You Become What You Appreciate
What you become is often a reflection of what you appreciate.
This holds true not just for individuals, but for organisations, cultures, and even nations.
If an organisation celebrates quick fixes, last-minute jugaads, and patchwork solutions, while consistently sidelining those who invest in stability, thoughtful systems, and long-term processes, it gradually becomes a collective of expert-grade hacks.
Not only will it lack real experts, it’ll lack the ethos that allows expertise to thrive. Even if it hires experts, it won’t retain them. Sure, it might still make money and deliver projects, but innovation and deep solutioning will remain out of reach (if it even attempts it).
We’re already seeing this play out. I don't need to name companies that are doing phenomenally well on the stock market, yet haven’t produced a single noteworthy product or service innovation. Top talent avoids them, viewing them as retirement homes, not places to grow.
The worst affected are teams that genuinely want to build great solutions, but get tempted by the applause for quick hacks. Over time, even the best talent starts thinking it’s smarter to spend 3 days doing a half-job that gets praise than 3 weeks building something right, only to be labelled “slow.”
Once this mindset hits critical mass, recovery is rare. It takes strong leadership to dismantle the very culture that allowed it to grow. But often, it's the leadership that reinforced the wrong appreciation in the first place.
What happens then? The inevitable.