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Streamline Training & Documentation
Streamline Training & Documentation
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Francis Bacon on Discourse
Francis Bacon first published "Of Discourse" in 1597 in a collection of short essays, and then in somewhat expanded form in subsequent 1612 and 1625 editions. Here, to give you a sense of Bacon's view of how to converse well, is the conclusion of the 1625 version: I knew two noblemen, of the west part of England, whereof the one was given to scoff, but kept ever royal cheer in his house; the other would ask of those that had been at the other’s table, Tell truly was there never a flout or dry blow [scornful jest] given? To which the guest would answer, Such and such a thing passed. The lord would say, I thought he would mar a good dinner. Discretion of speech is more than eloquence; and to speak agreeably to him with whom we deal, is more than to speak in good words or in good order. A good continued speech, without a good speech of interlocution, shows slowness: and a good reply or second speech, without a good settled speech, showeth shallowness and weakness. As we see in beasts, that those that are weakest in the course are yet nimblest in the turn; as it is betwixt the greyhound and the hare. To use too many circumstances ere one come to the matter, is wearisome; to use none at all, is blunt.
John Shook, an industrial anthropologist who worked with the NUMMI joint venture of Toyota and General Motors from its inception, has written an illuminating article about cultural change at the NUMMI factory in Fremont CA. The article appears in the Winter 2010 issue of the MIT Sloan Management Review.
Shook's model of cultural change is a close cousin of that put forward by Edgar Schein, an emeritus Sloan professor who specializes in organizational development. The Shook and Schein models are diagrammed in the graphic below.
The arrows in the graphic represent old and new thinking concerning the process of cultural change.
The traditional view, represented by the upward arrows, is that you start by getting people to change their thinking about how it's proper to behave, and they then proceed to make the desired behavioral changes. The Schein/Shook view, represented by the downward arrows, is that you start by getting people to change their behavior and, in due course they adjust their thinking about what sort of behavior is appropriate.
In Schein's model, the initial step is to change "cultural artifacts" — "the observable data of an organization, which include what people do and how they behave." This leads to a change in people's values and attitudes and, ultimately, to a change in the "pattern of shared basic assumptions ... that has worked well enough to be considered valid and therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to [solving] problems."1
In Shook's very similar model, managers initiate the process of cultural change by defining the actions and behaviors they desire, providing training, and designing the work processes that are necessary to reinforce those behaviors. This leads to a change in people's values and attitudes and, ultimately, to a change in organizational culture.
Shook describes how NUMMI's adoption of Toyota's system of requiring workers to immediately address any problem, even if that means stopping the production line until the problem is fixed, quickly produced a new culture of employee concern for quality. Previously, the factory had been plagued by worker-management friction and high absenteeism, and quality had been notoriously poor.
In Shook's view,
What changed the culture at NUMMI wasn’t an abstract notion of “employee involvement” or “a learning organization” or even “culture” at all. What changed the culture was giving employees the means by which they could successfully do their jobs. It was communicating clearly to employees what their jobs were and providing the training and tools to enable them to perform those jobs successfully.
The key take-away Shook offers at the conclusion of his article is that the "tools of the Toyota Production System are all designed around making it easy to learn from mistakes. Making it easy to learn from mistakes means changing our attitude toward them," i.e. skipping the finger-pointing and instead nurturing a culture of alert problem solving by empowered amployees.
__________ 1 Edgar Schein, "Organizational Culture and Leadership" (1993) in Classics of Organization Theory, Jay Shafritz and J. Steven Ott (eds.) (Harcourt College Publishers, 2001), pp. 373-374.
A couple of days ago, Joe Hodas, senior VP – Brand Communications at a Colorado marketing agency, published a column in Advertising Age that offers a checklist of ten do's and one don't that will help you "advance your career witout selling your soul."
In edited form, Hodas's ten principles are:
Nothing replaces hard work.Effective hard work, that is. You do need to produce valuable results.
We all have a personal toolkit — know yours and how to use it. Identify and apply your strengths. Keep strengthening your strengths.
It's about teamwork, but know who is and isn't on your team. Be an upstanding, savvy participant in the office politics you will inevitably be dealing with.
Don't throw any fits. Outbursts are unprofessional.
Decide how much you can take before you bail. "A career is like a relationship, so make sure you're putting as much effort into trying to fix the problems as you put into feeling bad about them."
Earn your raises and promotions. Hodas is "a firm believer that raises are for the work you've done, and promotions are for the work you can do."
Individuality is to be respected — as long as you're still part of the team. "Don't be afraid to stand out, but do make sure you don't alienate your teammates in the process."
Always try to add something smart to the discussion. And be ready with a rationale for what you are saying. I would argue that "because" (or its equivalent in your own language) is one of the most beautiful words you can use.
Sometimes you have to raise the volume in order to be heard. If you feel strongly about something — and are all set with your "because" statement — speak right up.
Have a perspective on the past, present and future. This is the most agency-oriented of Hodas's points, but it still can readily be applied in other industries: "It's not enough to do well today. Your boss wants and needs to see that you have a broader outlook on where you / the client / the work / etc. has been, is now and will be going."
Always be that ray of light in your boss's/ co-worker's day. This is among my favorite precepts. Remember: What you say and do in a particular situation is a statement of what sort of person you are. So be sure what you say and do reflects the you you want to be.
If Hodas's advice seems commonsensical, there's a reason for that. Principles for handling oneself well generally are a matter of common sense. The challenges are to know what to focus on, and to recruit the strength to be consistent in actually following the principles you swear by.
Below, in its entirety, is Chapter III of Part I, Section III, of the 1759 edition of Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments. From reading this passage, you can get a good sense of Smith's views concerning ethics and people's natural moral and not-so-moral inclinations.
* * *
This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments. That wealth and greatness are often regarded with the respect and admiration which are due only to wisdom and virtue; and that the contempt, of which vice and folly are the only proper objects, is often most unjustly bestowed upon poverty and weakness, has been the complaint of moralists in all ages.
We desire both to be respectable and to be respected. We dread both to be contemptible and to be contemned. But, upon coming into the world, we soon find that wisdom and virtue are by no means the sole objects of respect; nor vice and folly, of contempt. We frequently see the respectful attentions of the world more strongly directed towards the rich and the great, than towards the wise and the virtuous. We see frequently the vices and follies of the powerful much less despised than the poverty and weakness of the innocent. To deserve, to acquire, and to enjoy the respect and admiration of mankind, are the great objects of ambition and emulation. Two different roads are presented to us, equally leading to the attainment of this so much desired object; the one, by the study of wisdom and the practice of virtue; the other, by the acquisition of wealth and greatness. Two different characters are presented to our emulation; the one, of proud ambition and ostentatious avidity the other, of humble modesty and equitable justice. Two different models, two different pictures, are held out to us, according to which we may fashion our own character and behaviour; the one more gaudy and glittering in its colouring; the other more correct and more exquisitely beautiful in its outline: the one forcing itself upon the notice of every wandering eye; the other, attracting the attention of scarce any body but the most studious and careful observer. They are the wise and the virtuous chiefly, a select, though, I am afraid, but a small party, who are the real and steady admirers of wisdom and virtue. The great mob of mankind are the admirers and worshippers, and, what may seem more extraordinary, most frequently the disinterested admirers and worshippers, of wealth and greatness.
The respect which we feel for wisdom and virtue is, no doubt, different from that which we conceive for wealth and greatness; and it requires no very nice discernment to distinguish the difference. But, notwithstanding this difference, those sentiments bear a very considerable resemblance to one another. In some particular features they are, no doubt, different, but, in the general air of the countenance, they seem to be so very nearly the same, that inattentive observers are very apt to mistake the one for the other.
In equal degrees of merit there is scarce any man who does not respect more the rich and the great, than the poor and the humble. With most men the presumption and vanity of the former are much more admired, than the real and solid merit of the latter. It is scarce agreeable to good morals, or even to good language, perhaps, to say, that mere wealth and greatness, abstracted from merit and virtue, deserve our respect. We must acknowledge, however, that they almost constantly obtain it; and that they may, therefore, be considered as, in some respects, the natural objects of it. Those exalted stations may, no doubt, be completely degraded by vice and folly. But the vice and folly must be very great, before they can operate this complete degradation. The profligacy of a man of fashion is looked upon with much less contempt and aversion, than that of a man of meaner condition. In the latter, a single transgression of the rules of temperance and propriety, is commonly more resented, than the constant and avowed contempt of them ever is in the former.
In the middling and inferior stations of life, the road to virtue and that to fortune, to such fortune, at least, as men in such stations can reasonably expect to acquire, are, happily in most cases, very nearly the same. In all the middling and inferior professions, real and solid professional abilities, joined to prudent, just, firm, and temperate conduct, can very seldom fail of success. Abilities will even sometimes prevail where the conduct is by no means correct. Either habitual imprudence, however, or injustice, or weakness, or profligacy, will always cloud, and sometimes depress altogether, the most splendid professional abilities. Men in the inferior and middling stations of life, besides, can never be great enough to be above the law, which must generally overawe them into some sort of respect for, at least, the more important rules of justice. The success of such people, too, almost always depends upon the favour and good opinion of their neighbours and equals; and without a tolerably regular conduct these can very seldom be obtained. The good old proverb, therefore, That honesty is the best policy, holds, in such situations, almost always perfectly true. In such situations, therefore, we may generally expect a considerable degree of virtue; and, fortunately for the good morals of society, these are the situations of by far the greater part of mankind.
In the superior stations of life the case is unhappily not always the same. In the courts of princes, in the drawing-rooms of the great, where success and preferment depend, not upon the esteem of intelligent and well-informed equals, but upon the fanciful and foolish favour of ignorant, presumptuous, and proud superiors; flattery and falsehood too often prevail over merit and abilities. In such societies the abilities to please, are more regarded than the abilities to serve. In quiet and peaceable times, when the storm is at a distance, the prince, or great man, wishes only to be amused, and is even apt to fancy that he has scarce any occasion for the service of any body, or that those who amuse him are sufficiently able to serve him. The external graces, the frivolous accomplishments of that impertinent and foolish thing called a man of fashion, are commonly more admired than the solid and masculine virtues of a warrior, a statesman, a philosopher, or a legislator. All the great and awful virtues, all the virtues which can fit, either for the council, the senate, or the field, are, by the insolent and insignificant flatterers, who commonly figure the most in such corrupted societies, held in the utmost contempt and derision. When the duke of Sully was called upon by Lewis the Thirteenth, to give his advice in some great emergency, he observed the favourites and courtiers whispering to one another, and smiling at his unfashionable appearance. 'Whenever your majesty's father,' said the old warrior and statesman, 'did me the honour to consult me, he ordered the buffoons of the court to retire into the antechamber.' It is from our disposition to admire, and consequently to imitate, the rich and the great, that they are enabled to set, or to lead what is called the fashion. Their dress is the fashionable dress; the language of their conversation, the fashionable style; their air and deportment, the fashionable behaviour. Even their vices and follies are fashionable; and the greater part of men are proud to imitate and resemble them in the very qualities which dishonour and degrade them. Vain men often give themselves airs of a fashionable profligacy, which, in their hearts, they do not approve of, and of which, perhaps, they are really not guilty. They desire to be praised for what they themselves do not think praise-worthy, and are ashamed of unfashionable virtues which they sometimes practise in secret, and for which they have secretly some degree of real veneration There are hypocrites of wealth and greatness, as well as of religion and virtue; and a vain man is as apt to pretend to be what he is not, in the one way, as a cunning man is in the other. He assumes the equipage and splendid way of living of his superiors, without considering that whatever may be praise-worthy in any of these, derives its whole merit and propriety from its suitableness to that situation and fortune which both require and can easily support the expence. Many a poor man places his glory in being thought rich, without considering that the duties (if one may call such follies by so very venerable a name) which that reputation imposes upon him, must soon reduce him to beggary, and render his situation still more unlike that of those whom he admires and imitates, than it had been originally.
To attain to this envied situation, the candidates for fortune too frequently abandon the paths of virtue; for unhappily, the road which leads to the one, and that which leads to the other, lie sometimes in very opposite directions. But the ambitious man flatters himself that, in the splendid situation to which he advances, he will have so many means of commanding the respect and admiration of mankind, and will be enabled to act with such superior propriety and grace, that the lustre of his future conduct will entirely cover, or efface, the foulness of the steps by which he arrived at that elevation. In many governments the candidates for the highest stations are above the law; and, if they can attain the object of their ambition, they have no fear of being called to account for the means by which they acquired it. They often endeavour, therefore, not only by fraud and falsehood, the ordinary and vulgar arts of intrigue and cabal; but sometimes by the perpetration of the most enormous crimes, by murder and assassination, by rebellion and civil war, to supplant and destroy those who oppose or stand in the way of their greatness. They more frequently miscarry than succeed; and commonly gain nothing but the disgraceful punishment which is due to their crimes. But, though they should be so lucky as to attain that wished-for greatness, they are always most miserably disappointed in the happiness which they expect to enjoy in it. It is not ease or pleasure, but always honour, of one kind or another, though frequently an honour very ill understood, that the ambitious man really pursues. But the honour of his exalted station appears, both in his own eyes and in those of other people, polluted and defiled by the baseness of the means through which he rose to it. Though by the profusion of every liberal expence; though by excessive indulgence in every profligate pleasure, the wretched, but usual, resource of ruined characters; though by the hurry of public business, or by the prouder and more dazzling tumult of war, he may endeavour to efface, both from his own memory and from that of other people, the remembrance of what he has done; that remembrance never fails to pursue him. He invokes in vain the dark and dismal powers of forgetfulness and oblivion. He remembers himself what he has done, and that remembrance tells him that other people must likewise remember it. Amidst all the gaudy pomp of the most ostentatious greatness; amidst the venal and vile adulation of the great and of the learned; amidst the more innocent, though more foolish, acclamations of the common people; amidst all the pride of conquest and the triumph of successful war, he is still secretly pursued by the avenging furies of shame and remorse; and, while glory seems to surround him on all sides, he himself, in his own imagination, sees black and foul infamy fast pursuing him, and every moment ready to overtake him from behind. Even the great Caesar, though he had the magnanimity to dismiss his guards, could not dismiss his suspicions. The remembrance of Pharsalia still haunted and pursued him. When, at the request of the senate, he had the generosity to pardon Marcellus, he told that assembly, that he was not unaware of the designs which were carrying on against his life; but that, as he had lived long enough both for nature and for glory, he was contented to die, and therefore despised all conspiracies. He had, perhaps, lived long enough for nature. But the man who felt himself the object of such deadly resentment, from those whose favour he wished to gain, and whom he still wished to consider as his friends, had certainly lived too long for real glory; or for all the happiness which he could ever hope to enjoy in the love and esteem of his equals.
I'm usually not up late enough to watch Charlie Rose, and I'm not particularly fond of his interviewing style anyway, but I happened to have him on in the background last night. When Frank Bruni came on, I suddenly found myself riveted.
Bruni was the restaurant critic of the New York Times from April 2004 to August 2009. He has included his experience in that job, along with an account of growing up in a loving family that attached great value to good and ample meals, in his recently published memoir, Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater."
What had me so entranced by his conversation with Charlie Rose was not the subject matter of his book per se, but rather his manner of conversing, which had the most gracious air that I personally could remember witnessing on TV.
Bruni seems such an exemplar of graciousness that I want to pass along links for watching and listening to him in action. The Rose interview isn't yet available online, but I did locate the video below, a portion of a September 1 interview with Leonard Lopate on WNYC. The audio of the full interview is available here.
Another interview is from Thursday, when Bruni sat down with Stephen Colbert. You can watch it here.
You can also get a clear sense of Bruni's manner and conversational tone from reading transcripts of interviews, such as his September 14 interview with Julia Reed. One final sample of his style is the online Q&A the Times ran in October 2008, which you can read here.
Today's New York Times contains one of the more interesting interviews with a businessperson that I've read recently. Below I quote the story with which Gary E. McCullough, CEO of Career Education Corporation, answers Adam Bryant's opening question, "What's the most important leadership lesson you've learned?" I encourage reading the whole interview because McCullough has much wisdom to share.
The biggest [leadership lesson] I learned, and I learned it early on in my tenure in the Army, is the importance of small gestures. As you become more senior, those small gestures and little things become sometimes more important than the grand ones. Little things like saying “please” and “thank you” — just the basic respect that people are due, or sending personal notes. I spend a lot of time sending personal notes.
I’ll never forget one of the interactions we had with my commanding general of the division in which I was a platoon leader. We were at Fort Bragg, N.C. We had miserable weather. It was February and not as warm as you would think it would be in North Carolina. It had been raining for about a week, and the commanding general came around to review some of the platoons in the field. He went to one of my vehicle drivers and he asked him what he thought of the exercise we were on. To which the young private said, “Sir, it stinks.” I saw my short career flash before my eyes at that point.
He asked why, and the private said: “There are people who think this is great weather for doing infantry operations. I personally think 75 and partly cloudy is better.”
And so the commanding general said, “What can I do to make it better for you?” And the private said, “Sir, I sure could use a Snickers bar.” So a couple days later we were still moving through some really lousy weather, and a box showed up for the private. And that box was filled with 38 Snickers bars, which is the number of people in my platoon. And there was a handwritten note from the commanding general of our division that said, “I can’t do anything about the weather, but I hope this makes your day a bit brighter, and please share these with your buddies.”
And on that day, at that time, we would’ve followed that general anywhere. It was a very small thing, and he didn’t need to do it, but it impressed upon me that small gestures are hugely important.
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.
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.
Jacqueline Novogratz's Ideas for Alleviating Global Poverty
You can get an overview of Jacqueline Novogratz's views concerning alleviating poverty in developing countries by reading a short article about her work that appears in the May 23 issue of The Economist.
Novogratz is the CEO of Acumen Fund, which she founded in 2001. As the website explains,
Acumen Fund is a non-profit global venture fund that uses entrepreneurial approaches to solve the problems of global poverty. We seek to prove that small amounts of philanthropic capital, combined with large doses of business acumen, can build thriving enterprises that serve vast numbers of the poor. Our investments focus on delivering affordable, critical goods and services — like health, water, housing and energy — through innovative, market-oriented approaches.
To hear directly from Novogratz, you can watch the video below, which is the talk she gave at the conclusion of the 2008 Aspen Ideas Festival.
In the video, Novogratz addresses at a general level lessons learned and to do's for those seeking to assist with alleviating global poverty. For more detail about such matters as Acumen's investment principles and performance metrics, you can browse through the Acumen website.
In sum, the Acumen approach is to
use philanthropic capital to make disciplined investments — loans or equity, not grants — that yield both financial and social returns. Any financial returns we receive are recycled into new investments.
'But tell me, child, your choice; what shall I buy You?' – 'Father, what you buy me I like best.' With the sweetest air that said, still plied and pressed, He swung to his first poised purport of reply.
What the heart is! which, like carriers let fly — Doff darkness, homing nature knows the rest — To its own fine function, wild and self-instressed, Falls light as ten years long taught how to and why.
Mannerly-hearted! more than handsome face — Beauty's bearing or muse of mounting vein, All, in this case, bathed in high hallowing grace . . .
Of heaven what boon to buy you, boy, or gain Not granted! – Only . . . O on that path you pace Run all your race, O brace sterner that strain!
"G.M.H. called this sonnet 'autobiographical ... Last Lent two boys of our congregation gave me much help in the sacristy in Holy Week. I offered them money for their services, which the elder refused, but being pressed consented to take it laid out in a book. The younger followed suit; then when some days after I asked him what I shd. buy answered as in the sonnet.' ... Line 7, self-instressed, moved by its own natural impulse, i.e., towards the Good." (from Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Selection of His Poems and Prose, W.H. Gardner (ed.), Penguin Books, 1953, pp. 228.229.)
In an earlier post, I discussed the work of Patricia Devine, a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who has shown that people can avoid acting in a prejudiced way by making a conscious effort to base their behavior on personal values that include being unbiased.
In the February 2009 issue of the Harvard Business Review, Amy Cuddy, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School, reports briefly on related research.
Cuddy, with colleagues Susan Fiske and Peter Glick, professors of psychology at Princeton University and Lawrence University, respectively, has investigated how people respond to a person they are meeting for the first time.
Cuddy argues that two questions instinctively go through a person's mind at a first meeting:
What are this person's intentions toward me?
Is this person capable of acting on those intentions?
The problem is that there is also an instinctive tendency for the person doing the sizing up to assume:
If the new acquaintance is a warm individual with benign intentions, s/he won't be very competent to act on those intentions.
Conversely, if the new acquaintance is cold with not-so-benign intentions, s/he will be competent to act on the intentions.
Cuddy goes on to outline the implications of this warmth/competence model of prejudice:1
We like to assist people we view as warm and block those we see as cold; we desire to associate with people we consider competent and ignore those we consider incompetent."
The obvious problem is that plenty of people are both warm and competent, and plenty of others are cold and incompetent. We need to be ready to consider all four possibilities when deciding, for example, whom to trust and whom to build connections with.
Cuddy recommends a straightforward approach to enhancing the level of conscious thought that goes into making such judgments as whom to hire, whom to put together on teams, and how to promote retention of high performing employees. The approach has two steps:
Push yourself to be aware of how you form impressions. Avoid "sizing people up on the basis of stereotypical perceptions of warmth and competence."
Separate the two dimensions. E.g., consider an individual's interpersonal warmth in its own right, and do the same for the individual's technical/functional competence.
The goal is to "recognize individuals' true talents, thus avoiding the high cost of mistaken judgments."
__________ 1 Cuddy contrasts the warmth/competence model to "the prevailing psychological view of prejudice — namely, that people simply favor 'us' and dislike 'them.'" She argues that the warmth/competence model is able to explain behaviors that don't fit the alternative us vs. them model, e.g., the tendency of many people to "disrespect the elderly while feeling positive toward them."
In a couple of previous posts — one dealing with Monique Dembele, a native health worker in Mali, and the other discussing the Barefoot College, which began in India and has since spread to other countries — I've looked at how training can be geared to the needs of people in impoverished areas of the world.
Now the National Geographic has published an article in their December 2008 issue that offers another compelling example of how effective training can equip members of a rural community to deliver valuable services to fellow residents.
The Comprehensive Rural Health Project (CRHP), or Jamkhed (the name of the city east of Mumbai where the organization is based), has been providing training to village health workers (VHWs) since 1970. The training enables the VHWs to deliver effective basic health services and to teach such health-promoting practices as good nutrition, breast-feeding, hygiene, and oral rehydration. According to Raj Arole, CRHP's founder and director,
A village health worker ... can take care of 80 percent of the village's health problems, because most are related to nutrition and to the environment. Infant mortality is actually three things: chronic starvation, diarrhea, and respiratory infections. For all three, you do not need doctors.
Interestingly, one of the key aspects of the training for the VHWs, many of whom are coimpletely illiterate when they begin, is boosting their self-confidence.
The VHWs are supported by visits from a mobile team that includes a nurse, paramedic, social worker, and sometimes a doctor. The visits are initially weekly and then are scaled back as the VHW's expertise builds. At the moment, the mobile team actively visits 45 of the 120 villages where CRHP currently works. (In the thirty-eight years since its founding, CRHP has provided training to VHWs in 300 villages.) Patients requiring more complex care than the VHW can provide are referred to the hospital in Jamkhed.
CRHP's VHW training is ongoing — there is a Tuesday-Wednesday weekly session at the CRHP compound. At these sessions VHWs can "discuss problems in their village, review what they learned the previous week and tackle a new subject, such as heart disease." Back in their villages, the VHWs train villagers to diagnose and solve common problems on their own.
The Jamkhed Institute in Community Health and Population, established in 1992, aims to embed enhancement of rural healthcare delivery in a broader context of rural development. Thus, the Institute's offerings address not only health topics, but also agriculture, micro-credit and loans, income-generating programs, government schemes, and watershed management.
Training Supervisors in How to Support Work/Life Balance
The November 2008 issue of the Harvard Business Review offers another instance of how intelligent flexibility on the part of managers produces better results for a business than intensive enforcement of rigid rules.
In a brief article, Ellen Ernst Kossek, professor of human resource management at Michigan State University's School of Labor & Industrial Relations, and Leslie B. Hammer, professor of psychology at Portland State University, report the results of a multi-year study of supervisors and employees in American supermarkets.1 In sum:
Teaching managers to be more supportive of their direct reports' work/life issues can be a simple and effective route to improving employee health and satisfaction ...
The core of Kossek and Hammer's research program involved developing and evaluating training for supermarket supervisors designed to help the supervisors more effectively plan coverage in their stores and deal with employees' scheduling conflicts.
The training had three components:
A self-paced computer tutorial that took about 30-45 minutes for a supervisor to complete.
A 75-minute discussion session with a few fellow supervisors and a faciltator.
Having supervisors set individual goals for what they had learned and, for a few weeks following the discussion session, record their supportive behaviors on index cards.
In their training, the supervisors learned about good practice in four areas:
Providing emotional support — "acknowledging employees' sometimes extensive responsibilities outside work."
Providing structural support — "working with employees ahead of time to resolve scheduling conflicts."
Modeling healthful behavior — "for example, showing that it is acceptable to occasionally attend important family functions during work hours."
Partnering with other managers — i.e., working with fellow managers "to strategically address work/life issues through initiatives like interdepartmental cross-training, which increases coverage options."
Kossek and Hammer evaluated the impact of this training and found that after the supervisors were trained:
Employees' perceptions that their supervisors were supportive on work/like issues were significantly improved.
Employees "reported improvements in their overall health as measured by such factors as pain and psychological problems. This effect was most pronounced among employees who previously had the highest levels of work/life conflict — for example, a frequent need to change their hours to accommodate children's schedules."
Employees were more satisfied in their jobs.
Employees were less inclined to seek jobs elsewhere.
Employees reported greater willingness to comply with safety programs.
There was generally close agreement between employees' ratings of their managers' supportivesness and the managers' self-ratings. Prior to the training, the employees' ratings were markedly lower than the ratings managers gave themselves.
It is important to note that implementation of the practices Kossek and Hammer taught the supervisors required sanction from upper management. Short-sighted executives will balk at funding such training and at allowing the sort of flexibility Kossek and Hammer encourage. More far-sighted managers will recognize the business benefits of making reasonable accommodation of workers so that the latter feel valued and are not worn down by stress.
Those Who are Willing Can "Break the Prejudice Habit"
For almost twenty-five years, Patricia Devine, a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has been investigating how people with implicit and/or explicit prejudices can overcome those prejudices by applying values of fair-mindedness to their evaluations of and responses to others.
The key, as in just about any situation in which learning is involved, is that the individual must want to change. A person motivated to learn to act without prejudice will feel guilty when s/he behaves otherwise. This guilt is the person's cue to make a conscious effort to improve. The good news from Devine's research is that such conscious efforts pay off.
Devine explains:
[Prejudice] is the legacy of our socialization experiences. We all learn these stereotypes and have these biases at the ready whether we condone them or not, whether we think they are good or not, and as a result the immediate reaction is a biased one. If you are going to respond in nonbiased ways, you have to gain control or override the automatically activated stereotypic response and instead respond in these thoughtful deliberate ways that might represent your personal values.
In Devine's view, overcoming prejudice is akin to breaking a bad habit:
"[Eliminating prejudice] is a process. Making that decision is the first step, but then what you have to do is put some effort into it. Just making the decision doesn't mean you wake up one day, stretch and say "I'm not prejudiced," because you have got this whole socialization experience that you grew up with.
Devine found that people whose personal values and standards include being unbiased would try "to learn from mistakes, [try] to absorb material and at the next opportunity when prejudice was possible, they responded in a fair and unbiased way."
Devine also found that if people are responding to both internal motivation (personal values and standards) to act in an unprejudiced way, and to external motivation (social pressure), they will benefit from help in developing skills for acting in an unbiased way.
On the other hand, for people who are only responding to external motivation, the best way to help is not to up the ante by applying more pressure. Rather, a coach should try to facilitate development of internal motivation to break the prejudice habit.
However important one may believe good morale is for employee performance, it can seem a vague concept, invoked with only casual understanding of its characteristics, drivers, and impacts.
In a May 2007 Harvard Business Reviewarticle, Teresa Amabile, a professor at Harvard Business School, and Steven Kramer, an independent researcher and Amabile's husband, report on research that clarifies how morale fits into the causal flow that determines how well employees perform.
Amabile and Kramer don't actually use the word "morale," which generally refers to the overall esprit de corps at an organization. Rather, they talk about the "inner work life" of individuals — the interplay of three mental phenomena that are triggered by workday events:
emotions
perceptions of the organizational context of one's work (e.g., the degree of collaboration and cooperation, the degree of openness to new ideas)
motivation
To gather data on, specifically, knowledge workers' day-to-day state of mind, Amabile and Kramer arranged for 238 professionals working on various projects at their companies to keep daily diaries for the duration of the projects. Each day's entry had a standard format to capture the day's events and the employees' feelings. There were
several numerical questions, asking participants to rate their own perceptions of various aspects of the work environment, their mood, and their motivation that day, as well as their own work and the team's work that day. There was also an open-ended question asking people to list the main work tasks they engaged in that day. The most important question was also open-ended; it asked people to biefly report one event that stood out in their minds from the workday.
The diary entries enabled Amabile and Kramer to trace how workday events affected the employees' inner work lives, and how the latter, in turn, affected employee and organizational performance.
In considering the role of managers — after all, the actions of managers are one type of workday event — Amabile and Kramer were disappointed to find that most managers are oblivious to employees' inner work lives and, concomitantly, to the impact of those inner work lives on performance.
Amabile and Kramer argue that alert managers recognize that they can promote high performance by
facilitating employees' progress with their work
treating employees decently as human beings
Managers facilitate employee forward progress with job tasks by
providing direct help
providing adequate resources
reacting to successes and failures with a learning orientation (as opposed to purely evaluative orientation)
setting clear goals, and explaining the rationale for the goals and for any changes to the goals
Conversely,
When a manager's actions impede progress, that behavior sends a strong signal. People trying to make sense of why higher-ups would not do more to facilitate progress draw their own conclusions — perhaps that their work is unimportant or that their bosses are either willfully undermining them or hopelessly incompetent.
The underlying reason for the positive impact of facilitative and respectful manager behavior is that it makes it more likely that employees will have "good days" — days on which they feel happy, have positive perceptions of the workplace, and are intrinsically motivated to meet goals. And it is on good days, that employees get the most accomplished.
Amabile and Kramer conclude: "Far and away,the best boosts to inner work life were episodes in which people knew they had done good work and managers appropriately recognized their work."
So, if you want to maintain good morale — and to realize the associated boost to performance that it brings — paying attention to how your actions affect employees' emotions, their perceptions of their work context, and their motivation is vital. Seems like common sense, but as Amabile and Kramer point out, helping employees maintain a positive state of mind is all too often not at the front of managers' minds.
As the US presidential campaign grinds on, it seems useful to consider what we know about how leaders who are effective exercise their power. Dacher Keltner, a psychology professor at Berkeley, published an article in Greater Good Magazine that provides an overview of what research reveals concerning this question.
Keltner talks about the "paradox of power":
... a new science of power has revealed that power is wielded most effectively when it's used responsibly, by people who are attuned to and engaged with the needs and interests of others. Years of research suggests that empathy and social intelligence are vastly more important to acquiring and exercising power than are force, deception, or terror.
This research debunks longstanding myths about what constitutes true power, how people obtain it, and how they should use it. But studies also show that once people assume positions of power, they're likely to act more selfishly, impulsively, and aggressively, and they have a harder time seeing the world from other people's points of view. This presents us with the paradox of power: The skills most important to obtaining power and leading effectively are the very skills that deteriorate once we have power.
The power paradox requires that we be ever vigilant against the corruptive influences of power and its ability to distort the way we see ourselves and treat others.1
Keltner's short article is well worth reading. He refutes several myths, including the myth that Machiavellian types are the most effective in exercising power:
It is not the manipulative, strategic Machiavellian who rises in power. Instead, social science reveals that one's ability to get or maintain power, even in small group situations, depends on one's ability to understand and advance the goals of other group members. When it comes to power, social intelligence — reconciling conflicts, negotiating, smoothing over group tensions — prevails over social Darwinism.
Thus, essential skills would-be leaders should cultivate include exactly the aforementioned areas — conflict resolution, negotiation, team-building.
As for resolving the power paradox ("What people want from leaders — social intelligence — is what is damaged by the experience of power"), Keltner recommends learning about the qualities leaders should have (see above) and rejecting irresponsible leaders, "who lead by deception, coercion, or undue force." Conversely, when in a leadership position — whether in government, in business, in a non-profit organization, or at home — a person should strive conscientiously to exercise the qualities that are the marks of responsible leadership.
__________ 1 The nature of social intelligence is discussed in this earlier post.
As a follow-on to my recent post on mechanism design, I'd call attention to a paper (pdf) by Samuel Bowles of the Santa Fe Institute published in the June 20 issue of Science magazine.
Bowles reviews research into the circumstances in which incentives that appeal to self-interest may be counterproductive because they "undermine the moral values that lead people to act altruistically or in other public-spirited ways." Bowles identifies four such circumstances, namely when economic incentives:
are taken as a signal that behaving selfishly is appropriate.
gradually train people to adopt more self-interested motivations.
convey a message of distrust, disrespect, and unfair intent on the part of the person(s) establishing the incentives.
As Bowles explains,
Many of these unintended effects of incentives occur because people act not only to acquire economic goods and services but also to constitute themselves as dignified, autonomous, and moral individuals. Good organizational and institutional design can channel the material interests for the achievement of social goals while also enhancing the contribution of the moral sentiments to the same ends.
Bowles concludes with the thought that researchers "are well on their way to constructing an economic psychology of the interplay of self-regarding and other-regarding motivation that may eventually enlighten mechanism design and public policy."
Cross-Cultural Relations Between US Marines and Arabs
The July issue of the Proceedings of the US Naval Institute contains an interesting report of research Thomas Affourtit, a retired US Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel, carried out to learn about differences between the motivational profiles of the average US Marine selected for duty in the Middle East and the average Arab male.
The Proceedings article is available online only to members of the Naval Institute, but you can read an earlier version of Affourtit's article here (pdf).
Affourtit used the Edwards Personal Preference Schedule (EPPS) as his assessment tool. The EPPS, first published in 1959, measures the strength in an individual person of 15 needs or motives:
Achievement (ACH) — A need to accomplish tasks well.
Dominance (DOM) — A need to be a leader and influence others.
Deference (DEF) — A need to conform to customs and defer to others.
Endurance (END) — A need to follow through on tasks and complete assignments.
Orderliness (ORD) — A need to plan well and be organized.
Autonomy (AUT) — A need to be free of responsibilities and obligations.
Change (CHG) — A need to change activities to maintain interest. (Note that all online listings I found give a wrong definition for this item.)
Exhibition (EXH) — A need to be the center of attention in a group.
Affiliation (AFF) — A need to form strong friendships and attachments.
Intraception (INT) — A need to analyze behaviors and feelings of others.
Aggression (AGG) — A need to express one's opinion and be critical of others.
Succorance (SUC) — A need to receive support and attention from others.
Abasement (ABA) — A need to accept blame for problems and confess errors to others.
Nurturance (NUR) — A need to be of assistance to others.
Heterosexuality (HET) — A need to be associated with and attractive to members of the opposite sex.
Affourtit's surveys of Marine advisers and Arab college men in Jordan yielded the results summarized in the chart below.
Affourtit's key findings are summarized below. It is important to bear in mind that all of the summary statements are expressed in terms of averages, meaning that one should make no automatic assumptions about any individual based on these group findings.
Marines are more achievement-oriented than Arabs.
Marines are more intent on assuming leadership roles than Arabs. Conversely, Arabs are more deferential and willing to take orders. In terms of need for autonomy, Marines are at the US male norm (represented by the horizontal red line at the 50th percentile level), while Arabs are several percentiles lower.
Arabs score well above Marines on endurance.
Arabs have a stronger need for orderliness than Marines.
Arabs and Marines score similarly on need for change, and in fact are above the US male norm for this characteristic.
Marines have a markedly higher need to be the center of attention than Arabs.
Arabs are more inclined to be gregarious and generally friendly than are Marines.
Arabs and Marines are similar in their levels of intraception, i.e., need for understanding differences between themselves and others (and are at about the norm for US males).
Both Arabs and Marines score high in aggression.
Arabs score higher than Marines on need for succorance, abasement, and nurturance.
There is an extreme difference between Marines and Arabs on the need for expression of heterosexual interest, with Marines well above the US male norm, and Arabs quite low.
The summary of Affoutit's findings given above leaves out his interpretative commentary, which is highly recommended in order to more fully appreciate what can be learned from his research.
I recently had to pull together tips for raising an issue with a customer when the customer is, at least to a degree, at fault. My suggestions ...
Think about the person you’ll be speaking with and match your approach to their preferred communication style.
Keep notes of conversations. It is often good to follow up a conversation with an email to the other parties summarizing significant information and any agreements reached.
Encourage commitment to a specific course of action by finding out what is necessary for a Yea or Nay from the customer.
If you need to follow up on something that seems not to be happening as agreed, you may want to develop an additional reason to contact the other party. For example, you might combine your reminder with a clarifying question or an update about work your company is doing for the customer.
If you need to correct a customer’s misunderstanding or wrong information, do so tactfully.
A good rule of thumb is to think twice before starting a comment with “You ...”
If you know for sure that what you are thinking of saying is correct — e.g., “You agreed in your email on the 12th that we’d change the deadline to the 30th.” — that factual statement can be fine, so long as it’s couched in a neutral tone.
On the other hand, it may be preferable to be indirect, especially if you’re talking about a customer mistake. For example, you might say, “Somehow, this wasn’t what I was expecting. Let’s look at it together.”
If what you’re thinking of saying suggests you are able to read the other person’s mind — e.g., “You want to skip an important step.” — it’s usually better to revise your remark to get rid of what can come across as an accusation. Often, the best approach is simply to ask the person for their view of the issue instead of jumping to the conclusion that you already know what their view is.
Note that this advice applies with minimal modification to interactions with anyone with whom you need to maintain a solid working relationship.
If it weren't for the pervasiveness of the problem, you'd think one would not have to point out that fiddling with your Blackberry or your laptop during a meeting is no more acceptable than sitting there reading your newspaper.
In a brief column posted at adage.com, Marc Brownstein, president of the Brownstein Group, a small marketing agency in Philadelphia, endorses the sentiment, hopefully growing, that laptops and wireless devices should be banned from meetings (except, perhaps, for a minute-taker's laptop).
Brownstein cites four benefits, though I'm sure you can think of more:
Your colleagues no longer will ask questions that have been already asked and answered, because they are paying attention.
Productivity will increase, because more ideas will be exchanged and problems resolved.
Rudeness levels will sink dramatically, and respect in the workplace will soar.
Face-to-face meetings will once again have relevance.
Bottom line: Let's reconfirm that everyone at a meeting is expected to listen and participate with undivided attention.
