Why "Have a Sense of Humor" Was the Wrong Company Value -- with Mike Chaput

Mike Chaput bought his first company at 24, went bankrupt at 28, and started over. When he co-founded Endsight, he and his partners worked hard to establish company values -- and landed on one that sounded great: "Have a sense of humor and take enjoyment from the day." The problem? Elevating humor to the top of the values hierarchy gave permission for blame-based behaviors, including a rubber chicken shaming ritual where the chicken got hung on the cubicle of anyone who made a mistake.

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The turning point came when Mike encountered W. Edwards Deming's work at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business and a sales leader told him bluntly that the organization felt like it was always looking for someone to blame. Deming's Point 8 -- drive fear out of the workplace -- made it clear: humor without respect underneath it creates the conditions for people to hide problems from leadership.

Mike shares the framework he now uses to test whether values are actually working, how Endsight replaced blame with problem registers, value stream managers, and A3 thinking, and why command-and-control leadership turns teams into panicked prey animals instead of coordinated predators. Drawing on Primed to Perform by Doshi and McGregor, he explains the motive spectrum from play to inertia -- and why fear-based management guarantees low performance.