There were once two towns. One grew carrots. One grew rabbits. Obviously, these towns had much to gain from each other.
“This year we will have an amazing carrot crop!” Said the Carrot town leader.
“We and our rabbits cannot wait!” said the Rabbit town president. But when harvest time came, they received a delivery of Apples.
“We’re sorry, we know we said carrots, but the apple trees were so ripe we decided to harvest apples!”
The rabbit village could only watch as 1/3 of their rabbits starved.
“Please grow some carrots, quickly!” said the rabbit farmers.
“It has always been our intention to grow carrots” said the carrot growers.
But when harvest time came they brought paintings of rabbits that their children had painted in grade school. The rabbit village looked on with anger as another 1/3 of their rabbits starved.
“Why have you treated us like this?” fumed the rabbit people. “You are killing all of our rabbits! Had we known you were not going to grow carrots, we would have grown them ourselves. Now we only have 1/3 of our rabbits left!”
“We understand your frustration” said the carrot people who had not grown carrots. “But unforeseen circumstances required us to sell our carrots to another village. We promise that our next crop of carrots will go to you.”
“If you do not grow carrots, we will find someone else to buy carrots from.” Said the rabbit people.
However, the next day Rabbit village formed an army and attacked the Carrot village. Carrot village was defeated, and the Rabbit people took all their money, possessions, and carrot fields.
“How could you do this!?!?!” wailed the carrot people as they watched their belongings carted out of their smoldering city. “You never told us you would attack us without warning over carrots! You are dishonest!”
“You are a people who don’t do what you say you will do.” replied the rabbit people. “we are a people who do what we don’t say”.
In this way, rabbits died while people who grow carrots lost everything.
You can sometimes trust a person’s word, but organizations do not have a “word”.
The language of organizations is always what they do. This is particularly true in Infotech, where so much of what actually happens is obfuscated from view. Pay attention to actions. They are the most important form of communication.
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