Mike Lehr's Blog

A question posted by Expat 21 asked for examples of patience in the workplace, especially those demonstrating a contrast between American and other cultures.

While I find non-American cultures more patient, the examples I have aren’t that distinguishable by cultures except in their acceptance of patience-oriented approaches and the rules under which they might apply them. However, these rules don’t alter the basic strategies and tactics behind the employment of patience; they will only make application of patience more or less accepted.

With that said, Rahm Emanuel’s well documented quote,  “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before,” summarizes the business implications of patience. However, this means partnering patience with our knowledge, experience or insight about the future that others lack; we are waiting for the “crisis” that we know is over the horizon.

For example, I worked on an IT project involving the rollout of client management software (CMS). From my experience, I pushed for certain functionality that I knew sales executives would want. However, the CMS team discounted the functionality, had other priorities and didn’t incorporate it. I could have pushed harder, irritated the team and achieved only a partial list of what was needed. Instead, I waited for the rollout because I knew sales managers would request the functionality. When they did, I had their entire support to get the team to do what I originally proposed and much more.

Another example for me was the reorganization of an 80 person call center. They had already gone through three reorganizations in four years. I had advised patience to the new executive because her people were “shell shocked” and hadn’t been able to establish sound interpersonal working relationships; they needed a period of stability. She went along with her reorganization anyway; she felt pressure to do something. However, the reorganization reinforced anxieties, undermined executive credibility and made achieving goals difficult. She left after only eighteen months.

“Management by walking around” and “teachable moments” are key general examples of techniques employing patience. People are more receptive to instruction when they approach us than when we approach them. We can encourage it by making ourselves accessible but we need patience to make this work.

Some macro-business applications of patience deal with such things as branding, investment, public relations, training and marketing. In each of these cases, patience is required to see a return. Often the urgency of the moment disrupts these initiatives before the return on our patience is realized. It’s personal discipline combined with the corporate and social culture that will determine how much patience is accepted; however, the basic strategies and tactics remain fundamentally the same across cultures. It’s similar to warfare; weapons, training and supplies might be different, but the basic principles remain the same no matter who is fighting.

Related Post: Blue Heron Instructs on Patience

We live in an activist business culture, meaning we are biased toward action to solve problems. For instance, reorganizations often occur simply to show something is being done when most of the time they achieve very little. In reality, neither action nor inaction is better; it all depends upon the situation. Intuitive approaches often involve positioning which requires patience.

One day my wife and I were having a picnic lunch along the Cuyahoga River during a hike. At the inside corner of a bend in the river stood a Blue Heron. My wife asked what I thought he was doing there just standing. I told her he was waiting for a fish.

About twenty minutes went by when my wife said, “I don’t think he’s waiting for a fish; it has been a long time. I would just go after the fish.” Within a minute of telling her she would never catch one with that approach because the fish were much quicker, the Heron stabbed his head downward and retrieved a fish.

In business, people will encourage us to take action even when it’s not the best option. In nature, many animals, like the Heron, lie and wait for their opportunities. Sometimes we need to position ourselves for opportunities to maximize our returns and minimize our costs, but it’s often discounted by the urge to act. Real estate is an excellent example. It’s about “location, location, location.” That real estate is lying and waiting until the benefits from its location are reaped.

In our everyday business lives, we are often prejudiced to force a bad position just so we can feel action oriented, sooth our egos or look good politically. Resisting such temptation is challenging; patience requires more discipline than action.

A recent BNET post by Thomas A. Stewart talked about nurturing dissent and provided some valuable links. Rationally, it makes sense that if you want to drive your business forward you have to ensure that everyone is on the same page. However, evidence suggests the opposite.

Brooke Harrington, a professor at Copenhagen Business School has studied investment clubs and found that “the more dissent there was among investors, the better the financial returns.” Charlan Nemeth of Cornell University takes this even further by stating, “in general, we find that dissent stimulates thought that is broader, that takes in more information and that, on balance, leads to better decisions and more creative solutions.”

One of my favorite movies is the The Bridge on the River Kwai. In the commentary that came with the DVD, it’s reported that the producer, Sam Spiegel, liked to see conflict between the director and the lead actors. He found that it tended to produce better movies than when they were agreeable. In this movie, there was tension and arguments between the director, David Lean, and the lead actor, Alec Guinness; it won seven academy awards.

In everyday practice, we tend to prefer people who think along the same lines as we do. Conflict and controversy is something we tend to avoid. Those who dissent are often considered negative. Our natural tendencies are toward peace and harmony especially when urgent business priorities are upon us. However, subconsciously, as these studies show, dissent improves our cognition and creativity.

One of the major characteristics of intuitive approaches for leadership is the dominance of intrinsic rewards over extrinsic ones. The demarcation between the two is most clear in studies of the effect of praise over money from immediate managers. A November 2009 article from McKinsey Quarterly, Motivating people – Getting beyond money, is but one example.

In addition to praise from an immediate manager, the article sited attention from leaders and opportunities to lead as two other nonfinancial rewards valued above compensation. However, the transition to nonfinancial rewards is difficult for many managers. A major reason the article gave was that “nonfinancial ways to motivate people do, on the whole, require more time and commitment from senior managers.”

While this is true, an important aspect that is rarely examined is that the tendency to praise is a function of personality. In order to praise and interact effectively, people need to have some emotional awareness and sensitivity. Just as some cars are better than others, some praises are too.

For instance, a manager who is more easily drawn to statistics, reports, information and finances might not have the personality necessary to encourage him to seek out opportunities to praise and spend individual time with employees. Moreover, while some extroverts can excel at networking a room, they can fail miserably at nonfinancial rewards. It’s one thing to have polite, congenial conversations in public but quite another to have involved, developmental discussions with an employee one-on-one. This is why some great public speakers can’t teach and some teachers can’t speak publicly.

Until companies look for personalities and aptitudes conducive to using nonfinancial rewards, overreliance on compensation to motivate will continue.

I came across a book review in the October 11, 2010 issue of The New Yorker about The Thief of Time, edited by Chrisoula Andreou and Mark D. White. It’s a collection of essays on procrastination. Under an illustration there was this caption: Procrastination interests philosophers because of its underlying irrationality.

I never knew that procrastination received such puzzling attention. No one can really explain why we do it. Yet, it’s very common across all personalities. What makes it even more puzzling is that “indulging in it generally doesn’t make people happy.” In fact, according to Professor Piers Steel of the University of Calgary, “people who admitted to difficulties with procrastination quadrupled between 1978 and 2002.” He defines it as “willingly deferring something even though you expect the delay to make you worse off.”

Why is this important to intuition? Well, in order to appreciate intuition’s impact, we need to appreciate the degree to which our emotions influence our decisions and actions. Since procrastination is a frequent, everyday occurrence, it can serve as a tangible reminder to go beyond simple, rational analysis.

While many of us would acknowledge this, we often don’t practice it. Rather, we attempt to analyze problems in rational, logical and objective terms employing the best scientific analysis we can muster. We try to quantify then weigh benefits and costs without even considering the emotional weights of each. Then, we try to communicate our findings in the same way.

This can lead us astray because in reality emotions play a dominant role in people’s decisions and actions. Thus, when we try to be objective, we often aren’t realistic. Imagine not accounting for procrastination in planning because it’s irrational.

Management by objective is basic expectations setting 101; people will tend to achieve the expectations we set for them. Yet, when it comes to training sessions, we often don’t worry about any expectations until there are “cheeks in the seats.” At that point, we set them. The problem is that expectations for the training have already been largely set; it’s uphill trying to change them.

By this time, attendees have already read some sort of description of the training. Most likely, they’ve already heard their managers’ rationales for attending the training. If someone has already attended the training, the “grapevine effect” is in full force. Just as politicians, coaches and promoters work hard to set expectations before elections, games and events, the same should be done for training.

Here are some pointers on what to do prior to the training:

• Invest more energy on the training’s title than on its description; make it marketable yet accurate
• Script what managers or promoters of the training should say about it, including FAQ’s
• Give trainers as much access as possible to potential attendees (i.e. emails, promotional information, links)
• Ensure logistics (i.e. hotel, travel, directions, instructions) run soundly and a helpline exists
• Send a detailed agenda at least a few days prior
• If the training is part of a multi-day event, create opportunities for trainers to socialize with attendees
• Ensure all communication channels (i.e. materials, websites, announcements) are under control and delivering a consistent message

In short, the more you treat the announcement of your training as a marketing effort, the more likely you are to succeed in ensuring the right expectations are set when attendees walk through the door or log in.

As reported in the November 2, 2009 edition of The New Yorker in the article, Robots That Care, Professor Maja Matarić of the University of Southern California is experimenting with robots caring for stroke and Alzheimer’s patients and autistic children. The major thrust of this work entails programming robots to respond to behavioral cues of patients. One path involved addressing the extroverted-introverted nature of a person. Since many of us have been exposed to a plethora of personality assessment tools and often struggle with how to apply the information, I thought it might help to know how this professor programmed robots to respond to extroverted-introverted people.

When Professor Matarić programmed robots to work with extroverts, she had them:

• Work closer than the standard distance for a task
• Speak with a slightly higher pitch
• Talk quicker
• Instruct using more forceful words

When she had robots work with introverts, she programmed them to:

• Work farther away than the standard distance for a task
• Use fewer gestures
• Speak with a slightly lower pitch
• Talk slower
• Offer more praise
• Instruct using more soothing words

Additionally, Professor Matarić was able to program robots to “learn” the behavioral style of the person so they could adjust the above parameters depending upon their assessment of the person as an extrovert or introvert. Perhaps, this information will help us to “program” ourselves to work more effectively with the extroverts and introverts in our lives.

In the article, “Are You Being Served?”, in the September 6, 2010 issue of The New Yorker, the author James Surowiecki cites a survey of more than three hundred big companies from a few years ago in which “eighty per cent described themselves as delivering ‘superior’ service, but consumers put that figure at just eight per cent.”

Yet, one of the assumptions implied in the article is that quality service matters to the customer, or at minimum it should. Yes, in an open-ended request, customers would say that is does. However, how much are they willing to pay for it? Furthermore, will they actually pay for it when the opportunity arises? The article did cite some companies providing good service for low cost; however, it could only offer up luxury businesses as examples of where good service could support a cost premium. Of course, in these cases we have to factor in the emotional effects of buying something that conveys status; here, branding is vital.

In the end, there might not be an objective answer to the question. It depends upon many factors such as the consumer, the market, the competition, the product, the brand and the buying experience itself. For example, the article never concerned itself with product quality. Perhaps some consumers are willing to tolerate poor service if the product is top-notch. That becomes an issue of value which is subjective and thus emotional.

The unresolved question implied by the study was, “Why do customers tolerate such a discrepancy and not move to another provider?” However, the author overwhelmingly focused on why businesses don’t provide quality service and didn’t explore this intuitive phenomenon.