Mike Lehr's Blog

As we saw with pigeonholing and tasting food, context influences us greatly. This extends to people’s inclinations to collaborate. In support of this, the July-August 2011 issue of the Harvard Business Review has Yochai Benkler’s citing in his article “The Unselfish Gene” the work of Lee Ross from Stanford University. He found people being more inclined to collaborate if the context of the effort promotes it.

That’s why leadership that manages, operates and communicates with the implied assumption that employees are essentially motivated by “What’s in it for me” will tend to foster a less collaborative culture than leadership doing the same against a backdrop of collaboration. From an everyday perspective, this means the culture that heavily relies upon extrinsic rewards such as money, awards and perks for individual performances will tend to be less collaborative than the one relying upon intrinsic rewards such as the enjoyment of working with and helping others. Mastering morale builders that don’t cost a cent go a long way in helping here.

This doesn’t mean we eliminate monetary rewards for individuals, but it does mean we focus more on the culture we are promoting in our businesses; culture is context. However, the promotion of that culture must be real. If employees sense a divorce between words and actuality, then the context for collaboration falls, thus causing most employees to resort to self-interested behavior.

Using intrinsic rewards to buttress a collaborative context is involved. In addition to mastering morale builders, it means mastering compliments. Understanding and appreciating the different kinds will help us see how intrinsic rewards differ from extrinsic ones. It’s only by mastering these on an interpersonal level will we be able to extend it throughout our companies and organizations.

Other posts in this series:

• Cooperation vs. Self-interest: Which Reigns Supreme?

The Hot Spotters, by Atul Gawande in the January 24, 2011 issue of The New Yorker spoke primarily to minimizing medical costs but had much relevancy to my experiences in effecting change. It covered five tactics. This is the fourth of a five part series.

One of the biggest problems we have in promoting change is the assumption that people are light switches. We expect to say something once, and they will change. Advertisers learned long ago that running an advertisement just once doesn’t encourage behaviors of consumers and build brands inside their heads. Repetitively encouraging people to adopt change is a natural part of the change management process. Generally, we should expect to have to instruct and model the change three to four times, maybe more.

The problem is that we often position this more as following up to ensure people do what we told them. Typically, we code this as accountability in our business jargon. It’s better to position this repetitiveness more as a normal part of the instructional and modeling process; it’s a natural part of the change management process. We can do this by saying something like:

I don’t expect you to learn and perform these changes well overnight. There will be challenges. Therefore, I will commit to being available to you on a regular basis so we can help one another make these changes as easy and natural as possible for all of us.

This language establishes an expectation that our follow up is normal and not punitive. It indicates we’re in this together. Otherwise, they could easily construe our actions as micromanagement. The actual frequency of our repetitive instruction and modeling will depend upon the nature and scope of the change.

Other links in this series:

• Change Management – Tactic #1: Pick the Right Moment
• Change Management – Tactic #2: Strengthen Relationships
• Change Management – Tactic #3: Very Small, Simple Steps
• Change Management – Tactic #5: Request Demonstration

Long ago I sat in on the reprimand of an employee by a manager. The manager concluded his discussion by asking the employee, “Do you understand what I’m saying?” The employee responded, “Yes.” It suddenly occurred to me how biased we are in thinking that education alone will correct behavior. In other words, we assume that if someone understands our argument and reasons they will adopt our point of view.

In this above situation, there was no follow up by the manager to explore whether the employee agreed with the manager’s alternative action or whether the employee was moved to act accordingly in future situations. Yes, he was aware of the consequences, but we tend to forget that sometimes people are willing to pay those consequences.

I refer to making this false assumption about “Do you understand?” as a cognitive bias; we tend to believe that reasons, logic and rationales are enough to win the day. This bias will tend to make us wrongly believe that we’ve done “our best.”

I also experience this in non-disciplinary situations in which anyone is trying to influence another person. This cognitive bias happens frequently with instructors trying to move participants to take action in such settings as business training. They will ask participants, “Do you understand what I’ve shown (said, did, etc.)?”

Therefore, in summary, I find four basic hurdles, represented by the following questions, that we need to negotiate and verify before we can have significant confidence that we’ve persuaded someone:

1. Do you hear me?
2. Do you understand me?
3. Do you agree with me?
4. Are you moved to take the recommended action (to act on this idea)?

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.

Arbitrariness & First, Second, Third

Arbitrariness is a vital to intuitive problem solving because it’s related to subjectivity which is related to personality and its emotional drivers. Looking at the relationship between arbitrariness and conditionality will help us see this.

For instance, the concept of “first” does not need the existence of another number; however, the concept of “second” is dependent upon the condition that “first” exists, and the concept of “third” is dependent upon the condition that “first” and “second” exists.

House of Arbitrariness & Conditionality

Consider a house. Whereas someone can arbitrarily place the first stone of his house anywhere, the rest is built conditionally around that stone which is called the cornerstone. Ideas and knowledge are also built around cornerstones which we often experience as assumptions. Since knowledge influences how we identify, define and examine problems, our problems will have cornerstones too.

For instance, many of us consider the idea of democracy good. However, if such decision making is absolutely superb, why don’t companies and armies use it where more authoritarian styles dominate? This is because democracy’s cornerstone is placed in a governmental location. If we move that cornerstone to a corporate or military location, we will end up building a more authoritarian-style house.

In problem solving, moving the cornerstone to a new location will help us view our old location from a different perspective. But first, we must challenge ourselves to find the cornerstone of any set of conditions in which we find ourselves and the cornerstone of any set of ideas we are using to evaluate those conditions. That means avoiding an unquestioning, absolutist perspective and employing an inquisitive, arbitrary one.

Glass Half Full? Half Empty?

One of my favorite metaphors to use as a “challenging assumptions exercise” is the “Is your glass half full or half empty” one. The basic assumption is that the choice is one of attitude: if your attitude is positive you will choose “half full,” if negative “half empty.” One of the reasons why I like it is that it can create quite a stir in folks when they see the answer is not quite so clear cut. This is important because viewing problems from an alternate perspective can trigger negative emotional responses that retard problem solving.

For instance, we can disrupt this popular metaphor by asking: Who is more likely to go out and get more water? The answer is the one who views his glass half empty. As we saw with bonus plans, the fear of loss is much more powerful than the joy of gain. Therefore, those who feel that they’ve already lost half their water supply are more likely to secure more water than those who feel they still have half remaining.

I experienced a real life example of this when I was taking a new national sales manager around to the troops. We visited the office of a sales representative who was out. The manager looked around and pointed to a picture of the representative’s four children and wife and said, “I love to see that. It means he’ll be real hungry to sell and support his family.”

This is also why crises are the most effective ways to encourage change. Consequently, if you were a water salesperson, you would be more likely to make a sale if you could get the customer to see his glass as half empty rather than half full.

As we already know, one of the best ways to develop our problem-solving skills is to view things from a different perspective. Challenging assumptions is a way to do this, but this assumes we know the assumptions we’re using. Since they frequently go undetected, this can be problematical.

Nevertheless, we can train our minds to spot them. The process is similar to the one used by chess players in preparation for matches. They run through practice scenarios even though they won’t see them in the match. They are training their minds to see something similar. Students taking practice exams for standardized tests are doing the same thing; they won’t run across those questions but the practice establishes the right mind set for taking the test. We can improve our mindset for identifying assumptions by practicing with everyday situations.

For instance, a sales person asking whether you want to by the blue car or the red one is assuming that you wish to buy the car in the first place. A manager who says that you can make a lot of money if you do something is assuming that money is very important to you. When a neighbor told us he was going to get ice for the party, we assumed he would get enough for five ice chests; he only bought one bag. In business we often strive for efficiencies, but the assumption is that quality won’t suffer. The question, “Are we organized yet?” is assuming that organizing is necessary; the task might not require it.

Once a day, try to identify the assumptions people use in their decisions. No matter how obvious they might be, you will be honing your problem-solving skills.

Recently, as I’ve heard on many occasions, someone said “This isn’t personal, it’s business.” A critical assumption underlying an intuitive approach is that everything we do, think or say says something about us. In short, everything is personal. Business is no different; it can tell you much about a person.

The advantage business gives us in assessing personalities is the financial tradeoff it encourages. The stress this often creates allows us to see deeper into people than otherwise possible. When someone says, “This isn’t personal, it’s business,” he is saying the decision is very personal to him. It’s a form of protesting too much. The statement is just the rationale he chose to emotionally justify his decision.

However, we can’t assume that such a statement automatically implies any particular emotions. For example, they could have a miserly orientation or they could be rooted in strong feelings for providing for his family. Many other types of emotions could be at work. Without context, it’s impossible to tell.

Nevertheless, the key point is to realize that this person has one or more emotions that are strongly connected to money. To him, money is very personal. Once you know what these emotions are, money becomes an excellent vehicle by which to influence him.

A special report on television in the May 1, 2010 edition of the Economist stated “. . . people seem unaware of their own behavior. In surveys they almost always underestimate how much television they watch, and greatly overstate the extent to which they watch video in any other form . . .”

One of the important assumptions underpinning intuitive approaches is that people are largely unaware of their behavior. This implies that personal descriptions of behavior are heavily laced with personal and collective emotional drivers. A similar effect occurs when different people describe an accident; descriptions vary.

This example is particularly fascinating for two reasons. First, for most people television occupies a large chunk of daily activity (4 to 8 hours). Second, they tend to watch over 40% more television than they think, and tend to think they watch other video formats almost four times more than they actually do! Therefore, we are not talking about insignificant activities or variations.

However, here is the important question unanswered by the article: What are the emotional drivers causing people to underestimate television viewing and to overestimate the viewing of other videos formats so drastically? Could television, while popular, still be viewed as the “idiot box?” Could other video formats, because of their better interactivity, give the user a greater feeling of control and thus greater cultural acceptability? Is so, perhaps people want to believe they aren’t idiots and they have their viewing under control?

A similar effect commonly occurs in business – but perhaps more consciously – when subordinates will overestimate the time spent on approved activities and underestimate disapproved ones. Regardless, the point is that applying an intuitive approach means having a handle on all emotional drivers – individual and collective – lacing any communication.