Avoid "success theatre"

Ozan Onay — 21 Apr 2011

If you're charismatic you can get resources for anything and you can ship stuff and get people to use it and then you can engage in a tonne of what I call success theatre to try to make it seem like you're a big success. And so those people tend to get the celebrations whether they add value or not... they're like a cancer on most organizations in my opinion. Eric Reis — Authors@Google talk 

If you celebrate dramatic successes (for instance by paying a bonus when you hit a product milestone) you will encourage “success theatre"—employees will strive to replicate the drama without replicating the substantive underlying success. Instead, celebrate catastrophes averted, as this encourages the desirable response to a scenario (near-catastrophe) which fewer people seek to create artificially.