People do often ask what is the ‘one thing’ that I believe has created the success of RedBalloon. There is not ‘one thing’ – except maybe lot’s of hard work by lot’s of people. But I do know that accountability is a big part of that – and that my personal motto has always been “if it’s meant to be it’s up to me”. My colleague Chau shared the below poem with me (via Megan) – I thought how apt. When people believe that it is ‘not their job’ then nothing really gets done.
“This is a story about four people: Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody.
There was an important job to be done and Everybody was asked to do it.
Everybody was sure Somebody would do it.
Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it.
Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody’s job.
Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn’t do it.
It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody and Nobody did the job that Anybody could have done in the first place.”Unknown