Category Archives: Team Development

Most organizations have adopted some team process. These processes can broadly be defined as either a) work or management teams; or, b) problem-solving or project teams. We recommend both. They serve different and necessary functions, although many of the same skills are required.

Teamwork at the Cleveland Clinic

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Today’s New York Times editorial focuses on the advances made at the Cleveland Clinic through the development of teamwork across functions. Having long promoted teamwork, through both formal structures and changes in behavior, it is nice to see its importance recognized in the press.

As I have found working with other organizations, the Cleveland Clinic has succeeded by creating a system and structure that both requires and supports teamwork. It has become the new normal.

The N.Y. Times points out, “In its most fundamental reform, the clinic in the past five years has created 18 “institutes” that use multidisciplinary teams to treat diseases or problems involving a particular organ system, say the heart or the brain, instead of having patients bounce from one specialist to another on their own.”

Healthcare Team Manual frontcover G(b)As many of us know, bouncing from one doctor to the next, continually trying to find your way through the system, is a source of error and rework that requires deliberately designing the system, creating the architecture and process of “flow,” which is little different than apply lean management principles in the manufacturing setting where the goal is to create uninterrupted, continuous flow, of materials. Overcoming individual interests and egos is often the difficulty.

“This team approach can improve the quality of care because all the experts are involved in deciding the best treatment option, which can save time and money. The neurological team, by consensus, has been better able to determine which acute stroke patients need a risky and expensive treatment that involves threading a catheter through an artery in the leg up into the brain to destroy a clot. It cut the use of that treatment in half, reducing costs and deaths and improving outcomes.”

What is clear is that the Cleveland Clinic has created not only the architecture of teamwork but has engaged teams in the process of continuous improvement. Many small experiments by teams on-the-spot result in huge gains in both bottom line performance and customer satisfaction.

“One analysis found that suturing could be done as well with a $5 silk stitch as with a $400 staple, leading to a big drop in the use of the staples. At the same time, the clinic has also carried out simpler reforms, like improving sterile conditions, which has reduced catheter-related bloodstream infections by more than 40 percent and urinary tract infections by 50 percent. All this has happened in a remarkably short time. Patients seem to like the treatment they get. A federal government survey of patient opinion last fall found that 80 percent of the patients gave the Cleveland Clinic a high rating over all and 84 percent would recommend it to others, well above the state and national averages in the 69 percent to 71 percent range.”

I previously noted the culture of teamwork at the Mayo Clinic. The same is true now at the Cleveland Clinic. These are two models that should be followed by all healthcare organizations.

 

Meta-Lean 2: Empiricism and Humility

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Developing an Attitude of Science

LMMPhoto4aThe primary task of a manager is to think. The future success of the organization is dependent upon his or her ability to think clearly, critically, and creatively.

The greatest enemy of continuous improvement is arrogance, particularly on the part of leaders, and the opposite quality of humility is a requirement of learning and improvement.

In my previous post I introduced the idea that there are “big thoughts,”  or over-arching cultural principles that are essential to creating a genuinely lean culture. I suggested that the principle of Unity was the first. The second is what I will call the principles of Empiricism and Humility.

It might seem that empiricism and humility are two different things, but let me suggest that they are necessary corollaries.

Last night I watched the Charlie Rose interview of Jeff Immelt, the CEO of General Electric. I recommend the entire interview to you. It is insightful and intelligent. But, toward the end Charlie Rose asks Jeff Immelt what is the one piece of advice he would give to MBA students today if he was speaking to them at the Harvard Business School. His answer was “Humility and the curiosity that goes with it. The big mistakes you make are when you stop asking questions. But, if you are always hungry and digging for that extra piece of knowledge, that is how the world works.”

I think you would be hard pressed to find a better piece of advice for any executive or manager.

Correlation, Causation, or None of the Above?

Continuous improvement, or lean management, is built on the ability to discern fact from fiction; causal relationships from correlative relationships; anecdotes from data trends and statistical analysis. Unfortunately, our culture is doing a very poor job of helping students, and the population at large, develop these abilities. China, and many developing countries are outscoring the U.S. in math and science education with the U.S. ranked as low as 31st in math scores. This is a frightening trend with dramatic economic consequences.

Here is just one small example of this disability. Well.. actually, it isn’t that small!

It is constantly argued that lower taxes produce economic growth and higher taxes reduce economic growth. This is repeated so many times in the public press and political discourse that it is assumed to be true. The fact is that there is no demonstrable causal relationship between economic growth and tax rates. According to a study by the Congressional Research Service, a non-partisan body, there’s no evidence that tax cuts spur economic growth.

If anything, the chart below demonstrates a slight correlation (not a causation) between higher growth and higher tax rates. Don’t misunderstand, I like low taxes as much as anyone! But, what I like, is completely irrelevant to the facts. And your ideology or political leanings don’t change the facts! The facts are easy to demonstrate, but the facts are rarely looked at and given very little regard in the public discourse. Why is this? It is because we have become more ideological in our thinking and that frees us from the burden of analyzing the facts.

Dr. Deming’s 14 Points and an Attitude of Science

Dr. Deming was constantly preaching that we must manage by the “facts”, by the data, not by slogans, objectives, or other efforts to create fear or intimidation. He was, of course, a statistician and he believed in the power that comes from understanding your data.

I began my career in behavioral psychology which is heavily research and data oriented. B.F. Skinner used to say “the pigeon is never wrong.” In other words, when you conducted an experiment and the subject (a pigeon, for example) behaves in a way contrary to your expectations, the actual behavior trumps any theory you might have. It is the equivalent of saying, the employees are never wrong, in regard to their level of behavior or motivation. They are responding to the nature of contingencies, the consequences to behavior in the real environment. As the manager of those contingencies you are, therefore, responsible for their behavior. This is an attitude of science or empiricism.

My earliest work in textile mills in the South involved getting plant supervisors to post graphs that demonstrated rates of quality, waste, etc. and then have the supervisor lead a team meeting when they would discuss the data, ask why it was going up or down, reinforce improvement, and discuss what they could do to improve in the coming week. It was simple, but effective. Seeing the data on a graph, even by hourly workers, who in some cases were illiterate, had a powerful effect on their behavior. They responded to feedback, the visual display of the facts of performance. And, they could analyze data in its simplest form.

Run Chart1

Every front-line work team and, of course, every management team must become “scientists.” By that I mean simply applying the essential scientific method of a) gathering baseline data, or data of a control group; b) implementing a change in methods or conditions; then c) studying the data as it changes; and then d) standardizing what worked; and e) moving on to another experiment, another intervention to attempt to improve performance.  Letting the data speak, learning from the data, is the essential attitude of science and it is what we must cultivate in every organization. Until we achieve this we have not achieved the essential cultural characteristic of empiricism.

Scientists are humble because they know that they are not determining reality, they are merely discovering it, and most often after many, many failures. When Benjamin Franklin conducted his famous kite and key experiment to explain that lightening was electricity, he did so in a world in which the predominant view was that lightening was the anger of God punishing us for our sins. Franklin replaced superstition with science. That is exactly how most of human progress has been made and it is how most advances in production or other business methods are made. Unfortunately, in many of our organizations we are are still burning witches, rather than studying the data and experimenting.

As you go on your Gemba walk through production areas, in meetings with managers, ask for the data. See the data graphed! Ask “Why?” Teach them to become scientists!

 

 

Lean Lessons from the Hawthorne Studies

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Hawthorne’s Lessons for Lean Management

From both my clients and in a number of other publications there have been  references to the so called “Hawthorne Effect” in the past few months. The Hawthorne studies have been a frequent source of misinterpretation over the years. It happens that they also have significant implications for the implementation of lean practices in organizations.

Understanding the research can help one develop a system that is sustainable and not merely a short term boost in performance.

Women in the Relay Assembly Test Room at the Hawthorne Western Electric Plant

As you may know, the Hawthorne studies were conducted in 1924 by a team led by Elton Mayo at the Western Electric Cicero, Illinois plant. These studies are credit with beginning the entire field of industrial or organizational  psychology. As might be expected, the research methodologies at the beginning of any field of study are not particularly refined and may lead to erroneous interpretations of the data. The most significant modern investigation of the Hawthorne studies was conducted by H.M. Parsons and published in Science Magazine (1974) in which he went back and re-examined all the data from Hawthorne and even interviewed some of the participants.

The “Hawthorne Effect” Myth

The general interpretation, and I will say “myth” of the Hawthorne Effect is that if you make almost any change (in this case it was changing the lighting in the plant) it will produce a positive effect, a so-called novelty effect, which is likely to be temporary. However, the more recent re-study of the data and the conditions of the experiment revealed that in some cases performance improved, in some it stayed the same, and in some it became worse. In those cases in which performance improved, more was happening besides changing the lighting. The workers in the rooms in which performance improved were made aware of feedback on their performance, and in some cases received positive reinforcement for improvements in performance. In other words, if all conditions had been held constant, and if there was no feedback to workers, there is no evidence that merely changing the lighting would have had any effect.

The Feedback Effect

The idea that “being studied” improves performance is true when “being studied” involves workers being given attention that they did not previously receive (feedback and reinforcement) and when they can see the output measures of their performance and observe their performance improving. That is what the Hawthorne studies really demonstrated. There have been hundreds of research experiments since that have demonstrated the exact same thing. In fact, nothing in organizational behavior has been more studied then the effect of feedback on human performance.

Elton Mayo fotos sem data

Elton Mayo who led the research team at Hawthorne

It is also worth noting that Elton Mayo, who conducted the studies, also attributed some of the effect to the fact that workers felt better about themselves because the researchers were demonstrating “caring”, “interest”, etc., toward them. If you can imagine the conditions on an assembly line in 1924, it is not hard to understand that workers craved any “caring” attention and would respond positively to that demonstration by the researchers. Is this a “novelty” effect? In reality, students in a classroom, children at home, and workers in almost any environment respond positively to interest in their performance demonstrated by their parents, teachers or supervisors. This is a form of positive reinforcement. This again has been demonstrated in hundreds of research projects after Hawthorne.

Pay for Performance Does Matter

All of the workers at the Hawthorne plant were on a pay for performance, piece rate system. However, it was well documented that the workers managed upward, controlled the pace of work because they had learned that if some groups increased their rate management would increase the requirements for piece rate. In fact, the workers were self-organizing and working as a large team.

Because it wasn’t what the researchers were looking for, they didn’t report on the effect of both a change in the piece rate and a change in the team dynamics that allowed a small team to manage their own behavior to maximize their compensation. Here Parsons, who carefully examined the data and interviewed the workers, describes what happened In the Relay Assembly Test Room experiment:

“Two other extraneous variables particularly affected production rates. One was an alteration in the group piecework procedures  for paying the workers; its base was changed in period 3 (when performance improved) from the output of an entire large department to that of their little five person group, making their earnings more contingent on individual performance. Though the investigators acknowledged that this change might have induced the women to work faster (and thus confounded the results), they attempted to discount that likelihood. Thereby they incurred later criticism from some of the few analysts who paid attention to this variable.

“The experiment’s major dependent variable was productivity as evidenced in output rates. When the five operators moved to the test room after period 1, they were seated together with a chute beside each person’s work area. When one of them assembled a relay she dropped it down her chute, in which a hinged flap then activated a microswitch that sent a pulse to a counter. Every half hour a sixth employee tabulated cumulatively the totals of the five counters on a table behind the operators, and daily total were posted. The operators could and did examine those individual totals, during and between days, but the investigators never regarded that behavior as significant or even worth pointing out in their accounts… This information (discriminative feedback) was the second major extraneous variable that, coupled with the first, the money reinforcement, turned this study into an Organizational Behavior Management experiment. It also explained the Hawthorne effect, anchoring it to a particular experimental procedure.” (H. M. Parsons, Hawthorne: An Early OBM Experiment; Pay for Performance: History, Controversy, and Evidence; Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, Volume 12, No.1; The Haworth Press, 1992.)

So, an alternative explanation for the improvement in performance in the Relay Assembly Test Room was that the workers were reformed into a small team; those workers could visually see and discuss the results of their work; they were freed from larger group pressure to hold down production; and they felt in control of their results as a small team. This is a powerful combination of motivating forces.

An interesting side note on the Hawthorne Studies is that W. Edwards Deming, when a young man, was employed as an hourly worker in the Hawthorne plant at exactly the same time the studies were being conducted. Many of Deming’s views about workers in manufacturing plants are related to the conditions and treatment of workers in that plant. Needless to say, those conditions were not positive. Deming experienced the “normal” piece rate system at Hawthorne and became an extremely strong advocate of eliminating all financial incentives. However, Deming did not have the data. Deming had not studied the effect of these experiments, nor dozens of experiments that have been conducted since that time that demonstrate that money can motivate. However, as can be seen in the above experiment, it is never simply money. It is how money is employed along with the ability to control performance, empowerment, and the social system of teamwork.

Implications for Sustaining Lean Implementation

What does all this say about sustaining and improving performance at sites that have gone through a lean implementation? The changes in performance are not the result of “novelty” or being studied, as the general view of the Hawthorne Effect might suggest. Rather they are most likely the result of 1) the technical system changes that enable better performance, and 2) the improvement in motivation that results from small group ownership, feedback and reinforcement.

  • It is the job of management to provide attention, caring and feedback to employees as the experimenters did in these studies. This is the essence of the Gemba walk, or “being on-the-spot.”  If managers stop doing this and go back to their own “old ways” it is likely that some of the gains in performance will be lost. If they continue to engage in good management practices, changes in performance are likely to be sustained or improved.
  •  The effect of “ownership” and teamwork cannot be over emphasized. Teams need to be of a size where they can experience the contingent effect of their own performance on results. The results of their effort to improve performance must be positively reinforced in some way. It doesn’t have to be money, but it does have to be real in their world.
  •  What needs to be reinforced? The simple answer is experimentation and improvement. Who needs to be reinforced? The team members who work together as a team so you are reinforcing not individuals in a way that creates disunity, but the small work group so that you are strengthening their bond and confidence in their ability as a team to improve.

If managers follow these practices you will not have to worry about regression to a mean, or the mythical Hawthorne Effect wearing off any more than Honda and Toyota are worried about die change regressing to a 24 hour process. I am not worried about staff performance or motivation. I am worried about management performance – managers reverting or regressing to their baseline habits. That is what will destroy performance.

Action-Learning: Cycles of Learning are the Key to Developing a Culture of Continuous Improvement

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The following article was published today in Industry Week’s Continuous Improvement blog/website today. (Note: this is available for download on the “Papers” page of this blog and you are welcome to use it in your work.)

The best methods and the best of intentions can easily fail unless we take into account how adults learn in our organizations. During World War II a process that has become known as Training Within Industry (TWI) and its component Job Instruction (JI) was developed and was then adopted by Toyota as it developed its system of production. For management development Toyota and other Japanese companies added the role of the sensei or coach. These methods are effective because they are consistent with action-learning that recognizes the reality of how adults learn.

Malcom Knowles who pioneered the field of adult learning identified the following principles as critical to adult learning:

  • Adults are autonomous and self-directed. They need to be free to direct themselves. Their teachers must actively involve adult participants in the learning process and serve as facilitators for them. They must show participants how the learning experience will help them reach their goals.
  • Adults have accumulated a foundation of life experiences and knowledge that may include work-related activities, family responsibilities, and previous education. They need to connect learning to this knowledge/experience base.
  • Adults are goal-oriented. Instructors must show participants how this class will help them attain their goals.
  • Adults are relevancy-oriented. They must see a reason for learning something. Learning has to be applicable to their work or other responsibilities to be of value to them.
  • Adults are practical, focusing on the aspects of a lesson most useful to them in their work. They may not be interested in knowledge for its own sake. Instructors must tell participants explicitly how the lesson will be useful to them on the job.
  • As do all learners, adults need to be shown respect. Instructors must acknowledge the wealth of experiences that adult participants bring to the classroom. These adults should be treated as equals in experience and knowledge and allowed to voice their opinions freely.

Another way of saying this is simply to say that adults aren’t good at sitting at a desk and obediently following instructions and learning theories or abstractions. Learning has to make a difference to them and they have to put it into action. I think the same could be said for children, but we don’t need to argue that point.

Much of my own training is focused on the development of both work and management teams to engage in effective continuous improvement, problem solving, and to become a high performing teams. What has proven most effective is to apply this action learning model to team development. The eight steps illustrated here constitute a cycle of learning and continuous improvement. In many ways they correspond to the PDCA cycle of improvement. However, they are a bit more specific to the actions required for effective learning and incorporate the role of sensei or coach.

The steps illustrated in yellow are primarily knowing/gaining knowledge steps. The steps in purple are more experiential and have more impact on how the learner feels. Knowledge and emotions are equally important in gaining sustained change in individual behavior or in the culture of the organization. Too often our training methods focus more on knowing, and too little on the emotive aspect of learning which is more likely to occur from experience. Often we assume that “if they know, they will do” and this is a false assumption.

1. Build A Case for Action:

It is essential that team members understand the business case for action. Why do we need to do this? What difference will it make to our performance, to customer satisfaction, and to my own work?

As management embarks on a process of continuous improvement they need to point to competitors, best practices, financial benchmarks and the voice of the customers who are telling us that we need to improve. And, it helps to make clear that learning and practicing the new skills will be a component of everyone’s appraisal process. In other words, it is the job of managers and coaches to make change matter!

2. Gain Knowledge:

Transferring knowledge is what most corporate trainers do best. It is what classrooms are best designed to accomplish. It is why we have books and websites. However, knowledge very often does not result in behavioral change. It is the difference between taking a history course in which knowledge acquisition is the goal in itself; as opposed to learning to play the guitar. The former is primarily about cognition/knowledge, the latter is about habits or changes in behavior gained through experience and feelings of comfort with that new behavior.

If we are training teams to solve problems effectively, knowing the steps in a problem solving model is important, but it is only the beginning of employing that knowledge for continuous improvement. Knowledge without action will not change habits or culture.

3. Agree on New Behavior:

Intention is the beginning of change. The guitar instructor may teach a chord position or scale on the fret board. By itself, that is useless knowledge. It only becomes useful when practiced. The student must agree to practice the chords or scales.

The way I have designed my own training manual is so that each chapter is a training module and each training module corresponds to a deliverable – a desired performance or behavior. For example, the second chapter is on writing the team’s charter. The deliverable or action step is to actually go through the steps in writing the charter and gain approval of the sponsoring manager. Another chapter is on defining customer requirements. Of course, the team then brainstorms customer requirements, interviews customers, and agrees on customer requirements. So, each bit of knowledge and training then asks for a new behavior to be performed the team agrees on the behavior and then takes action.

4.      Apply & Practice New Behavior:

Imagine learning to play a musical instrument. How much knowledge of the keyboard or fret board is useful without then putting your hands on the instrument and practicing? The answer is very little. The important learning comes from playing the instrument, hearing the sounds, trying out different positions and chords and experiencing their difference. At one point I had the idea that I would learn to play the banjo and I bought a lesson book by Pete Seeger. When asked how often you should practice his answer was “Never. Just play!” What he understood was that the learning will come from the joy of playing, not from doing exercises or turning the experience into a painful task.

Learning any new skill is much the same way. Teams need to practice problem solving and experiment. It is OK to fail as long as every effort is recognized as a learning experience.

Practicing, evaluating, improving becomes a way of life. A Fast Company article (6/2/2009) on Toyota’s Georgetown, KY plant described the reflection of one worker in the plant: “Artrip has been at Georgetown for 19 years. The way he does his work is so compelling it has become part of his personal life. ‘When I’m mowing the grass, I’m thinking about the best way to do it. I’m trying different turns to see if I can do it faster,’ he says.” This is a clear sign that continuous improvement has become ingrained in the culture.

5.      Receive Feedback from Coach

The role of the sensei has become understood as an element of Toyota culture. A sensei is, essentially, a personal coach and mentor. Someone who can guide, observes, and gives feedback and encouragement. It is worth noting that in every sport, whether the emphasis is on team performance or individual performance, there is always a coach. And coaches are not reserved for children or new learners. The best professional quarterbacks, tennis stars, professional golfers and opera singers all have personal coaches even though they are at the top of their game.

In a May, 2004 Harvard Business Review article (Learning to Lead at Toyota) Steven J. Spear does an excellent job of describing how a new manager is hired and trained at Toyota. His coach introduces him to the organization with structured observation and debriefing on what he sees. He is asked to find improvements, many each day, just from observing. Then he is asked to work on the line with an assembly team. He is asked to find improvements and work with the team implementing them. He is then taken to Japan to again work with a frontline team and implement improvements, even in the very plant where the Toyota Production System began its development. At each step the sensei is encouraging him, guiding, and debriefing with him on the lessons he is learning. It is intensely personal and direct training and coaching. But, the sensei does little instructing in the traditional sense. Rather, he is creating experiences, asking questions, encouraging reflection.

Now consider how you develop teams in your own organization. Do they have a coach? Do they follow a structured learning process? Do they receive guidance, encouragement and feedback from a coach? Let me suggest that this is a necessity for the development of teams at every level of the organization.

6.      Gain More Knowledge:

And now, the cycle becomes obvious. After each lesson learned, action or deliverable completed, the team receives feedback from the coach and then goes on to learn the next element of development: how to develop a balanced scorecard; how to map their work process; how to recognize variances of common versus special cause; how to reduce waste and cycle time, etc. And again this leads to practicing those skills.

7.      More Practice:

The team and their coach should map out a series of ten to twenty steps that the team or individual will learn then do, then gain feedback and reflection. These steps should be those that lead to the complete set of behaviors you want a team to perform.

8.   Positive Reinforcement from Coach and the Natural Environment:

As teams practice the skills of continuous improvement they begin to have an impact on actual performance. They should be able to see this impact on measured performance, on graphs. This is in itself, positive reinforcement and strengthens the learned behavior. It is the job of both the coach and the manager to assure that new skills and desired behavior lead to good outcomes for both individuals and teams. These outcomes can be as simple a certification that you are a High Performing Team, or the opportunity to present the results of your efforts to senior managers. There are a hundred ways to “make it matter” to strengthen the behavior of continuous improvement and this reinforcement should be part of the designed learning process.

While there is nothing entirely new about the eight steps of this action-learning cycle, it is a key to establishing lean management and culture that is too often overlooked.

 

New Year’s Resolutions That will Have an Impact

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Industry Week’s Continuous Improvement newsletter  has just published the following article which you may find of interest as you meditate on the coming year.

OK, I know. You are going to exercise more often, eat less fatty food, lose weight, save more money, and maybe even write that book you have been swearing you would write for the past five years! And, maybe you can add a few things to your list that won’t be so hard to do and which will actually improve your own performance, and that of those around you.

Here are some suggestions guaranteed to improve performance in almost any work place.

First, let’s agree to encourage others. I know it is a simple and obvious thing. But, we all thrive on encouragement. Let us agree to see the potential, not simply the current reality, in each of our team members. There is something I like to call “creative dissatisfaction” which is the gap between who we are and who we know we could become… and, there is always a gap, no matter how great we may be. Rather than pointing out what I am not (and there is lots you could point to!), how about pointing to what or who I could become? It’s a small difference that makes a huge difference. When I have a vision of who I could become I develop a drive, that creative dissatisfaction, to achieve, to close that gap.

Second, strive to become a scientist in the coming year. It may sound strange, but how we make judgments are often colored by learned biases. Continuous improvement is the result of the continuous design of experiments, watching the data, understanding cause and effect and the humility to say “Oh, well, that one didn’t work. Let’s try something else.” The great managers, like the great scientists, respect the data and have the courage to experiment and to learn from what the data is telling them.

Third, demonstrate through your deeds the value of the world’s greatest experts who are on-the-spot. The traditional culture of our organizations has taught us that “moving up” is valued; those who have been promoted up in the organization must be worth more. We naturally value them. But, who actually serves customers? Who does the real work that adds value to customers and who become genuinely expert in the process of serving customers? It is most often not those who are “up” but those who have their hands on the real work. The Gemba walk is a philosophy, not merely something you do with your feet and the philosophy is to learn from and value those who are on-the-spot.

Fourth, commit to your team. A very few significant successes are attributable to individuals alone. Individual successes are more likely to be achievements in the arts or sciences, rather than in business. Most success in business is the result of teamwork. You are a member of a team.  Jim Collins in his book Good to Great defined what he called the Level 5 Leader who managed to sustain great companies over time. These leaders where not ego driven charismatic stars, rather they were focused on building great teams. “Compared to high-profile leaders with big personalities who make head-lines and become celebrities, the good-to-great leaders seem to have come from Mars. Self-effacing, quiet, reserved, even shy – these leaders are a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will. They are more like Lincoln and Socrates than Patton or Caesar.” [1] So make this the year when you focus less on yourself and more on your team. Give them credit, demand that they work together as a team, and insist that they do what you expect from everyone else: know and serve their customers; know and improve their own processes; and strive to win against their own team’s scorecard.

Fifth, practice Four-to-One: In the mid 1970’s I worked with Fran Tarkenton and Aubrey Daniels at Behavioral Systems, Inc. We took the research of Dr. Ogden Lindsley who studied the effects of positive reinforcement versus negative comments by teachers in the classroom. He found that the ideal ratio that maximized learning was 3.57 positive to 1 negative. We rounded it off and called it Four-to-One. We encouraged plant supervisors to record their positive and negative comments to employees and too often it was one to four, in other words four times the number of negative comments than positive. This year, try to achieve the four-to-one ration of positive to negative interactions with your employees. This focus on positive behavior and achievements will increase positive behavior and achievements. Almost forty years later that is now being practiced at Toyota and other great companies. It works!

Sixth, Find the Noble in Your Work: We all live our lives in the moment, struggling to do what is urgent, but always longing to find the important, that which is noble and worthy in our work. The most primary source of motivation is the search for meaning, the desire to accomplish something worthy. I believe it is important to meditate on what we do and why it is important. The best public speaking advice I ever heard was to be certain, before you stand in front of an audience, that you have something genuinely important to say, something important for that audience. If you don’t believe you have something important to say, there is no way you can fool the audience into believing it is important. Management and leadership are the same. Have something important to say. Meditate on how you and your company are making this world just a little bit better each year. And, then say it to your employees. Make life in your organization important and worthy.

I am sure you can think of other commitments you can make going into the New Year. It is a good time to reflect on how we can each improve, both personally and professionally. It would be a good idea to ask your entire management team to reflect on their own behavior and how they could each improve, how they could each contribute to the collective performance of the group.

And, oh…, I will complete that book I have been working on for the past five years!!!

[1] Collins, Jim, Good to Great. pp. 12-13.

 

When Small Things Make a Big Difference: Motivation by Tipping the Scales

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Managing the “Balance of Consequences”

Even in a lean organization, with lean culture, you are confronted with the need to manage human behavior and performance, and address behavior problems. Sometimes old ideas, and even small ideas, can have a big impact. In every complex system, small changes can produce hugely significant consequences. Those who scoff at climate change research should be reminded that the great Ice Age resulted from only a six degree change in the average temperature in North America. Current climate chaos cannot be explained in a linear direct relationship between any two events. It can only be understood by understanding complex systems (or chaos) theory. Organization culture, like the natural environment, is a complex system in which slight changes in one sub-system can trigger changes in other sub-systems and can precipitate significant changes in outcome for the entire system.

As many of you know, I started my career working in prisons in North Carolina where I implemented a “token economy”, actually a checking economy, behind prison walls. This was an exercise in “behaviorism,” behavior modification, or organizational behavior management. One of the core beliefs of behaviorists is that “the data speaks”, or as B. F. Skinner said, “the pigeon is never wrong.” So, in my prison we kept data on almost every type of inmate and guard behavior we thought might be influenced by the implementation of our system of positive reinforcement for good behavior. I actually employed a college student to sit in the dormitories at night and record inmate-to-inmate and inmate-to-guard interactions, categorizing them into positive and negative, who initiated them, etc.

The Balance of Consequences

The result of this data was to conclude that while behavior in the work area had improved as a result of new forms of positive reinforcement for good work behavior, behavior in the dormitories had not improved. This was logical since the change in consequences to behavior was in the work areas. The good behavior did not generalize to the dormitories and interaction with guards. So… we came up with a scheme to cause the guards to interact more positively with the inmates. We gave them “bonus points” to hand out for agreed upon good behavior of inmates. These behaviors included helping other inmates; studying at night; cleaning the area, etc. It was a small thing. But, it tipped the “balance of consequences” for the guards. It resulted in a huge change in the behavior of both inmates and guards. Not only did the guards initiate more positive interactions, the inmates initiates more positive interactions with both guards and other inmates. In other words, the degree to which inmates were managing the guard’s behavior decreased and the degree to which the guards were managing inmate behavior increased.

The idea of a balance of consequences is that for every decision or behavior, there are likely to be consequences, both positive and negative, on both sides of the equation. Deciding to take job A or to take job B involves assessing the balance of consequences, potential rewards and potential negative events for either choice. It doesn’t require shifting all of the weight in one direction, it only requires a slight shift in consequences to tip the teeter-totter.

One reality of most work setting is that the first level of management works very closely with the work force. The front line supervisor or team leader is closely tied to the social system of the first level workers. It is natural that they want to get along with them, even seek there approval. It was clear in the prison that most guards had good relationships with most inmates and they were reluctant to punish bad behavior, thereby causing negative consequences that would come back to them. They “got-along” with the inmates by ignoring some behavior that they should not have ignored. Given the realities of the system, they were intelligently managing their relationships, those that mattered in their day-to-day world.

Tipping the Scales

Managers do the same. Often their behavior is managed upward. Employees have many ways of displaying approval and disapproval of the managers behavior and it is natural that they seek approval. This, however, can result in the front line manager ignoring or letting pass slow or sloppy work.

I am reminded of a research project done some years ago in a classroom. The researcher instructed the children, in the teachers absence, to “attend” to the teacher (give eye contact, lean forward, nod their heads) when the teacher was on the left side of the room, and to ignore the teacher when she was on the right side of the room. The classroom was video taped before and after and, not surprisingly, the teacher “learned” to stand to the left side of the classroom the majority of the day. The researcher then reversed the procedure and, again, the teacher responded by modifying her behavior to gain the attention of the students. To some degree, every manager is like that teacher, seeking approval from those they manage.

But, what happens when the team members approve of the leader ignoring their poor or slow work? The question then comes, how do you create less dependence on the approval of the workforce, and more willingness on the part of the first level leader to both recognize good performance and to respond to poor performance? Here are a couple possibilities. I would like to hear your ideas:

1. Adherence to standards and standard work: In a traditional assembly line factory there are generally work standards and standard work. An employee is expected to produce X amount by doing Y tasks in the specified way. There are both standard work outputs and there are standardized tasks. Leader standard work generally includes the tasks of the leader to measure, observe and provide feedback on the degree of conformance to these standards. However, most work today is not of this assembly line or routine factory type. For example, the maintenance function in manufacturing involves a high degree of variability. How long does it take to fix different equipment under different conditions? It is often non-standard. In many cases it is possible for the team leader to use his or her judgment to determine how long repairing equipment should take. Getting them to assert that judgment in the face of pressure from employees is the problem.

2. Creating Connections to Larger Outcomes: We are often not able to see the direct connection between our work and larger outcomes for the organization. If I arrive to work on time, will the company be more profitable and will my job security increase? Probably, but the connections are too remove. Creating “line-of-sight” is one of management’s jobs. In other words, if I perform in X manner, that contributes to Y performance of the larger group. We have to make work important. A good example is the hospital worker who cleans halls and rooms. You can simply call him a “maintenance man.” Or, you can define his job as “reducing the risk of infection for patients.” He is part of the team, one whose work contributes to successful health outcomes for patients. This is similar to Disney’s practices of defining every employee at their theme parks as “members of the cast.” Maids cleaning room are taught that how they clean, how the talk to guests, is part of the total entertainment experience. They are cast members. These definitions help the employee understand the “line-of-sight” from their work to the more significant organization outcomes. What are some other ways of creating this “line-of-sight?”

3. Tip the Balance-of-Consequences for the Team Leader: You will never remove the potential of employees managing upward. Sometimes that is a positive force. But, sometimes that works against taking action against poor performers. Remember the balance of consequences. You don’t have to shift all of the consequences in on direction. You simply have to make a slight shift that tips the balance. How are team leaders rewarded for the good performance of their teams? If there is strong positive reinforcement for the manager, he or she is more likely to take action to enhance the performance of the entire team. You have to make performance matter for both first level employees and first level team leaders.

Ask yourself this question: “If the performance of the team increases, what is the so-what for the leader? Why does it matter for the leader?” And, what are the consequences if performance decreases? If there are no significant consequences for the team leader, then it is likely that the consequences of team member approval will outweigh the need to act on poor performance.

4. Tip the Balance-of-Consequences for the Entire Team: Never under estimate the power of peer approval or pressure. Team members often perform to please other team members. What happens if the entire team improves its performance? What are the consequences? How can you increase the positive consequences through recognition, incentives, opportunities, etc., for the entire team? Or, are there currently forms of reinforcement for the team slowing down their work? How can the system be changed to eliminate this reinforcement for poor performance? Here are just a few ideas for tipping the scales:

  • How is team performance measured so that records are set? It is always fun to compete for and set new records for any performance. This is a strong bias in our culture. When you watch any sport, think about how often records are discussed, competed for, and celebrated. How often does this happen at work? Why not?
  • Is there a team of the week, month or year award? How can you celebrate outstanding team performance?
  • Is there an award for team performance improvement or cost savings ideas?
  • Is there a system by which one team, who may be the customer of another internal team, can positively recognize the performance of that team? For example, if maintenance work is completed rapidly, can the the team who uses the equipment recognize the maintenance team? Can the maintenance team recognize line teams for doing preventive maintenance and causing fewer repairs?

What have you found to be effective in tipping the balance of consequences, the motivation for first level managers, so that they will confront poor performance and recognize the good performance of their front line teams? It would be useful to compile a list of things that have worked in one place and might then be tried in another.

Most important, experiment! Be the scientist, trying out different things until you find the system that works best in your organization. After all they are all different.

Managing the culture is the art of managing a complex system, managing through chaos. Analyzing human behavior and motivation is a key skill for all managers. But, no where is it more essential than in that first level relationship between team leaders and team members.

Decision Making Chaos on the Deepwater Horizon

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I have long been an advocate for team decision-making, but more importantly, for decision-making appropriate to the situation. It appears clear now that the Deepwater Horizon, the Transocean drilling rig under contract with BP, suffered from poorly designed decision processes.

The Wall Street Journal reported recently that

“The chain of command broke down at times during the crisis, according to many crew members. They report that there was disarray on the bridge and pandemonium in the lifeboat area, where some people jumped overboard and others called for boats to be launched only partially filled.

The vessel’s written safety procedures appear to have made it difficult to respond swiftly to a disaster that escalated at the speed of the events on April 20. For example, the guidelines require that a rig worker attempting to contain a gas emergency had to call two senior rig officials before deciding what to do. One of them was in the shower during the critical minutes, according to several crew members.”

An important consideration when establishing team decision-making processes is to clarify which decisions should be command, which consultative, and which should be consensus decisions.

Acknowledging the legitimacy and critical need for effective command decision making is the only way to gain an acceptance for the situational appropriateness of consultative and consensus decisions. In any environment in which there is a potential for crisis it is essential that there is a well defined and well rehearsed command decision process. It is insane that a rig worker attempting to contain a gas emergency would have to call two senior rig officials before deciding what to do. That is the equivalent of a marine on the ground in a combat zone coming under fire and having to go two levels above to get instructions to take action. That is a certain way to get your marines killed and lose a war. It was a certain way to get eleven rig workers killed, also.

Soldiers on the ground are trained to take action, to take initiative, to improvise, and are drilled in those actions that require instantaneous responses. Bureaucratic control is not the same as effective command. In a crisis it must be assumed that the means of communication are incapacitated, that individual leaders have been cut off from the action on the ground. Those who can and must act must know that they are expected to take initiative and they must be trained in the appropriate responses.

You can use consultative and consensus decision making to arrive at the best procedures… long before the crisis. In the crisis, everyone must know who in command, who can take action, and what action must be taken immediately. This is a good time for every organization to study this negative case and use it as an opportunity to review your own crisis management procedures.

Does Happiness Matter?

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Authentic happiness conributes to business success

One of the best books of the past year is Authentic Happiness by Martin E.P. Seligman. Read it and be happy. In fact, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for every manager to buy it for his or her employees. It will pay off in performance.

When I first began consulting in manufacturing plants in the 1970’s management was dominated by, not just men, but by genuinely tough men – men’s men. To rise through the management ranks from the shop floor to senior management at J.P Stevens & Company, Cannon Mills or Millikan & Company, no wimps need apply.

When I was consulting with Continental Can Company, at which long battles between the company and the Steelworkers and Machinists Union had hardened everyone, to the point that managers glared at each other. Someone pointed out to me that the CCC managers had “gunslinger eyes” and they would sit around a table at lunch with their hands under the table, out of site, and then suddenly draw and point, getting someone by attacking what they had said. This may sound absurd now, but it was the norm of American manufacturing culture and it is one of the reasons for the decline of manufacturing in this country.

These were not happy places to work. I once interviewed a Vice President, the only woman member of a twelve person senior management team, and I asked her about the “glass ceiling” that might prevent women from rising to senior management. She immediately responded, much to my surprise, that there was no glass ceiling. She said women were promoted. But, when they got there, the environment was so anti-social, so unfriendly, that they couldn’t understand why anyone would want to be there, and they left.

In the past, the idea that we had any burden to create “happiness” at work would have been viewed as some socialistic absurdity. But now there is very good evidence, hard data, that suggests that people who are “authentically happy” perform better than those who are not. Authentic happiness is not simple pleasure. Eating ice cream brings pleasure, but sitting around all day eating ice cream does not make you authentically happy. It will soon make you miserable. Similarly, the data shows that an increase in income from $20,000 a year to $40,000 a year will make you happy because you may be able to afford a better home, care for your children, etc. But, does an increase in salary from one million to two million, or ten million, make you any happier? Very unlikely.

Martin Seligman is the founder of what is now called “Positive Psychology”, essentially the study of mental and emotional wellness. He says that there are three domains of happiness, each of which can be measured.

The first is The Pleasant Life: which he says is “Having as much positive emotion as possible and learning the skills to amplify the intensity and duration of your pleasures. But the capacity for positive emotion turns out to have a genetic set range that is hard to push around: lottery winners and paraplegics revert to their usual level of good cheer or grumpiness within a year following the event that changed their lives.” In other words, there isn’t much you can do about your capacity for this type of positive emotion.

The second type is The Engaged Life: “Being “one with the music,” absorbed and immersed in your work, love, friendship and leisure. The central skill to have more engagement is to identify your signature strengths and virtues and re-craft your life to use them more often. By deploying your highest strengths and talents, you can have more intense absorption in more areas of your life.”

Over the years, and this may sound a bit silly, I have believed that the work we have done in setting top-to-bottom systems of team management in which every employee takes ownership of his or her work processes, communicates with customers, plots data, and is empowered to make decisions, has made employees and managers happier. It just felt this way. And, this always went along with improvements in performance. Seligman’s work helps understand this connection between management systems, psychological engagement, and productive workplaces.

And the third is The Meaningful Life: Seligman says that this “Adds one more element, transcending the self, to the engaged life: The central skill is to identify your signature strengths and virtues and using them to belong to and to serve something that you believe is larger than you are.”

There is good data suggesting that people who are religious, who have a strong set of values and beliefs, are happier than those who do not. Meaning matters. Purpose matters. Serving something that you believe is larger than yourself is the essence of all religion and is a cornerstone of the spiritual enterprise.

One of the most useful areas of research (if I were advising you management or psychology students) is how the processes, systems, and culture of organization can be structured to reinforce these three attributes of authentic happiness.

Visit Seligman’s website and take his happiness test. You will find it interesting.