article thumbnail

On Creative Accounting: Two Creativity Myths

Harvard Business Review

"Creative accounting" is really bad. For me, it evokes a wonderful old New Yorker cartoon by Robert Weber , where a small, meek accountant stands before the desk of an overfed chief executive exhorting the accountant to rescue the company: "It's up to you now, Miller. The only thing that can save us is an accounting breakthrough." Wall Street's " financial innovations " of recent years seem to have given creativity a bad name.

GAAP 15
article thumbnail

Eliminate Slogans, Exhortations and Targets

Deming Institute

The best policy may be to avoid incentives altogether and focus instead on creating systems in which intrinsic motivation, cooperation, ethical behavior, trust, creativity, and joy in work can flourish. Distorting the numbers, a form of creative accounting aimed at looking good rather than doing well, is rampant in American business. Point 10 on W.

Hammer 51