I recently purchased a Blackberry Storm. After setting up the essentials (contact list, calendar, etc.), I copied my music. My last phone didn’t have an MP3 player built in. I was excited that Iwould no longer have to carry both a phone and MP3 player with me.

I decided that it was only appropriate that I break the MP3 player in with the Boss. So I queued up “Live in Dublin” and waited to hear the opening of “Atlantic City” (BTW: Live in Dublin has some of the best alternative versions that I’ve heard). Well, I waited, and waited but no song. Then I saw a little message on my screen – “Invalid file format”. After some investigation, I found out that file format wasn’t the issue. The issue was with the digital rights to the song.

When I bought the album, WalMart.com said that I would have the right to burn it 10 times and synch it unlimited times. Unfortunately, WalMart chose to stop supporting DRM last Feb and no longer updates your licenses when you try to synch. But, this isn’t about Walmart. As much as I am disappointed by their decision (and it will impact my decision to shop there), this is a bigger issue. It’s about the recording industry.

The recording industry doesn’t want me pirating their songs. That’s fair. I don’t want to pirate their songs either. I believe that artists, producers, and recording companies are providing a product and deserve to be paid. So, we both want the same thing. Yet, they’ve made it really hard for me to do 1) what they want me to do, 2) what I want to do, and 3) what is right. That’s a problem. It’s a problem because people tend toward the path of least resistance. As I’ve researched this in an attempt to find a solution I’ve discovered something interesting. The only people who have problems are the ones who are buying musically legally. I haven’t seen any web or blog postings saying, “Gee, it’s such a pain to copy pirated music onto my MP3 player”. So where’s the incentive to do it legally? For me the incentive is that I believe that pirating is fundamentally wrong so I’m not doing it. I can certainly see how someone else with a similar belief might eventually tire of hitting their head against a wall. I’m willing to meet the recording industry half way on this one, but I wish they would have been willing to do more to help me help them.

While this story is about an industry and its consumers, it’s a good lessons for leaders. The recording industry made two mistakes. First, they focused more on the people who weren’t “bough in” than those who were. That’s a common mistake. The truth is that cheaters will almost always find a way to cheat. Building your systems around them usually just makes it harder for those who want to work within that system. (From what I’ve been reading, many spam programs seem to have better success at reading graphical captchas* than I do). As a result, the second problem occurs — it eventually become too hard to do the right thing.

Right now there are people in your organization who want to do exactly what you want them to do. But, there are processes, policies, rewards, and an organizational culture that make it easier for them to do something else. Those people are willing to meet you half way, but you can’t put the burden on them to take it all the way. They need your help.

Make doing the right thing the path of least resistance. When you do, you will start getting the results you want.

*captchas are those pesky boxes with the funky, barely intelligible letters inside of them that you sometimes see on web forms. Their purpose is to prevent spam programs from signing up for multiple accounts or sending out spam through blog entries, comments, etc. The problem is that many of these captchas can now be read more (or equally) effectively by computer programs (which are created by spammers) as by people. And the computer program doesn’t get frustrated if it take ten tries.