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Streamline Training & Documentation
Streamline Training & Documentation
Friday, February 26, 2010
Alfred Sloan's Memoir IX: The Technical Center
Three cheers for Alfred Sloan that he decided to hire top architectural talent — Eliel Saarinen and his son Eero — to design the General Motors Technical Center, which opened in Warren MI in 1956 (by which time Eero was the main architect, his father having died in 1950). As Sloan explains in Chapter 14 of My Years with General Motors, there was some disagreement over the "architectural and aesthetic standards" that should be set for the Technical Center.
Staircase, designed by Eero Saarinen, in the Research building of the General Motors Technical Center (Critical Detroit)
... Harley Earl had contended from the beginning that we should engage an architect of stature, and aim for a center that would be distinctive. Several others felt that any emphasis on high aesthetic standards might be detrimental to the practical operations of the center, and so they wanted General Motors itself to design and plan the project. At about the time this argument was in progress, I happened to visit the Ethyl Corporation laboratores in Detroit, which had just been completed. These handsome facilities made an excellent impression on me, and so I inclined to Mr. Earl's point of view more than I might have otherwise.
Among those who expressed some concern about the effects of an aesthetically oriented center was Mr. Lammot du Pont. He felt, quite properly, that he would not be fulfilling his responsibilities as a director unless he was satisfied, on certain points. I wrote to him on May 8, 1945, arguing the advantages of retaining an outside architect, and on May 17 he replied that he was satisfied on the point. His letter said, in part:
The whole layout and the description of its preparation gave me the impression that the matter of esthetic treatment, or as I would style it, "dressing up the place," had been an important factor from the beginning. I questioned whether the matter of appearance was of any importance in a project of this kind, the sole object being to get technical results. It was with this thought in mind that in offering my remarks, I started out with the layout which had been made by an architectural firm, whereas according to my line of thought, it would have been more appropriate to have had the layout made by an engineering firm or General Motors engineers.
I gather from your letter that it is not the intention to allow the appearances to interfere with the technical possibilities or to add substantially to the cost of the project. With those two assurances, my only remaining question with respect to the project would be answered.
We asked Mr. Earl himself to find the right architect for the center. He visited a number of leading architectural schools and sought out the opinions of others who were knowledgeable in the field, and he found in the end that virtually everyone made the same recommendation. The selection of the Saarinens was not a difficult choice. [The landscape architect was Thomas Church.]
[The General Motors Technical Center] is located on a 900-acre site northeast of Detroit, about twelve miles from the General Motors Building. At the center of the site is a twenty-two acre artificial lake surrounded on three sides by clusters of buildings. On the north side are the Research Laboratories. To the east are the Manufacturing Staff and the Engineering Staff buildings. To the south are the Styling Staff buildings, including a distinctive domed auditorium in which fairly sizable groups can gather for showings of the staff's work.
According to Stanford psychology professor Carol Dweck, working up to one's potential requires a growth mindset, i.e., the belief that one's abilities are malleable and can improve.
This is in contrast to a fixed mindset, i.e., the belief that one's abilities are inborn and fixed and, therefore, one is basically helpless in the face of skill deficits, such as poor public speaking or written communication.
(click to enlarge)
Fixed Mindset vs. Growth Mindset (Nigel Holmes [pdf])
Fortunately, there is good evidence that it is quite realistic to believe that one can improve one's abilities. What's needed are challenging opportunities to acquire experience in specific fields, which, over time, develops into deep expertise.
Most of Dweck's work has been directed at school students. For example, she and a colleague, Lisa Blackwell, have recently launched Brainology, a computer-based training program for middle school and high school students aimed at producing better academic outcomes by imbuing students with a growth mindset.
Dweck's research has demonstrated that students with a growth mindset have higher motivation to learn. When this heightened motivation is coupled with plenty of good instruction and practice, the students show solid increases in achievement.
A corollary of Dweck's findings concerning the importance of a growth mindset is the idea that trying to build students' belief in themselves by telling them how smart they are is not helpful. Doing this can, in fact, lead to worsened performance. Students are demotivated to undertake learning tasks at which they may initially fail because they're afraid their "native" intelligence will be called into question.
A much better approach to building students' belief in themselves is helping those with a fixed mindset to convert to a growth mindset.
The Brainology program is an example of how to achieve this conversion. It consists of an introduction and four units. In sum (pdf), the four units cover:
Unit 1— basics of brain structure and function, particularly what is required to maintain readiness to learn.
Unit 2 — brain behavior, how it functions, effect of emotions (e.,g., performance anxiety), and strategies to manage emotions (e.g., strategies for handling tests calmly).
Unit 3 — how learning changes the brain, and what sort of activities promote learning. You can exercise your brain "by exploring new information, learning new concepts, and practicing skills. [P]ractice is the key to learning."
Unit 4 — how memory works, and study strategies to apply the Brainology lessons in real life. "[I]nformation moves from working memory to long-term memory through a process called encoding. In order for encoding to happen you must pay attention, attach new information to existing information that supports it, and repeat the information. [O]ther mnemonics (memory strategies) include connecting information together by chunking, visual images and acronyms."
Organizations that want to cultivate learning-oriented behavior among their employees are well-advised to encourage a growth mindset, accompanied by opportunities to build experience. In practice, this means that a company's performance management system should give heavy weight to skill development, with lesser weight placed on grading employees in order to make compensation and retention decisions.
From Book I, Chapter II, of the original 1776 edition of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. . . ... thus the certainty of being able to exchange all that surplus part of the produce of his own labour, which is over and above his own consumption, for such parts of the produce of other men's labour as he may have occasion for, encourages every man to apply himself to a particular occupation, and to cultivate and bring to perfection whatever talent or genius he may possess for that particular species of business.
The difference of natural talents in different men is, in reality, much less than we are aware of; and the very different genius which appears to distinguish men of different professions, when grown up to maturity, is not upon many occasions so much the cause as the effect of the division of labour. The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature as from habit, custom, and education. When they came into the world, and for the first six or eight years of their existence, they were perhaps very much alike, and neither their parents nor playfellows could perceive any remarkable difference. About that age, or soon after, they come to be employed in very different occupations. The difference of talents comes then to be taken notice of, and widens by degrees, till at last the vanity of the philosopher is willing to acknowledge scarce any resemblance. But without the disposition to truck, barter, and exchange, every man must have procured to himself every necessary and conveniency of life which he wanted. All must have had the same duties to perform, and the same work to do, and there could have been no such difference of employment as could alone give occasion to any great difference of talents.
From Book I, Chapter II, of the original 1776 edition of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. . . ... man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and show them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.
"Passion" Isn't Actually Required to do a Good Job
It was with a real sense of gratitude that I read Alina Tugend's "Shortcuts" column in today's New York Times. I have never been comfortable with the popular admonition that people should do their darndest to bring "passion" to their jobs. As I indicated in this blog's first post, I certainly agree that it's best for people to be working in jobs they truly care about, but I can't help thinking that "passion" has connotations that generally fit private life best.
Tugend's quarrel with the call for "passion" at work, is not exactly like mine. Her question is:
Are we falling into a trap of believing that our work and indeed, our lives, should always be fascinating and all-consuming? Are we somehow lacking if we're bored at times or buried under routine tasks or failing to challenge ourselves at every turn?
Following her own line of thought, Tugend goes on to discuss the ideas of various thinkers who have addressed the questions of what mental state or attitude is best suited to achieving satisfaction at work, and what employers and employees can do to encourage arriving at this preferred state.
As it turns out, the advice Tugend's informants offer is quite consonant with my own (by no means unprecendented) thought that people should aim to be employed doing something they can embrace wholeheartedly (while also recognizing that just about any job has tiresome aspects). Similarly, managers should aim to get people working on projects that particular individuals find inherently interesting and that tap the employees' strengths.
When There is No Good Option, You Need to Prepare for Backlash
People with any kind of political instincts realize that having to choose among a set of unattractive options is going to open a decision-maker up to disgruntled flak, regardless of which particular option the decision-maker picks as the best of a bad lot.
Helping to confirm this intuition is a recent paper (pdf) co-authored by Justin Kruger (Stern School of Business at New York University), Jeremy Burrus (now at the Educational Testing Service), and Laura Kressel (a graduate student at the Stern School) which reports the results of two experiments in which participants were asked to evaluate decisions and decision-makers in just such no-win situations.
As explained in the paper's abstract:
In Experiment 1, participants read about a judge deciding to which of two seemingly unfit parents to award sole custody in a real-life divorce case. In Experiment 2, participants were led to believe that their partner in the experiment was forced to pick one of two unpleasant tasks for the participant to perform. [Specifically, the task was to wear a sign in public reading either "Long Live Osama" or "Free Saddam."] In both cases, the decision and decision-maker were evaluated negatively regardless of the alternative chosen.
An obvious question is how to minimize ill-will resulting from being forced to make an unappetizing choice. The key is effective communication, which means:
When announcing a downbeat decision, provide the facts that the decision-makers were grappling with.
Explain how pros and cons were considered and the rationale for the decision ultimately reached.
Discuss how employees' jobs and the work environoment will be affected. Explain your plans for mitigating the decision's negative impacts.
Take questions from your audience. Prepare for the Q&A in advance by discussing questions that are likely to come up and how to answer them honestly and constructively.
Finally, explain how management, with employee input, will be vigilantly assessing and acting on opportunities for maximizing positive results in the future.
People differ in their views concerning the circumstances in which businesses benefit from promoting competition among employees. I don't want to tackle such a broad topic here, and so will restrict myself to noting what some recent research suggests would be most effective specifically in a company's Sales department.
Earlier this year, Stephen Garcia, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, and Avishalom Tor, a law professor at the University of Haifa, published a paper examining the relationship between the number of competitors a person is facing and that person's motivation to compete.1 A good summary of the paper appeared in the July 11 edition of The Economist.
Garcia and Tor report two findings of significance to businesses in which individual sales representatives are, to a greater or lesser degree, in competition with each other:
After a certain number, which is quite low,2 the more competitors a person is facing, the lower that person's motivation to compete.
The negative correlation between number of competitors and competitive motivation — which Garcia and Tor have dubbed the "N-Effect" — comes into play only when the people involved are in the habit of comparing their performance to that of others.3 I.e., it is in this context of social comparison that the number of competitors makes a difference; a small number of competitors is more conducive to comparison of one's own performance to that of others than is a large number of competitors.4
I think it's clear why I see particular relevance of these results to management of sales organizations. As Garcia and Tor put it, "In the workplace ... productivity on individual tasks (e.g., sales in a commission-based system) might be lower when the tasks are performed among many similar workers in a large warehouse than when they are performed among only a few workers in smaller branch offices."
2 Garcia and Tor note that the limits of the N-Effect remain to be studied and are likely to vary according to the exact type of competition in question. ("N poker-table competitors may well be perceived differently from N marathon runners.")
Continuing my periodic citation of work by Jeffrey Pfeffer (most recently here), one of my favorite business academics, let me recommend reading the two-page piece he has in the July-August issue of the Harvard Business Review.
"Shareholders First? Not So Fast ..." deals with today's renewed appreciation of the value of considering all stakeholders in business planning and decision-making. Pfeffer argues:
In the 1950s and 1960s, the stakeholder was king. CEOs saw their role as one of balancing the interests of the various groups that touched their companies — customers, employees, suppliers, shareholders, and the community at large. This reflected the executives' sophisticated understanding not only of their role as stewards of the valuable resources entrusted to them but also of their own enlightened self-interest: Each of these groups was essential for organizational success. What was true then is even more so today, in an age of knowledge work, outsourcing, global supply chains, and activist interest groups.
Pfeffer goes on to say that
opinions on deregulation, finance, time horizons, and the wisdom of corporate leaders are all shifting, and the logic for putting the creation of shareholder wealth ahead of the creation of stakeholder-value is rightfully under fire.
To build profitability and productivity, enlightened managers are
implementing high-commitment work practices. These include investing in training, decentralizing decision making, and having pay be contingent on organizational, not just individual, performance. Other sources [of research] show the benefits companies reap from customer loyalty and high levels of customer satisfaction.
Pfeffer points to the increased prominence of balanced scorecards and other assessment tools as evidence that companies using such tools recognize the suboptimality of focusing exclusively on financial metrics.
Of particular interest to people in the training field, are Pfeffer's repeated references the the importance of employee training in implementing strategies that embody a balancing of stakeholders' interests.
In reading about this effort, first in the Wall Street Journal on Saturday, and then in the June 22 issue of The New Yorker, I was particularly struck by the special type of persuasion the program uses to reduce violent crime and to remove drug markets from community streets.
David Kennedy, director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control, had the insight some years ago that criminal offenders who had not yet perpetrated violent crimes might be deterred from continuing their illegal activities by being challenged to behave better by people with moral authority, such as family members and community leaders. At the same time, it would be impressed upon the offenders that the police had already accumulated sufficient evidence of their misdeeds to convict them in court if the illegal behavior recurred.
This second-chance approach, with attached sanctions if the second chance does not produce improvement, reminds me of an approach to dealing with recalcitrant employees that has always seemed smart to me. The basic idea is to call in an employee who has persistently failed to meet expectations and deliver this message: "You need to go home for a day and think very seriously about what you want to do. Do you want to bring your performance in your job up to the level that we expect, or do you want to look elsewhere for employment? If you are sincerely ready to do what's necessary to meet expectations, we are ready to help. If not, we have no choice but to let you go."
The process followed with criminal offenders is to ask them to attend a meeting; they are promised that the meeting is not a trap at which they will be arrested.
Those who appear at the meeting are confronted by influential figures, such as family, friends, clergy and ex-offenders, who describe the harm the offenders' activities are causing, earnestly entreat them to stop the bad-acting, and offer help with getting education, jobs, and other assistance for turning their lives around. As the New Yorker article explains, "victims and their family members [are] on hand to deliver the moral component of the message to the offenders: 'What you are doing is wrong, and we know you can do better.'"
The offenders also get a deliberately theatrical talking to from police and representatives of the criminal justice system, who present the dossiers of evidence that are ready to be used to convict them and send them to prison if they fail to take advantage of the offer of a second chance.
You can see portions of such a "call-in" meeting in the video below, which deals with use of the Kennedy approach to deter street drug-dealing in High Point NC.
Jeremy Travis, president of John Jay College, argues:
David [Kennedy] has proved that when you communicate directly with offenders, tell them their actions have consequences — not abstract consequences but direct, immediate ones — and then offer them a way out, that it can have an enormous deterrence value.
It should be noted that, according to John Seabrook, author of the New Yorker article, the social services element of Kennedy's approach has been relatively weak. I am inclined to think that this is because, as experience shows, helping those with employability problems is itself a project that requires concerted, multi-pronged effort. See, for example, this post about the "wrap-around services" the Cincinnati Works program offers to individuals facing various employability issues.
An excellent Wall Street Journal report on the High Point NC experience with using the Kennedy program is here. The maps below show the prevalence of serious crime in High Point prior to the "call-in" of drug dealers, and then about 600 days after. Colors indicate the number of crimes by census block. White indicates the fewest crimes and red the most.
A friend of mine, Bruce Fleming, who teaches English at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, recently posted an article at SoldiersForTheTruth.org that tries to prepare incoming plebes and cadets for what their years at one of the US military academies will actually be like.
Based on twenty-two years of direct observation at Annapolis, Fleming argues that the approach to education adopted by the military academies drains students of the idealism with which they enter. Students are subjected to a high degree of counterproductive frustration that could and should be substantially reduced, to be replaced by methods that build enthusiasm and motivation for performing well ...
... and professionally.
I benefited from reading the entire article, but here I'll just cite one passage that struck me because it alludes to one of my pet ideas, namely that people often lack a clear understanding of what "professional" behavior actually amounts to.
In discussing the start of a plebe's first academic year (which follows Plebe Summer), Fleming, addressing incoming plebes directly, says:
Simply by keeping your eyes open, you realize that many of the first-class [seniors] you were prepared to idolize are goof-offs, looking for ways to get out of doing things rather than being fired up with The Spirit. Some may be downright unprofessional. Their sloppiness may be in their uniforms, their rooms, their attitude, or their people skills. Yet so long as they pass their inspection and don’t get caught doing whatever it is they’re doing, they seem to think it’s okay. They get away with it. And it doesn’t seem to bother them. You’ll realize that people here aren’t interested so much in being good as in looking good. This will be a huge blow to your idealism, which has all the intensity of an 18-year-old eager to take on the world. How can they lecture you on not being “professional” when they’re so lax themselves?
Clearly, a goodly contingent of the soon-to-graduate first-class students have yet to internalize the notion that a professional, among other things, is a person who has the discipline to practice what he/she preaches. Instead, in Fleming's view, all too often the impact of the Naval Academy culture is creation of passive aggressive behavior that is anything but professional.
In the "Bottom line" section of his article, Fleming sums up:
Mostly you’ll learn to put your chin down and survive. If you just hang on, it’ll all be over. Midshipmen are constantly counting down to something: the next vacation, the end of the semester, Herndon, graduation. Because you get zapped for everything you do, after a while you’ll cease looking for ways to be pro-active. It’s rare to hear midshipmen enthusiastic about an academic or military challenge — unless they make it themselves.
That’s what you have to “get” about Annapolis: it has lots of opportunities, but despite our rhetoric of “ship, shipmate, self,” the opportunities aren’t collective, they’re individual. Take advantage of everything offered, accept every new challenge — vow to become a leader. On your own, I mean, because in my view that’s the only way anybody ever became a leader. Namely, because s/he decided to become one.
For a straightforward approach to allowing employees scope for exercising their intelligence and creative talents, while controlling risks associated with empowerment, you can look to the "levers of control" framework put forward by Robert Simons, a professor at Harvard Business School.
Simons recommends adopting four types of control system so that employees can "initiate process improvements and new ways of responding to customers' needs — but in a controlled way." The four types of control system are:
Diagnostic control systems — The traditional approach of checking performance against plan by monitoring critical performance outcomes, such as sales and profits.
Belief systems — Communication of your company's core values and its mission in a way that inspires employees' commitment and motivates them to "search for new ways of creating value." Simons notes, "In the absence of clearly articulated core values, [employees] are often forced to make assumptions about what constitutes acceptable behavior in the many different, unpredictable circumstances they encounter."
Boundary systems — Ground rules for operations, and limits on the types of opportunities that employees are allowed to pursue. Simons argues that empowerment only works if you refrain from making lots of rules about what employees must do, and instead specify what they may not do. For instance, departures from ethical behavior should be clearly verboten. A company will probably also want to specify types of business it does not want to get involved in (perhaps because of lack of needed competencies), and/or types of customers it does not care to serve. Simons argues, "Boundary systems are especially critical in those businesses in which a reputation built on trust is a key competitive asset."
Interactive control systems — The "formal information systems that managers use to involve themselves regularly and personally in the decisions of subordinates." In practice, this means regular face-to-face discussion between senior managers and subordinates to assess emerging information and new ideas that may or may not indicate a need to revamp the company's strategy and action plans. Managers are looking to "identify specific vulnerabilities, opportunities, and the source of any problems that require proactive responses." The sorts of questions to explore are What has changed since our last forecast? Why? What are we going to do about it?
Note that the combination of belief systems and boundary systems effectively define the domain within which employees are encouraged to actively seek profitable innovations.
Donald Sull Makes the Case for Management by Commitment
Donald Sull, who teaches management at the London Business School, has long been a proponent of what he calls management by commitment.
As Sull explains in a brief interview posted at BNET.com on March 4, management by commitment involves looking "at an organization as a network of overlapping, continually evolving promises that people make to each other to get things done."1
Sull contrasts management by commitment to two alternatives:
Use of hierarchical power
"This tends to create silos: the hierarchy is very up and down and doesn't work well for work that requires cooperation across different units or functions. It's pretty slow as well; it takes a long time for information to get up the structure and for orders to find their way down."
Management by standardized processes
"This is hugely helpful — it allows you to squeeze out excess resources and continuously improve on what you do. But here we also have limitations, probably the biggest one being that standardization gets in the way of innovation."
For situations that do not lend themselves to standardization, Sull argues that management by commitment allows needed flexibility. Management by commitment also has a natural place in situations in which you need cooperation from someone over whom you have no authority.
Based on research he and his colleague Charles Spinosa have done, Sull cites five characteristics of effective management by commitment:
The commitments are public and they are tracked publicly.
The commitments are active, as opposed to being casual or pro forma.
The commitments are voluntary. The person from whom a commitment is sought can make a counteroffer, or even say no if what's being requested is something the individual really isn't able to take on.
The commitments are explicit, i.e., it is clear which individuals are committing to what objectives and tasks.
The commitments are motivating. People need to care about what they are being asked to do, so that they are willing to carry on when inevitable obstacles crop up. This requires clarifying the importance of, and the rationale for, the actions people are signing up for.
Note: In a longer interview published in 2007 that is well worth reading, Sull explains in more detail how management by commitment helps with strategy execution.
__________ 1 A brief follow-up BNET.com interview with Sull, citing specific examples of use of management by commitment, is here.
Universia-Knowledge@Wharton, the Spanish-Portuguese segment of Knowledge@Wharton, published an article today that seems overwrought in cautioning organizations about the pitfalls associated with making goal-setting central to performance management.
In pursuit of such mandates, employees will ignore sound business practices, risk the company's reputation and violate ethical standards.
I believe such unacceptable consequences of goal-setting are generally due to a falure to qualify goals by defining criteria that specify what successful achievement of each goal requires. Employees need to understand that how goals are achieved will be taken into account in assessing whether the goal achievement is truly successful. For instance, in the article's opening example, the story of the ill-designed Ford Pinto, whose fuel tank was vulnerable to catching fire in a rear-end collision, it seems that Ford neglected to require engineers to include proper attention to safety in the design criteria.
The Universia-Knowledge@Wharton article summarizes a paper (pdf) by Maurice Schweitzer (Wharton), Lisa D. Ordóñez (Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona), Adam D. Galinsky (Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University), and Max H. Bazerman (Harvard Business School) (SOGB).1
In fairness, I must note that SOGB point to the need to monitor performance as employees pursue assigned goals, and that they base their reasoning in part on the fact that such monitoring is frequently quite difficult. Nonetheless, I would argue that SOGB overstate the degree of unmanageable risk in setting specific goals for employees to meet.
As summarized in the Universia-Knowledge@Wharton article, there are four problems SOGB emphasize as likely to accompany goal-setting:
"Goals that are too specific often lead employees to develop such a narrow focus that they fail to recognize obvious problems unrelated to the target." I say that there is no reason for management to let employees overlook problems related to other desiderata.
SOGB also discuss the problem of setting too many goals, so that employees pick and choose in a manner that does not match organizational priorities. The counterpoint here is that managers need to clarify priorities and coach employees on gauging their efforts to match priorities.
Time horizons for goals that are (1) too short, meaning long-term considerations are largely ignored, or (2) too long, meaning employees slack off if they manage to meet a goal in advance of the deadline they've been given. I say (1) success criteria should include optimizing the combination of short-term and long-term considerations, and (2) there is no reason not to plan for special rewards and recognition — and a revised goal/timeframe — to ensure employee productivity is maintained when the initial deadline for a goal proves longer than necessary. (I'd also note that the example of New York cab drivers electing to knock off early on rainy days — because they can meet their own, self-set goals for the daily total of fares earlier than on clear days — is not actually relevant to an analysis of employee response to goals set by management.2)
"Workers with highly specific and ambitious targets will engage in risky practices in order to meet them." Again, it seems evident that success criteria should include requirements for appropriate risk management.
"Unethical behavior is one of the more obvious pitfalls of overly ambitious goal setting ..." Success criteria requiring adherence to ethical standards, with compliance monitored, are a sine qua non in any respectable organization.
The last two items are aspects of the general issue of perverse incentives. Mitigating perverse incentives involves not only setting appropriate success criteria, but also directly adjusting the structure of incentives to reward desired behavior and not reward behavior that undercuts organizational values.
Where SOGB are on firm ground is their caution concerning undercutting employees' intrinsic motivation by overemphasizing financial rewards. Also well-taken are SOGB's observations that employees will "lose their focus on learning new skills in favor of using tried-and-true methods to meet their quotas," and that "[setting] targets for individual workers can create a culture of competition in which workers tend to shun teamwork in problem solving." But even here I'd say that astute definition of both the goals and the success criteria can mitigate the danger of perverse employee behavior.
In their paper, SOGB discuss two other problems they associate with overuse of goal-setting to motivate employees.
There is the issue of "goal-induced reductions in self-efficacy" that can occur when employees achieve a good result that nonetheless falls short of a stretch goal they were aiming for. This "can be highly dettrimental because perceptions of self-efficacy are a key predictor of task engagement, commitment, and effort." I say that effective leaders will take action in such a situation to acknowledge that employees have done a good job that has moved the organization forward; the stretch goal was overly ambitious, so no one is in trouble for falling short.
Another problem is the difficulty of tailoring goals to match individuals' particular strengths without creating perceptions of unfairness. Managing this issue is a matter of managerial judgment — that takes employee input into consideration — allied with persuasive communication. If an employee is still disgruntled after a manager has heard him/her out, responded with any goal adjustments that may be appropriate, and explained the rationale for the final determination of more or less disparate individual goals, it is fair to point out that the employee may need to find a position that better matches his/her job preferences.
For me the bottom line is that, while SOGB have done well in articulating the issues associated with making goal-setting a central element in performance management, especially in a complex setting, I believe, based on my own observation of companies intelligently implementing performance management systems, that attaching success criteria to all goal statements, providing constructive coaching, and exercising appropriate managerial oversight makes establishing goals for individual employees a crucial part of maximizing odds of mission accomplishment.
__________ 1 The link takes you to the working paper version of the Schweitzer et al. article. The published version is in Academy of Management Perspectives, Vol. 23, No. 1 (February 2009).
2 SOGB adopt the view, "If NYC taxi drivers used a longer time horizon (perhaps weekly or monthly), kept track of indicators of increased demand (e.g., rain or special events), and ignored their typical daily goal, they could increase their overall wages, decrease the overall time they spend working, and improve the welfare of drenched New Yorkers." True, and perhaps cab drivers should be reminded of this fact regularly to make sure it hasn't slipped their minds. All the same, we're talking about utility here so, ultimately, it's up to the cabbies themselves to decide how they want to spend their time.
As a follow-on to yesterday's post, I'd like to cite a more recent survey of the literature on organization citizenship behaviors (OCB). The article (pdf) in question was published in 2007 by Brian Hoffman, Carrie Blair, John Meriac, and David Woehr (HBMW).1
HBMW reach several conclusions from their meta-analysis of the OCB literature:
OCB can be measured as a single factor. I.e., the seven dimensions of OCB identified by Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Paine, and Bachrach in their 2000 literature review2 are highly correlated, meaning they are largely measuring the same thing — the degree to which an employee performs above and beyond formal job requirements.
There is indeed a measurable difference between discretionary and non-discretionary work performance. I.e., OCB "is empirically distinguishable from task performance" (the latter being the term organizational psychologists use to refer to specific job responsibilities).
Attitude variables are more strongly correlated with OCB than with task performance. I.e., the strength of an employee's discretionary effort is more tightly tied to his/her motivation than is non-discretionary effort. (The attitude variables HBMW use are job satisfaction, organizational commitment, procedural justice, distributive justice, and interactional justice.3)
The attitudinal variables explain a positive, though small, amount of the unique variance in OCB (the variance in OCB over and above what it shares with task performance). I.e., the unique variance in OCB across employees is to a small degree explained by differences in the employees' attitudes, as measured by the five attitude variables listed in the previous bullet.
From the point of view of training, the conclusions to be drawn are that promoting "good citizenship" on the job makes a difference for job performance, and that there is significant potential for promoting good citizenship by promoting job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and organizational justice.
__________ 1 Brian J. Hoffman, Carrie A. Blair, John P. Meriac, and David J. Woehr, "Expanding the Criterion Domain? A Quantitative Review of the OCB Literature," Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 92, No. 2 (2007), pp. 555-566. Hoffman teaches applied psychology at the University of Georgia. Blair teaches management at the College of Charleston (SC). Meriac teaches psychology at the University of Missouri – St. Louis. Woehr teaches management at the University of Tennessee Knoxville.
2 Philip M. Podsakoff, Scott B. MacKenzie, Julie Beth Paine, and Daniel B. Bachrach, "Organizational Citizenship Behaviors: A Critical Review of the Theoretical and Empirical Literature and Suggestions for Future Research," Journal of Management, Vol. 26, No. 3 (2000), pp. 513-563.
3 Procedural justice refers to "fair procedures, defined as those that are unbiased, based on accurate information, applied consistently, representative of all parties, correctable, and based on ethical standards." Distributive justice refers to fairness in "wage and other resource distributions." Interactional justice refers to "the perceived fairness of interpersonal treatment." See "The Distributive Side of Interactional Justice: The Effects of Interpersonal Treatment on Emotional Arousal, by Mary D. Stecher and Joseph G. Rosse, Journal of Managerial Issues, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Summer 2005), pp. 229-246.
The reasons people procrastinate include personal proclivities (some people are especially prone to the problem) and distaste for certain types of tasks (e.g., completing administrative paperwork, writing performance appraisals). Now a quartet of psychologists have gathered evidence for another causative factor — the way in which a task is presented to the person being asked to carry it out.
Sean McCrea (University of Konstanz, Germany), Nira Liberman (Tel Aviv University), Yaacov Trope (New York University), and Steven Sherman (Indiana University Bloomington) report (pdf) the results of a suite of three studies that suggest people are less prone to procrastinate if a task they are given is represented in concrete terms rather than abstractly.1
For example, the first study the team carried out compared the degree of procrastination between two groups:
The first group was asked to write a couple of sentences about how one would go about engaging in ten specific activities, such as opening a bank account.
The second group was asked to write a couple of sentences about the traits of people who engage in the specified activities.
It turned out that the first group exhibited less procrastination than the second group.
This pattern was repeated in the other two studies. In sum, "the way the task is represented influences when individuals complete it."
An obvious implication of this research for business is that assignments given to individuals and teams should be defined as concretely as possible. On the other hand, the drive to describe assignments in concrete terms should not overwhelm the need to start out at a fairly high level of abstraction in some cases, such as when a business is investigating opportunities for innovation and is still at the divergent thinking stage of the process.
__________ 1 "Construal Level and Procrastination," by McCrea, Liberman, Trope, and Sherman, was published in Vol. 19, No. 12 (2008) of Psychological Science, pp. 1308-1314.
In the Fall 2008 issue of the MIT Sloan Management Review, Joseph Grenny and David Maxfield of the consultancy VitalSmarts, and Andrew Shimberg of nGenera Talent, present a straightforward model of influence that can be quite helpful in situations where people need to be willing and able to change their behavior to fit new circumstances.
In "How to Have Influence," Grenny, Maxfield, and Shimberg (GMS) analyze a simple taxonomy of sources of influence in which the willingness (motivational) and ability components of influence each operate at three levels: the personal, the social, and the structural (non-human).
Thus, the GMS taxonomy consists of six sources of influence. GMS list questions to ask (here slightly edited) in assessing whether and how to tap each of these sources in particular situations:
Personal motivation to change — "link to mission and values," i.e., "help people see the broad implications of their actions and choices" and "help them connect the changes to their deeply held values." Ask:
In a room by themselves would people want to engage in the behavior?
Do they hate it or enjoy it?
Do they find meaning in it?
Does it fit into their sense of who they are or want to be?
Example of a successful strategy: Leaders "identified the aspects of the change that were boring, uncomfortable or painful and found ways to either eliminate them or make them more pleasant."
Personal ability to change — "a robust training initiative is at the heart of almost all successful influence strategies." Ask:
Do they have the knowledge, skills and strength to be able to do the right thing?
Can they handle the toughest challenges they will face?
Example of a successful strategy: Leaders "gave guided practice and immediate feedback until people were sure they could engage in the new bahaviors in the toughest of circumstances."
Social motivation to change — "harness peer pressure." Ask:
Are other people encouraging the right behavior or discouraging the wrong behavior?
Do people whom others respect model the right behaviors at the right time?
Do people have good relationships with those who are trying to influence them positively?
Example of a successful strategy: Leaders "identified people who would be most concerned about the changes, and made sure they were involved early."
Ability to exert social influence — "create social support." Ask:
Do others provide the help, information and resources required — particularly at critical times?
Example of a successful strategy: Leaders "created 'safe' ways for people to get help without feeling embarrasssed or being put on the spot."
Structural contributions to motivation to change — "align rewards and ensure accountability." GMS caution that it is generally best "to use incentives third, not first. Otherwise, you might acutally undermine people's intrinsicmotivation." Ask:
Are there rewards — pay, promotions, performance reviews or perks?
Do rewards encourage the right behaviors and costs discourage the wrong ones?
Example of a successful strategy: Leaders "adjusted the formal rewards system to make sure people had incentives to adopt the new behaviors."
Ability to apply structural influence — "change the environment." Ask:
Does the environment — tools, facilities, information, reports, proximity to others, policies, work processes — enable good behavior or bad?
Are there enough cues and reminders to help people stay on course?
Example of a successful strategy: Leaders "reorganized people's workplaces to remove obstacles and to make the change convenient and easy."
(Note that two earlierposts discuss an influence model that addresses situations in which one must exercise influence without authority.)
In a numberofprevious posts, I've discussed how companies can create and assess business models. In this post, I'd like to call attention to what Julian Birkinshaw and Jules Goddard have to say in the Winter 2009 issue of the MIT Sloan Management Review about how companies can and should make conscious decisions concerning what management model they use.1
Birkinshaw and Goddard define management models — ways of getting work done through others — in terms of how management:
defines objectives
motivates employees
coordinates activities
allocates resources
The first two dimensions are ends, the second two are means.
On each of the dimensions, any particular company falls somewhere between two poles, one the "tight" extreme, the other the "loose" extreme. Specifically,
Objectives can be set as specific goals, e.g., achieving a minimum profit rate (tight), or as higher-order goals, e.g., delighting customers (loose).
Motivators for employees can be extrinsic, e.g., salaries and wages (tight), or intrinsic, e.g., the inherent attractions of the work (loose).
Activities can be coordinated via formal policies and procedures, i.e., bureaucratically, in a neutral sense of the word (tight), or they can be coordinated informally in what Birkinshaw and Goddard call "emergent" fashion — "spontaneous coordination through the self-interested behaviors of independent actors" (loose).
Decisions on resource allocation can be made by managers in a hierarchy (tight), or these decisions are made via a collective intelligence process (loose).
Birkinshaw and Goddard use the above dimensions to define four general types of management model:
Planning model — tightly defined ends and means.
Most suitable for:
Mature business, operating in a stable, predictable industry
Turnaround or crisis situation, where clear rules are needed
Leaders most comfortable acting as master architects or controllers
Quest model — tightly defined ends, loosely defined means.
Most suitable for:
Established and growing business, with a defined competitive arena
Market conditions that are dynamic and competitive
Leaders emphasize strategy and tactics, often using sports or military metaphors; winning is everything
Scientific model — loosely defined ends, tightly defined means.
Most suitable for:
Human-capital-intensive business, such as professional services or research and development organizations
Benign market conditions with plenty of opportunities, often in multiple domains
Leaders are understated, first among equals, looking to enable others
Discovery model — loosely defined ends and means.
Most suitable for:
Early-stage business operating in highly uncertain, fast-changing environment; or established business seeking to rejuvenate itself
Competitive arena is ambiguous
Leaders are experimenters, open to improvisation, conversation, and mutual engagement
A key point that bears repeating is the importance of making a conscious choice of the company's management model, based on intelligent analysis of the company's circumstances. This is as opposed to moving along with unexamined assumptions concerning what management practices are optimal for the company in its current circumstances.
With conscious understanding of the company's mnagement model, it is possible to make purposive adjustments in order to strengthen the company's competitive position.
Issues to Consider when Tapping Collective Intelligence
In the Winter 2009 issue of the MIT Sloan Management Review, Eric Bonabeau, CEO of Icosystem Corp., reviews what we know about the best ways to apply collective intelligence to decision making (the alternative being to depend on a small number of decision-makers who may suffer from biased thinking and/or poor information).
The techniques for tapping collective intelligence Bonabeau mentions include:
Information markets
Wikis
Crowdsourcing
Social networks
Collaborative software
What is especially helpful in Bonabeau's article is his discussion of specific issues one should consider when deciding if and how to use collective intelligence techniques:
Loss of control — Depending on collective intelligence can produce an undesirable outcome, an outcome so unpredictable that the organization is not prepared to deal with it, lack of clarity concerning who is responsible for bad decisions, and public relations problems if outsiders are involved and come up with embarrassing ideas.
Diversity vs. expertise — The best outcome in some situations is produced by ensuring that a wide variety of perspectives are considered. In other situations, it may be best to sacrifice diversity in order to ensure that needed expertise dominates the analysis and decision making.
Engagement — "... organizations must provide a continuous flow of new, enthusiastic participants to keep engagement high, or they need to provide incentives to sustain people's motivation over time."
Policing — to control any mischief-making or malicious input.
Intellectual property — An organization must both manage its own intellectual property when sharing information with those whose input is sought, and it must "determine whether and how it will assume ownership" of intellectual property that arises from ideas contributed by people outside the organization.
Mechanism design — The organization must answer such questions as who gets to participate, whether everyone's input receives equal weight, and whether decision making will be distributed (a number of people contribute to one decision) or decentralized (many people are empowered to make their own independent decisions).
Bonabeau summarizes his key point:
For many problems that a company faces, there is potentially a solution out there, far outside of the traditional places that managers might search, within or outside the organization. The trick, though, is to develop the right tool for locating that source and then tapping into it.
Bonabeaue also emphasizes the importance of identifying appropriate metrics and indicators for assessing the performance of collective intelligence tools the organization adopts.
Positive deviance, discussed in a couple of recentposts, is the brainchild of the husband and wife team, Jerry and Monique Sternin.
In May 2005 Jerry Sternin (who, sadly, passed away on December 11) published an article (pdf) in the Harvard Business Review co-authored with Richard Pascale1 that describes how the principles of positive deviance apply in the business world.
The basic idea is the same as in the context of development economics: When seeking a solution to a problem look for "positive deviants" — people who seem already to have solved the problem despite having access to no more resources than others in the community.
An exhibit in the article summarizes the differences between the traditional approach to change and the positive deviance approach. These differences (here, somewhat edited) are:
Leader as path breaker vs. Leader as facilitator
In the traditional approach, the leader has primary ownership, and the momentum for change comes from above.
In the positive deviance approach, the leader guides the positive deviance process, while the community takes ownership of the quest for change.
Outside in vs. Inside out
In the traditional approach, experts identify and disseminate best practices.
In the positive deviance approach, the community identifies pre-existing solutions and amplifies them.
Deficiency-based vs. Asset-based
In the traditional approach, leaders deconstruct common problems and recommend best practice solutions, with the implicit reproach that the company's or unit's employees aren't as good as their peers.
In the positive deviance approach, the community leverages pre-existing solutions practiced by those who succeed against the odds.
Logic-driven vs. Learning-driven
In the traditional approach, particpants think themselves into a new way of acting.
In the positive deviance approach, participants act themselves into a new way of thinking.
Vulnerable to "transplant rejection" vs. Open to self-replication
In the traditional approach, resistance arises to ideas imported from, or imposed by, outsiders.
In the positive deviance approach, latent wisdom is tapped within the community, which helps forestall rejection. "The trick is to introduce already existing ideas into the mainstream without excessive use of authority."
Moving from problem-solving toward solution identification vs. Moving from solution identification toward problem-solving
In the traditional approach, best practices are applied to problems defined within the bounds of existing parameters.
In the positive deviance approach, the solution space is expanded through the discovery of new parameters.
Focus on the protagonists vs. Focus on enlarging the network
The traditional approach engages stakeholders who would conventionally be associated with the problem.
The positive deviance approach identifies stakeholders beyond those directly involved with the problem.
As a final note, I'd mention the emphasis the positive deviance process places on reframing. Pascale and Sternin outline three steps to reframing a problem:
Identify the conventional presentation of the problem. (E.g., "We don't have enough proper food for our children.")
Find out if there are exceptions to the norm, people in identical circumstances who seem to be coping especially well. (E.g., Yes, Mrs. X and Mrs. Y have healthy, well-fed children.")
Reframe the problem to focus on the exceptions. (E.g., "What are Mrs. X and Mrs. Y doing that's different?")
Reading the whole article will provide you with a range of helpful examples of reframing and of other aspects of the positive deviance process.
__________ 1 Richard Pascale is currently an associate fellow of Oxford University. Previously, he served for twenty years on the faculty of Stanford University's business school.
One of the earliest themes of this blog is "critical caring" — making sure, as far as possible, that your work is something you really and truly want to do well.
I recently came upon a prime example of this philosophy in the culinary area. At the Reluctant Gourmet blog, there is an interview with Todd Mohr, a man who began a second career as a chef after spending about ten less-than-fulfilling years as a middle manager in marketing and advertising.
Having recognized that "I was spending the majority of my life in an endeavor that was not fulfilling spiritually," Mohr jumped ship at considerable financial cost and enrolled in the culinary arts program at Baltimore International College. He finished the two-year program in 13 months and went on to his first job in his new field — working at the National Security Agency, where the kitchen team prepared two meals a day for a workforce of 15,000. Among his remarks about this experience, Mohr notes:
I didn’t realize it at the time, but the NSA taught me a tremendous amount. There were certainly times I wanted to quit, but I’m glad I persevered, because that knowledge paid off.
After a couple more jobs in institutional cooking, Mohr returned to his home state of North Carolina and opened Savor Hospitality, a catering business. He explains his thinking:
I didn’t want to start just another catering company. I wanted to create a unique niche. I started to notice large, important, companies having important business meetings and getting wax-paper wrapped sandwiches brought by an unskilled delivery boy, dumped at the receptionist’s desk.
The secretary now has to set everything up, clean it up, stuff that’s not their job. I created “Business Dining Catering,” elements of a wedding caterer brought to the business environment. This unique approach that included a Chef on site, gold and chrome chafing dishes, white linens, and return clean-up service separated us from every other caterer.
Now, 7 years later, others are copying what I started.
The whole discussion with Mohr is quite informative and engaging. For my purposes, I would just reiterate what I take away from the interview: Mohr is working hard and productively, and is continuing to expand the range of services he offers (which now include a cooking school for laypeople). He is motivated to put in all the time and effort this requires because he truly cares about what he is doing. As Mohr puts it, "I would be terribly frustrated with 12 - 18 hour days if I worked for someone else. The fact that I'm forwarding my own business makes it a joy."
Earlier this year, Mohr began a blog, where he posts brief instructional videos. In the example below, you can learn how to make a Japanese omelet, a technique Mohr was taught by a Japanese chef who visited one of his classes at culinary school.
