Mike Lehr's Blog

We often overlook the downside of processes in our businesses because we enjoy how they allow us to scale and reduce labor costs. However, they often become the infrastructure that retards flexibility and adaptability as people’s self-interest and comfort zones become wedded to the processes.

The November 2010 issue of the Harvard Business Review, which focused on leadership lessons from the military, Boris Groysberg, Andrew Hill and Toby Johnson wrote about the tradeoffs between process and flexibility. Their article, “The Different Ways Military Experience Prepares Managers for Leadership,” discussed the tradeoffs that each of the four branches of the U.S. Military made and how they influenced leadership styles.

Their research showed that CEO’s who had military experience in the Navy and Air Force tended to “take a process-driven approach to management; personnel are expected to follow standard procedures without any deviation.” This allowed them to excel “in highly regulated industries and, perhaps surprisingly, in innovative sectors.”

Conversely, those with an Army and Marine Corps experience tended to “embrace flexibility and empower people to act on their vision.” They were able to excel “in small firms, where they are better able to communicate a clear direction and identify capable subordinates to execute accordingly.”

Throughout the article, the authors contrasted the process orientation of the Navy and Air Force with the adaptive one of the Army and Marine Corps, the important point being that there is a tradeoff between the two. Even though they justified why each branch had the orientation it did, they still contrasted the two orientations as a trade-off. In simple terms, it’s hard to have both.

Therefore, when we rush toward processes to create standardized, consistent and repeatable outcomes, we need to leave room for adaptation. After all, life never duplicates itself in exactly the same way.

Previously I had indicated that placebo management could impact performance. I recently read

Michael Specter’s article, “The Power of Nothing,” in the December 12, 2011 issue of The New Yorker. He shared Ted Kaptchuk’s work on the Placebo Effect at the Harvard Medical School. I found this passage extremely apropos for placebo management:

. . . although placebos had no impact on the chemical markers that indicate whether a patient is responding to therapy, patients nonetheless reported feeling better. Kaptchuk concluded that objective data should not be the only criterion for doctors to consider.

Translated to the business world, we cannot just evaluate our effectiveness with people only on objective considerations. For instance, when a manager explains a business plan to an employee, the value isn’t just in the manager’s explanation and the employee’s understanding. There is additional intangible value in the time the manager spent with the employee. The manager could have enhanced this value by taking the employee to breakfast or lunch for the discussion.

As we saw there are two aspects to an interaction: thinking and feelings (see diagram to right). In this example, the manager’s explanation represents the thinking; the time and place represent the feeling. A different outcome would occur if the manager simply gave the plan for the employee’s reading.

In using this managerial approach, keep five things in mind:

1. Objective information and criteria don’t tell the whole story
2. People react differently
3. Expectations of you and the other person matter
4. Feelings matter more than #1
5. Different users have different results

Relationship building strategies and techniques maximize the placebo effect. It helps to have a strategy for improving your relationship with each of your employees. Implementing initiatives and effecting change will be easier and more effective.

Other links in this series: Placebo Management: Impacting Employees’ Beliefs

It’s generally easier to understand what positive and negative reinforcements are than it is to understand their advantages and disadvantages. Tradeoffs exist. Generally, in terms of getting action positive reinforcements are better over the long run, negative over the short run. The table below explains:

Now, it’s important for us to understand and appreciate how these work together. After all, managers are likely to use both, not just one or the other. Therefore, here are two important ratios to remember:

Results Ratio: It generally takes five (5) positive reinforcements to do the work of one (1) negative one.

5:1

Relationship Ratio: It generally takes ten (10) positive reinforcements to overcome the negative feelings of one (1) negative one.

10:1

For instance, one could hold a gun to someone’s head and change his behavior very quickly, but the relational damage is immense. We don’t want to become overdrawn on our relational accounts because overreliance on negative reinforcements will reduce the effect of positive reinforcements. This will necessitate greater use of negative reinforcements and produce a synergistic spiral downward resulting in a compliant, uninspired workforce.

In Part 4 of this series, I discussed the positivity of intrinsic rewards in the workplace. Let’s now address the negative impact of monetary motivations which are the primary extrinsic reward in today’s business world.

As Yochai Benkler in his article “The Unselfish Gene” of the July-August 2011 issue of the Harvard Business Review writes on page 84:

Whenever you design a policy that relies on monetary rewards, you have to assume that it will have side effects on the psychological, social, and moral dimensions of human motivation.

While it might be easy for us to see how monetary rewards encourage us to pursue our selfish interests, it’s difficult to see their deeper negative side effects. For instance, in many ways incentives encourage us to feel no better than rats in a maze. Rats seek out the cheese to guide them successfully through the maze. A right turn returns cheese while a wrong one does not. When businesses help employees navigate the maze of their business plans, making the “right” turns brings monetary rewards. When they make the “wrong” turn, the cheese is not forthcoming.

Now, many will claim, “I don’t feel like a rat.” However, as we come to understand ourselves better, we find much of this affects us subconsciously. We see this whenever we jokingly refer to the business world as the “rat race,” the “dog-eat-dog world,” or other similar descriptors. Of course, as Lily Tomlin pointed out, “The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.”

This isn’t to say we eliminate monetary rewards. It’s similar to eating; people require diverse foods to be healthy, so they also require diverse motivations for their professional health. In other words, we can’t create a cooperative culture on money alone.

Other links in this series:

• Cooperation vs. Competition on the Business-to-Business Level
• Cooperation vs. Self-interest: Which Reigns Supreme?
• Cooperation vs. Self-interest (Pt 2): Context – The Great Influencer
• Cooperation vs. Self-interest (Pt 3): Empathy
• Cooperation vs. Self-interest (Pt 4): Intrinsic Rewards
• Cooperation vs. Self-interest (Pt 5): Humans vs. Apes

My October 13, 2011 post, “Eloquence Trumps Honesty in Trust & Likeability Wars,” discussed how style affects our assessment of talent. Now, in the November 2011 issue of the Harvard Business Review, the article, “It’s Not What You Say but How You Say It,” cites the research of

Timothy DeGroot’s team from Midwestern State University indicating the attractiveness of leaders’ voices influence our perceptions of their effectiveness.

Again, the challenge is that we often don’t realize this influence is occurring. Moreover, we tend to believe other people are influenced but we aren’t. Combining this with the way labels influence our perceptions of content and how beauty and attractiveness influences us, we begin to see easily how incompetent people can receive promotions especially if they are confident.

In combating this influence, it’s important to begin with two perspectives:

1. Acknowledge that style influences us (“That includes me!”)
2. Remain focused on more intrinsic indicators of talents such as process (how a person works, thinks and interacts)

Often, we erroneously focus on results when we don’t factor in extraneously factors such as the team, timing and situation of the person’s experience. Perhaps the person was just along for the ride. Culture, processes and tools can also affect outcomes. When we fail to account for these, we tend fall into the trap of believing people are “winners” if they come from “winning organizations.”

In the final analysis, what makes assessing talent difficult is not the intrinsic analysis of it but rather being able to do so while trying to navigate the murky cloud of our own perceptions and biases. Many forces intuitively influence us on a subconscious level to stir up this mud.

In a previous post, I briefly mentioned the work of Michael Tomasello of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology as reported by Elizabeth Kolbert in her article, “Sleeping With The Enemy,” which appeared in the August 15/22, 2011 issue of the The New Yorker. At the time, I cited Tomasello’s work to emphasize the natural orientation humans have toward cooperation. In this post, I am suggesting that cooperation is a higher form of intelligent behavior than self-interest.

Here are two quotes from the article indirectly suggesting this:

1. Apes seem to lack the impulse toward collective problem-solving that’s so central to human society.
2. If you were at the zoo today, you would never have seen two chimps carry something heavy together. They don’t have this kind of collaborative project.

Only thinking and working towards your self-interest without consideration for others is definitely easier to accomplish than cooperation is. Additionally, when you add the importance of context, empathy and intrinsic rewards – all ingredients we’ve discussed earlier – to encourage natural cooperative tendencies, the achievement of cooperation is difficult, demanding and warrants a higher form of talent, aptitude and skill.

Furthermore, we can even take cooperation to a higher level when it comes to encouraging it within a diverse workforce. Such a workforce is more likely to be creative, innovative and adaptable. It’s much easier to gain cooperation within an homogeneous workforce than a diverse one. Moreover, creating the context, empathy and intrinsic rewards to appeal to such diversity requires special talents.

Again, all of this is to suggest that the desire and ability to cooperate belongs in the realm of a higher life form, humans rather than apes. Seen more simply, whereas self-interest puts our behavior more in line with those of apes, cooperation elevates us above them.

Other links in this series:

• Cooperation vs. Competition on the Business-to-Business Level
• Cooperation vs. Self-interest: Which Reigns Supreme?
• Cooperation vs. Self-interest (Pt 2): Context – The Great Influencer
• Cooperation vs. Self-interest (Pt 3): Empathy
• Cooperation vs. Self-interest (Pt 4): Intrinsic Rewards

People periodically ask me, “Should I get a coach?” I chuckle because it’s akin to asking, “Should I get married?” Coaching as with marriage is great if you find a great person. However, it can be unrewarding, even harmful, if you don’t, especially if you’re already good at your profession.

If you’re considering a coach, I strongly recommend reading, “Personal Best”, by Atul Gawande which appeared in the October 3, 2011 issue of the The New Yorker. Gawande gives an excellent account of his decision-making process for securing a coach. More importantly, he made three points about coaching that standout from other coaching literature I’ve read:

1. “Good coaches know how to break down performance into its critical individual components.”
2. “Good coaches speak with credibility, make a personal connection, and focus little on themselves.”
3. “. . . bad coaching can make people worse [especially if they are already professionals]”

In many respects, it doesn’t matter what the coach’s credentials, experience, references or record of accomplishment are: if the coach and you do not connect on a personal level, your experience will be mediocre and possibly damaging. Yes, selecting a coach is a highly subjective affair.

Many coaches will transfer their failure to the client by saying, “I’m only as good as my client is.” Theoretically, this is true, but in reality, you can have two excellent coaches in a situation where one succeeds and the other fails. Coaching is not an objective science; it’s a subjective art. What works for one client might not work for another.

That means determining what you want in a coach. If credentials and experience are important, that’s great! If not, don’t fret. You’re in charge; it’s your coach . . . and your choice.

If you have a son and a daughter both under college age, odds are greater that she will become CEO of a Fortune 500 company. As I was writing my book, The Feminine Influence in Business (more), in 2003 and 2004, I made this prediction to friends:

Within the next generation or two, more women will be Fortune 500 CEO’s than men.

After eight years, I’m only concerned that I was too conservative. The recent appointment of Virginia Rometty as new CEO of IBM has prompted me to revisit this prediction. However, despite what articles such as “The End of Men” and “The Rise of Women in the Creative Class” say, I believe deeper, more fundamental forces are at work:

The nature of work that is remaining for humans to do falls more within the talents, attributes and skills of women than of men’s.

That is because technological advancements more easily replace the logical, rational functions of humans than the intuitive, relational ones. Since men tend to be more dominant in the former and women the latter, computers will more easily replace men than women.

In this blog, we already explored the need for more relational skills to manage a more creative, innovative and adaptive workforce. Moreover, as much as we try to systematize and quantify creativity and innovation, that only takes us so far. Many times we need intuition to fill in the gaps. There is a reason why we say, “woman’s intuition” rather than “man’s intuition.”

Yes, many other forces are at work such as more women receiving advanced degrees, more diverse family options and more women in the workforce. But, underneath it all is this current: technology is producing a workplace more favorable to women than to men.

Part of what makes intuition so powerful is the assumption that we are born with personalities, talents and knowledge. Life then becomes the challenge to express them.

For example, we are born knowing about the “opposite sex.” It’s only later in life we arrive at an understanding of it and the ability to verbalize it. However, this contradicts the more popularized view of humans being born a “blank slate.” The article, “Transporter of Delight”, in the October 15, 2011 edition of The Economist, severely undercuts this notion by beginning:

“The idea that the human personality is a blank slate, to be written upon only by experience, prevailed for most of the second half of the 20th century. Over the past two decades, however, that notion has been undermined.”

The article cites research concluding, “personality is the single biggest determinant” of happiness with “a third of the variation in people’s happiness [being] heritable.” For example, extroverts tend to feel happier than introverts do. Thus, what I wrote regarding free will (more) and “who we are” being quite different from “who we think we are” is really about us being substantially more than “the sum of our experiences” and more than “a product of our environment.” There are opportunities for us when we realize we weren’t born slaves to our conditions, environments, societies and cultures.

Yet, this poses some thought provoking questions such as, “What happens to us when our nature is in conflict with our culture, our society or our upbringing?” Also, “What happens when we try to express ourselves in the midst of such conflict?” In such situations, we can easily see how God or Nature created us to alter the status quo, to change things . . . to encourage growth where stagnation exists. Growth cannot occur without change.

Intrinsic rewards are important aspects of creating a cooperative work culture. However, such rewards are difficult to understand and teach. Moreover, many, many people just don’t believe they are that powerful. Yochai Benkler in his article “The Unselfish Gene” of the July-August 2011 issue of the Harvard Business Review endorses the importance of intrinsic rewards in cooperative cultures.

Essentially, as we saw in the second post of this series, most people enjoy being cooperative, enjoy helping others; but, this enjoyment will dissipate if we ignore, discount or unreinforce it. Using effective, intrinsic, morale building techniques and compliments while working to minimize selfish extrinsic motivations such as money will ensure this won’t happen.

Since intrinsic rewards by nature are less tangible, it’s often difficult for managers and leaders to understand and appreciate the internal motivations of others, especially if they by nature don’t receive tremendous enjoyment from helping others. Nevertheless, here are a few tips for encouraging a cooperative workforce:

• Thank employees when they help others (letting them know it’s important to you)
• Demonstrate how they have helped you or others (it’s not always apparent to them)
• Recognize that they naturally enjoy helping others (reinforcing their internal motivation for helping others)
• Show how their job helps others to do theirs when performed well (creating a personal connection between their job and others)
• Hire and promote people who enjoy helping others (the desire to help others is a function of personality)
• Believe that people enjoy helping people (we cannot promote cooperation if we don’t believe it’s a motivation)

These tips will be uncomfortable at first but regularly applied they will produce positive effects over the long run. Thus, they require relentlessness, discipline and almost a fanatical belief in the power of cooperation.

Other links in this series:

• Cooperation vs. Competition on the Business-to-Business Level
• Cooperation vs. Self-interest: Which Reigns Supreme?
• Cooperation vs. Self-interest (Pt 2): Context – The Great Influencer
• Cooperation vs. Self-interest (Pt 3): Empathy