Mike Lehr's Blog

Thanking employees periodically for doing their jobs generates a superior return on our time. It’s an effective cost-containment technique for our labor cost; the less employees like the culture the more money it will take to keep them. Consequently, no employee should go more than three to six months without an executive or senior manager thanking him for his work.

Moreover, Thank You’s power extends beyond the immediate employee. She will assuredly talk to other employees about her experience, thus producing a ripple effect. We are making the company’s grapevine work for us.

Here is a simple, direct thank you:

Hi, Tom. How are you? Listen, I just wanted to thank you for the work you’ve been doing for me. I appreciate it. You’ve really been helping us out.

Often, employees will respond with something like:

Well, I’m just doing my job.

To which we can respond with:

Perhaps, but I know that you don’t have to show up and you don’t have to apply your total effort. So, I’m thanking you for those things too.

Occasionally, I’ve heard executives and managers say:

• If they don’t like it, there’s the door!
• Why should I do this when their paycheck is our thanks?

First, employees are under no legal obligation to show up for work; we cannot sue them for not showing. We avoid headaches when they show. Second, every company issues paychecks; every company does not issue thank you’s. They give us a competitive edge in securing and keeping talent. Third, if money is the only way we show appreciation, then money will be the only thing that motivates them. Thank you’s allow us to develop and leverage personal connections. These build a team culture and make goals more achievable.

This past month, I conversed with a resident of a Muslim country. He commented on how many of his fellow citizens couldn’t understand why Americans thought they were free. “They have all these laws directing them. They can’t drive as fast as they want and they even need the government’s permission to drive (licenses).”

Coincidentally, the December 16^th 2010 edition of The Economist reported on driving in Iraq. It’s true, at least there, that Iraq has far fewer driving restrictions than the United States has. It doesn’t even require driving licenses. However, driving there is dangerous. In fact, “the health ministry estimates that six times as many people now die in car accidents as fall victim to political violence.”

I also ran across an article about choice in the same issue. “Too much choice, concluded Sheena Iyengar of Columbia University and Mark Lepper of Stanford, is demotivating.” The article went on to suggest that this is from the anxiety people often feel when making decisions; too much freedom of choice increases anxiety.

There are people who seem to prefer less, and almost no, freedom in their work. They prefer clearly defined directions, rules, policies and procedures dictating their thinking and actions. Why? I have come to learn that this produces a different kind of freedom for some: freedom from responsibility. How can we be responsible for decisions we did not make or regulations we did not write? For some it also produces certainty; they know what the “right” decision is.

As the diagram to the right asks, “When does more freedom become chaos and uncertainty to us?” For each of us, that varies. For some of us, it restricts freedom so much that it might not even seem like freedom anymore. So, is freedom for everybody?

I was recently advising a sales rep on one of her major clients when I asked midway through our conversation, “So, Kathy, have you ever told this client that you enjoyed working with her?”

After a pause, Kathy replied, “No, but she knows I enjoy working with her.”

“How?”

“Well, . . .” and Kathy proceeded to tell me all the things she did that helped the client to know that she enjoyed working with her. However, at no point did Kathy say that she ever told her client that she enjoyed working with her.

So, I asked, “Okay Kathy, so what you’re telling me is that if your husband believes you’re beautiful that there is no reason for him to tell you so as long as you know that he believes you are. True?” After this question, Kathy committed to telling her client that she enjoyed working with her.

The point is that we often “beat around the bush” with compliments. I was recently guilty myself when I told an executive recruiter that I enjoyed working with the candidate. She asked me, “Have you ever told him that?” After confessing guilt, I promised her I would, and I did.

We often comment on our dislike for those who “beat around the bush” and don’t get to the point. So, perhaps during this holiday season, while we’re enjoying our friends and families, we could extend the joy to clients, co-workers, employees, colleagues and many others in our careers that contribute to our enjoyment.

We can simply say, “I enjoy working with you.”

Anytime we describe or comment on someone’s personality, we are doing an assessment. Yes, it might not qualify as a formal psychological assessment, but it can still help us. More than likely, we are interpreting people’s responses to certain events to arrive at this assessment. This is very similar to projective personality assessments (also known as “free response” assessments). The most famous one is the Rorschach (inkblots).

In reality, people’s actions, decisions and words tell us something about them. For instance, the music, movies, books, clothes, cars and food they like give us insights. The challenge is figuring out what they tell us. Moreover, just because two people like the same book doesn’t mean they have similar personalities. The key question is, “Why do they like it?” Their answers are the clues.

When they answer, we listen by pretending they are now describing themselves. Many times the attributes we like, we will tend to like in other people and things. Conversely, the ones we don’t like, we will tend to not like.

For example, someone who says she liked the book because it was well organized is very likely to like organization in people and other facets of her world. If another says he liked the book because it made him think differently, he is very likely to like thought-provoking people and ideas. Usually, people’s first response is the most telling.

It’s important though that we continue to question and listen to see if we get other responses that tend to support our initial observation. Maybe something else besides personality drove the response such as education, upbringing or rules. That’s why I like doing this with everyday discussions because they tend to be less encumbered by other factors.

Other links:

Projective Test Definition (About.com)

Projective Personality Test (PsychCentral)

Projective Versus Objective Personality Tests (Yahoo! Contributor Network)

Psychological Testing (Wikipedia)

The article, The Case for Behavioral Strategy, (PDF) by Dan Lovallo and Olivier Sibony* from the March 2010 McKinsey Quarterly states:

Once heretical, behavioral economics is now mainstream. . . . Yet very few corporate strategists making important decisions consciously take into account the cognitive biases—systematic tendencies to deviate from rational calculations—revealed by behavioral economics. . . . in strategic decision making leaders need to recognize their own biases.

As I pointed out in my postings regarding the difference between leadership and management and confidence as an indicator of incompetence, advancements in technology and research methodologies are increasingly showing the influence of unconscious biases in our decisions. Our unawareness encourages substandard decisions. Learning our biases and accounting for them is important. Here are a few common biases mentioned in this article:

• Believing good analysis by managers with good judgment will automatically lead to good decisions
• Over-weighting recent or highly memorable events
• Clinging to a formed hypothesis even when there is evidence disproving it
• Taking actions prompted by excessive optimism and overestimation of our abilities
• Endorsing projects proposed by confident advocates over those who identify all the risks and uncertainties
• Over-weighting last year’s numbers in budget reviews
• Feeling losses more intensely than equivalent gains
• Underestimating the influence a person’s self-interest has in his determination of what’s best for the group
• Conforming to the dominant views of the group or its leader

Among the article’s solutions were:

• Establish formal decision making processes
• Take a different perspective and form alternative hypotheses around it
• Examine at least six similar experiences, not just one or two
• Identify uncertainties and unknowns in planning
• Redo budgets from scratch rather than from last year
• Encourage diversity and dissent

*Olivier Sibony is a director in McKinsey’s Brussels office.

Expressing our thoughts is challenging especially when we don’t know the words to do so. Therefore, restricting our vocabulary will tend to restrict our thoughts. As a result, we will experience more difficulty influencing others and solving problems. It’s important for us to expand our vocabularies, to allow stylistic differences and to exercise our minds by defining the fine differences between synonyms rather than assume they are the same (i.e. truth vs. clarity, influence vs. control, power vs. authority).

George Orwell’s book 1984 details this thought control through a state working feverishly to restrict the words of its citizenry. By eliminating words like “freedom” and “revolution,” citizens would have difficulty thinking of these concepts.

We don’t have an Orwellian state; however, business and company cultures tend toward self-censorship because they need standardization for efficiencies. Standardization often requires standardized communication practices, as exemplified in warfare and football. They save time.

I call such words “vanilla” words. They tend to be:

• Inoffensive to the group (politically correct)
• Repeatedly used to enforce positivity and optimism (i.e. great, awesome, super)
• Technically or narrowly defined
• Promoting cost-control, speed and efficiencies
• Easily understand (no dictionary needed)
• Buzz words, phrases and acronyms
• Void of emotionalism and feeling (i.e. business reports and legal documents)
• Emphasizing groups over the individual (i.e. We versus I, They versus He/She)

Basically, vanilla words encourage us to look at our businesses in vanilla terms. We cannot arrive at new flavors by using words that encourage a vanilla filter. The cost is employees who can only think inside a vanilla box.

Touching can enhance relationship building. In the workplace, some touching creates problems. However, the handshake is generally acceptable and is an extremely effective morale builder when used regularly with employees.

While frequently used to greet new people or re-acquaintances, it’s normal for employees to go with unshaken hands for long periods. For example, a fourteen-year veteran machine operator with a 150-employee manufacturing company had never had his hand shaken by a company executive.

I advise that every employee receive a handshake from a company executive (or senior manager in larger corporations) at least once every three to six months. Executives should be able to do this on a regular basis for their top 100 reports.

Shaking employees is usually easy and fun. Extending your hand often encourages the employee to do likewise. Sometimes, when it’s unexpected, I’ve had to keep my hand extended for as much as 10-15 seconds before the employee extended hers. Thus, I often play off the technique’s novelty by saying:

Hello Anne, how are you [extend hand]?  [As hand is extending continue uninterruptedly.] It has been a while since we talked. What’s going on with your (client, market, family, vacation, etc.)?

I’ve also had employees ask:

Did you want something in particular?

To which I’ve responded with something like this:

No, I just wanted to see how you were doing and to thank you for your efforts.

Touches influence people’s feelings and in turn their thoughts. For instance, a patient touched by a doctor will tend to think that the doctor spent twice as much time with him than she did. We need to remember that people are not light switches. Over time, handshakes work and lay excellent ground for future initiatives.

People are always looking for ways to ensure their jobs, more so today. As we’ve seen, the people who only focus on doing a good job place themselves at high risk. Simply being talented is no guarantee either. So, when people discuss their strategies with me, I often ask this question:

• Do you like your boss, his boss, the President/CEO, and/or Owner(s)?

In most cases, if we don’t like one or more of these folks, we are at a high risk to lose our jobs even if we believe they don’t know that we don’t like them. The reason is that there is a very high correlation between the people we don’t like and the people who don’t like us.

Of course, their stated reasons for letting us go most likely won’t include that they dislike us. It might not even include performance issues. “Down-sizing” or “job elimination” are much more convenient rationalizations. They can give the impression that it was beyond their control; it was business, nothing personal. This will help them avoid looking like the bad guy or gal. If they really want to keep us, they will find a way.

At the core is how well we fit into the culture. Since these folks play a major role in defining that culture, if we don’t like them, most likely we won’t like the culture they’re creating. What do you do? Learn to like them or begin looking for another job.

Writing down the problem was a problem-solving technique I discussed in a previous post. Attacking definitions is another that complements this one. For instance, consider the problem:

Making a better window

We now attack what we mean by “making,” “better,” and “window.” For example, by making do we mean create, produce, deliver or service? By better do we mean cost, maintenance or longevity? By window, do we mean a current offering or a new one? Through this attacking, we begin to attack our definition of the problem, stimulating our thinking and opening windows to potential solutions.

We can visualize what’s happening with a castle. Its walls define what comprises it while at the same time what it doesn’t. However, if we need to repair a building inside the castle, the materials might not rest within the castle walls but outside them which the walls don’t allow us to see. Definitions work the same way: they define what a word comprises and doesn’t comprise. While they help to focus our attention by erecting walls to keep out confusion and vagueness, they also hinder our ability to see solutions resting beyond their walls.

Thus, the solution to our window problem might not be a window with enhanced qualities. It might be one easier to install and service, or one quicker to produce or less costly.

We can also apply an intuitive approach by asking, “Does the window need to be objectively better or just perceptually better?” If so, the solution might be as superficial as having a better advertising campaign to point out its advantages. All of these might solve the problem depending upon how we define the words. In short, it might be as simple as defining the problem better.