Noelle RussellChief Executive Officer, AI Leadership Institute · 5x Microsoft Trustworthy AI MVP | 3.4+ million students | #1 Thought Leader in Agentic AI | AI-Powered Revenue Growth + Cost Optimization Expert ✨Best-Selling Author: Scaling Responsible AI | TEDx Sp

Embrace the Red for Real Progress

2 Oct 2024 · 1 min

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In this brief motivational talk, the speaker recounts advice received from a Microsoft executive: "embrace the red." The principle urges leaders and teams to openly acknowledge negative performance indicators (the red) rather than disguising them as positive (green). By confronting these issues daily, the speaker argues that organizations can trigger the brain's reticular activation system, which heightens focus on critical problems and ultimately transforms poor metrics into improvement. The talk emphasizes transparency, daily monitoring of true data, and using honest feedback as a catalyst for real progress.

Worked very closely with the executive leadership at Microsoft. He looked over at our team and he was like, embrace the red. It's the only way it's going to turn green is if you embrace the red. And it's the thing we don't want to do. Literally, when we create those charts, we're like, well, it could be green if we do this, or if we say it this way, it could be green. And we try and make things green that are not green, that are red, that we're in trouble. Embrace the red. Look at it every day because it'll, it'll change. It's called the reticular activation system.