Batman Is a Poor Executive
The legendary W. Edwards Deming once said “A bad system will beat a good person every time.” Playing Batman: Arkham Shadow recently, this quote kept resonating as I watched Commissioner Gordon - a dedicated public servant - struggle against Gotham’s broken system. This made me reflect on what effective executive sponsorship really looks like. Early in my career at Comcast, I experienced transformative sponsorship. Our development team needed Macs for coding (this was pre-WSL - yes, I’m dating myself here). Corporate policy prohibited Macs on the network. Instead of telling us to “make do,” or intentionally violating corporate IT policy, our executive sponsor recognized the systemic barrier and took action. They funded and built a parallel network infrastructure that enabled our success. Our team went on to deliver exceptional results because we were properly empowered. ...