Dear Bob ... Once again you have elegantly stated (in Keep the Joint Running, 5/9/2005) several situations that illustrate how things work and that way was not good. My manager says my favorite saying is, "No good deed goes unpunished" but it isn't. That is not the only thing he did not understand. Apparently he doesn't get that if good deeds are punished people will eventually stop doing them. Your writing abou Dear Bob …Once again you have elegantly stated (in Keep the Joint Running, 5/9/2005) several situations that illustrate how things work and that way was not good.My manager says my favorite saying is, “No good deed goes unpunished” but it isn’t. That is not the only thing he did not understand. Apparently he doesn’t get that if good deeds are punished people will eventually stop doing them. Your writing about how people respond to financial rewards is noteworthy. It is apparent that many times upper management hasn’t spent enough time on choosing what to measure and the consequences of that measurement. Perhaps much of it has to do with reality and theory.Finding myself arguing with my boss about the way things are working or not working, he will invariably start to argue a point that it will be his way because people are supposed to do it that way. Supposed to care about quality because we asked them to care about quality but pay them based on quantity – I don’t think so.The idea that a person or team that “saves” a projects in jeopardy should get rewarded when they might not have done the work well to begin with or mismanaged the project badly is much too common. Sometimes the manager to whom these Project Mangers/leaders etc. report to only get one side of the story – his own teams side. How many times have I found members of my own team being flaky or mismanaging a project and blaming another team for “slow” response or being ineffective and my boss buys off on it. Don’t know what can be done about this. Have given it a lot of thought in case I am managing a team – how can a manager know what is really happening?– InquisitiveDear Inquisitive … I think what you’re really getting at isn’t that good deeds are punished. It’s that when those in authority reward bad deeds, it’s hard to continue to stay on the side of truth, righteousness, and following the defined procedures.Two other thoughts. The first is the question of a project team blaming other teams for being slow and so forth. The solution we recommend to clients is that this stop being an issue altogether. Project managers need to define all of the staff and other resources they need for their project to succeed. If this means including a member of the ops team in the project, that’s fine and appropriate; it also means it’s up to the project manager to define where in the plan “Build test and production server environments” has to begin and end to stay off the critical path.The other: You ask “How can a manager know what is really happening?” This is the general question of how to go about listening to the organization. There is no single answer – it requires use of multiple organizational listening channels, including the chain of command, satisfaction surveys, walking around, open door policy, “skip” meetings (meeting directly with staff, bypassing the chain of command), and whatever else comes to mind. Oh, yeah, one more thing – organizational listening is time-consuming, which means it’s usually the first activity to stop when a manager is under time pressure.– Bob ——– Technology Industry