more positive choice of action.
My rule of thumb is that rather than complaining, I present an alternative. So rather than ‘don’t use that quote’ I would have wanted to offer ‘heres a quote you could use instead’.
Not always possible, of course
I think it’s important to realize that this sort of laissez faire, panglossian kind of approach to credit and attribution doesn’t work in technical areas or academia. Promotions, program/school admissions, tenure, etc. are all dependant on proper tracking and stewardship of credit for one’s work. It really does matter in these places who’s credited with being first author, principal investigator, etc.
You can tell me “well, it SHOULD be this way”, but I’d challenge you to go out and find somebody in an academic discipline to give up credit on their research or not be bothered when somebody uses their work without credit because “Well, it DOES help spread the idea and that’s what really matters, right ?”
Sorry to dump on your post like this, but as a technical person working in a technical field, it is important that credit really be given where credit is due and for people like Mr. TP to be reminded of where ideas come from and called out on what he’s doing if he persists.
@Jetdillo
Although I totally know what you are talking about (dated an academic for 3 years – have experienced the technical realm through observation/proxy) and know what the reservations are, I would much rather see an idea (or at least MY ideas) spread rather than be worried about who is getting credit for them.
When I worry about who is getting credit, I stifle the growth of the idea. And no idea – whether academic, technical or business – comes to someone in a vacuum (no idea is formed without the influence of other ideas), so who gets the credit ultimately? Plato? Homer? This is also why I’m so down on patents and copyright as well. Yes, it protects people from ideas being ‘stolen’, but it also prevents an idea from growing naturally, being built on by other thinkers/doers and coming to that place of transcendence we need to reach.
I watched my ex freak out too many times because an idea was being used across the world – MUST have been lifted from that article in such and such conference proceedings – instead of dropping that person (who obviously thinks like you) a line and collaborating on something much bigger…giving the idea a chance to go from good to amazing.
I sometimes wonder if the reason we haven’t found the cure for Cancer or AIDS is because of this idea of credit (in the formalized legal sense of patents).
@Lucretia — I don’t know if you said this deliberately to make a point:
“If Mr. Talky Pants claimed to be the originator of the term whuffie, I’d stand right up and say “ahem… you don’t look a thing like Tara.”
But it’s a lovely example of how tricky and twisty it is to keep attributions accurate… it was Cory Doctorow who originated the concept and term “whuffie” — a point Tara has been taking great pains to emphasize in her book, talks, interviews, articles. The fact that despite all of her (in my opinion) very strong efforts to credit the origin of the whuffie concept to Cory, a large group of smart people (who obviously weren’t Doctorow fans) still assume it came from Tara makes me realize just how hard this is.
So, it’s now possible that someone could see, for example, Cory Doctorow interviewed about Whuffie and think he was ripping off Tara. I have no idea what should be done, but it does make for interesting discussions
@Kathy – I adore you!! I’m actually a fan of Cory’s and Tara is very careful to give credit where credit is due… She’s also one of those people who would give an idea to the world if it were a good idea and not worry if people were as concerned with attributing her as they were with spreading the idea.
It was a subtle (too subtle?) attempt on my part. Tara would and will spend much time making sure that Cory gets credit – Mr Talky Pants will neither credit Cory for the origination or Tara for the popularization and furthering of the concept. It’s the part that irks me. We really need to credit each other when we can… but there are those who never correct a misimpression even when given the chance. If they didn’t exist? I think the rest of us would be less worried about the issue. If the Mr. TPs of the world weren’t out there making a living off of letting people believe they are creators and collaborators then we’d probably all be more inclined to let things slide.
Wishes and horses tho… :/
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I know most project-heads need their ego-boost and most of the time they can’t get enough of it… but does the internet really become a better place if false information stays false?
I think that taking credit for a project you didn’t work on is like telling a lie and even when propaganda has it’s place, it should not be based on false facts. It could result in the same as the problem we had in Europe around 1940… depending on “the project”.
great post! so though provoking, which makes it a great read. I agree, we can stifle our own growth by holding our cards too close to out chests.
Donna