“My New Year’s resolution is to quit procrastinating … I’ll start tomorrow.” Unfortunately, that’s the dead-end road that a majority of our resolutions take. Most of us are familiar with Albert Einstein’s quote “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” but when it comes to New Year’s resolutions, why is it that we do the same thing over and over (make resolutions) hoping that things will be different, yet they never are? The solution to accomplishing New Year’s resolutions can usually be found in these four things…Read my latest Talent Management Post to learn more, then take our Workplace Resolutions Poll. Tell us what one thing you would change in your workplace if you could.
‘Ask Aubrey’ Articles
Resolution Solutions for the New Year
The 12 Days of Reinforcement
Like so many people, I grew up with the traditional song “The 12 Days of Christmas.” We’ve sung the verses many times even though the gifts given by the “True Love” seem somewhat odd. A bit of research, however, reveals that the song’s lyrics are based on religious symbolism. The True Love, for example, refers to God; the two turtle doves to the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, the five golden rings to the first five books of the Old Testament, and so forth. It occurs to me that like the song, many of the behaviors we engage in…Click through to Talent Management to read this blog in its entirety.
Why Washington’s Debt Crisis Plans Won’t Work and What Will
“If some people get any cheer out of a $328 billion debt ceiling, I do not find much to cheer about concerning it.” [Congressional Record, June 16, 1965, p. 13884]. This quote is from Senator Everett Dirksen speaking on Federal spending almost 50 years ago. Another quote attributed to him but not precisely what he said is, “A billion here; a billion there and pretty soon you are talking about real money.” Although the exact words spoken are in debate they do seem to characterize his beef with Congressional spending. What would he say today?
The current debt crisis has been pitched as a revenue vs. spending crisis. While there is no doubt a serious gap between the two, I don’t think that the real solution has been identified. What I find with most of the plans put forward to solve not only the debt crisis but most top down plans for change is they rarely look at the consequences to the performers involved in the implementation. In this case the taxpayers and the government employees who actually spend the money and otherwise do things to make a plan work. There is no plan, no matter how clever and how good it looks on paper, that cannot be thwarted, undermined or just accidentally screwed up by the ones charged with the actual implementation of the plan.
This to me is the troubling aspect of all the current plans. Take for instance the top 2% of income earners; they will pay little more than they are paying now. They have access to top lawyers and accountants who will be able to find loopholes in the current tax code that will escape any congressperson looking to close all loopholes. A current example was reported in the Wall Street Journal this week.
“The Costco board voted to give themselves a special dividend to avoid President Obama’s looming tax increase. Specifically, the giant retailer announced Wednesday that the company will pay a special dividend of $7 a share this month—that’s a $3 billion Christmas gift for shareholders that will let them be taxed at the current dividend rate of 15%, rather than next year’s rate of up to 43.4%.”
Further, what are the consequences to those charged with “saving money?” The government is notorious for making cuts that are never realized, not that they cannot be made but it is not to anyone’s advantage to do so. What is the incentive for any government employee to “do more with less?” There isn’t one that I can think of. All the consequences I can think of favor spending more, not less. If you don’t spend all the money in your budget, you lose it. If you ask only for what you need you will probably get less than what you need. When I was in the Army there was a saying about budgets, “Ask for four, expect 2 and get one.”
I have written previously about a plan I refer to as the “Buchwald Plan” that although it was made tongue-in-cheek by the late columnist for the Washington Post, Art Buchwald is in the right direction. (See Federal budget blog.) While it seems frivolous, a version can be made that will create real change in the government that is painless to all parties and energizing to government employees who really need it. Just think what would happen to the size and efficiency of the government if employees were actually excited about doing more with less while delivering more value to the citizens for their tax dollars. A pipe dream, maybe, but it can be done when behavior is understood and addressed.
For more on the government’s fiscal cliff situation, read my post at Talent Management Magazine, How Businesses Can Avoid Their Own Fiscal Cliff.
Citigroup: Lessons for incoming CEOs
Introducing a new leader can be either highly successful or terribly detrimental to an organization and its employees. With the sudden and surprising news this week of Citigroup’s CEO stepping down and a replacement coming in, it’s important to understand from the outset the four predictors of effective leadership: Momentum, Commitment, Initiative, and Reciprocity. Read my latest Talent Management post to learn more.
Silent Screamers and Anger in the Workplace
It was expected, almost acceptable, years ago to hear of or be victim to the screaming boss. But for one reason or another, maybe because of today’s social adeptness, these bosses are turning into silent screamers, leading to more anger in the workplace. Read this latest Talent Management post from Aubrey Daniels as he describes the crux of the problem and offers a solution for dealing with, and potentially resolving, anger in the workplace.
Back to School Basics: Some Counter-Cultural Advice
Who shouldn’t like this time of year? Many parents like it because their children will actually be in school for a number of hours during the work week, providing a needed break from childcare responsibilities. Many children are excited because they will be learning new things and exposed to new friends and experiences. Unfortunately, there are many parents and many children who are not excited about the prospects of a new school year as it is too often a time of increased frustration and stress for both student and parent. The frustration is not confined to not having time to purchase all the supplies on the back-to-school checklist in the right quantities, colors, and brands to please the children but more from what happens to them when they use those supplies.
What caused me to think of this was an article in a recent Psychology Today, “The Developmental Psychologists’ Back-to-School Shopping List.” It ignited one of my “driving me crazy” moments. It wouldn’t be so bad except many people reading such an article actually take what the author says seriously. I was actually baffled by much of what the author advocated that children and parents need to do and more importantly, her reasoning behind it.
The author provided a top 5 list for what should be done to improve children’s learning. The problem with this list, in my opinion, is that the author describes the advice as “grounded in scientific research” but her advice is often far from what the science has actually discovered. Most people who are not “grounded in the science” are unable to discern what research is good and what is not and which recommendations are scientifically based and what is just the author’s opinion.
For example, her first item tells readers to praise children for their effort and not their intelligence. The author says, “Research suggests that telling children they’re smart might actually interfere with their ability to learn.” There are two key words in that sentence, suggest and might. I suggest that there is no research that shows that telling children they are smart affects their ability to learn. There is nothing wrong with telling a child that s/he is ‘smart’ or ‘bright’. It will not affect their future potential, or lack-there-of, as the author suggests. If children are constantly told they are smart when in fact they are lazy, disobedient, and defiant it will absolutely affect their behavior, but not their ability to learn. Children who are solving problems while doing homework may in fact be energized and positively reinforced by the “smart” evaluation. One way to praise a child’s efforts is to tell her she is smart and intelligent.
This notion of not telling children they are smart is based primarily on the research of Dweck[1]. Unfortunately, most people quoting her research (and she has been widely quoted) don’t make the connection between behaviors, accomplishments, and such parental verbalizations. Telling a child he is smart when he comes home with all A’s on his report card will not damage his self-esteem or demotivate him. The notion that it will is ridiculous. If children are disciplined in their study, complete assignments on time, get A’s on them, they generally meet most of the criteria for what is implied by the label “smart.” In other words they earned their smartness. If they are told they are smart when they are not, it is a bad thing to do.
The author says that, “Too much praise can be especially troubling for children who have had an easy time in the early grades but then run into subjects in middle school that require some effort.” What she is describing here is a reflection of poor teaching more than a motivational defect on the part of the child.
But wait, I’m not through.
The author goes on. Number two on her list of five is: Make learning Meaningful, Not Rewarded. To quote her again, “if you’ve ever promised your child a cookie, some TV time, or another reward for finishing her work study homework, … What you might not know is that they also squash children’s drive to learn.” (Emphasis on might). You can’t imagine how statements like that make my blood boil! This is just totally wrong and almost all parents know it. Certainly there are many parents that misuse rewards and positive reinforcement but the suggestion that positive reinforcement and rewards for learning “squash the drive to learn” cannot be supported. I am familiar with the research used to support such claims. Most of the research is flawed and the conclusions such as these are unwarranted even from it.
The idea that gold stickers cannot be used effectively to enhance learning, as she suggests, is just not true. Stickers, properly used, are a symbol of accomplishment which is often accompanied with other social reinforcers for learning. They can provide an important bridge from learning math facts, spelling and many other non-reinforcing academic tasks that are foundational to future activities that are naturally reinforcing. Using a computer, driving a car, or using social media are all activities that are made more enjoyable by mastering the basics, which in themselves are often considered dull and boring.
There is more that I can say but I am not sure that I can make this blog reinforcing enough to keep you reading.
Let me finish by saying that I hope what I have said here about the Psychology Today article will not cause you to want to read it. The problem is that much of what is presented to the public in the name of science is not science, or at least, good science. Fortunately much of it can be ignored, or is inconsequential to you. Whether Diet Coke is good or bad for you, may not matter to you as you don’t drink it. On the other hand how you treat people in your family, especially your children, does matter. What you say to your children, how you react to their behaviors matter so it is important to know whether to comment on their smartness or whether or not to use stickers as a technique for getting chores done around the house. My advice is to be careful about whose advice you follow. Ask for the research, or better yet, learn the science of behavior yourself. If you do, not only will you have confidence in the decisions and activities that you use to help make your children good people but you will be a happier and more fulfilled person yourself.
[1] Dweck, C.S. (2006). Mindset. New York: Random HouseElliot, A., & Dweck, C.S. (Eds.) (2005).
Additional Resources:
Bringing Out the Best in People
Head Strong: A Parenting Survival Kit for Reducing Tension and Building Self-Esteem
Ask Aubrey: Insanely Simple or Just Insane?
Here’s a recent question that came to me via Twitter
Question:
[SIC] What is your take on this quote from the book Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple’s Success by Ken Segall?
“Many businesses follow an instinctive but misguided principle: The more critical the project, the more people must be thrown at it. The operative theory is that more brains equal more ideas. That’s hard to argue with—except that only occasionally do more brains mean better ideas. The more people involved in the effort, the more complicated briefings become, the more hand-holding is required to get people up to speed, and the more time must be spent reviewing participants’ work and offering useful feedback. A smaller group offers the most efficient way to succeed—assuming that it also has…”
My Response:
I have not read this book, but based on this quote, here’s what I think. First, brains have very little to do with it; it’s about behavior. When people take that into account, it is more about how behavior is reinforced and/or discouraged than it is about how many people are involved. I say that most organizations have the solution to their problems when they create an environment where everybody feels they are an important part of making the organization successful. That necessarily means that they need to continually come up with ideas about how to do things better, faster and cheaper. Organizations shouldn’t want to limit the number of ideas their employees generate–the more ideas the better. When you have many ideas it is the task of management to make sure that idea generating is positively reinforced. The next task is to sort, prioritize and fund development. 3M Company was the exemplar at this years ago (think Post-It notes). They are trying to recapture what was lost when they began to depend only on the brains (engineers) to come up with good ideas. There was a time when employees were given time and money to pursue what appeared to be wild ideas at the time. I do agree with the money part, where companies think it is a money and resource problem, but that is not my experience (and the science of behavior tells us otherwise).
Additional Resources:
PM eZine
Rapid Change: Immediate Action for the Impatient Leader
Women (and Men) in the C-Suite
Messages about how women can rise to the top shouldn’t be delivered only to women. Men and women both need to understand and embrace the skill sets they were predisposed to, and those they learned along the way, to stand tall in the board room, equally. In this recent blog post for Talent Management, Aubrey challenges readers to learn from each other while not losing or changing the things that make each gender unique.
Why Wall Street won’t ever change their spending ways
I’m going to get right to the point. I have little faith that Wall Street will ever get smarter about how they spend their money. The reality is they have too much of other people’s money and deal in such large amounts day to day that they will never take seriously the efficiency and effectiveness of their own management systems. They have seen good times and bad. While they are talking about making dramatic changes now, history has proven that they will only be temporary. Even though they are in a position now where their financial belts will have to be tightened, it will be only for a short time because when the economy improves they will return to their spendthrift ways. Why? Because they don’t know any better and since they are in the business of selling money have come to believe that money will solve their problems only if it is given in large amounts. It is an environment where $100,000 is considered “chump change.”
What prompted this blog was an article in Bloomberg News titled, “Wall Street Mulls Partial Pay Freeze” by Jeffery McCracken and Christine Harper. They talk about the fact that revenues in the investment-banking business have been so bad that they might have to resort to eliminating the practice of boosting pay automatically each year. They quote Joseph Sorrentino of Steven Hall & Partners, an executive-compensation consultancy who said, “Pay increases have been traditionally automatic because there are traditionally very long hours in terms of the amount of work and this is another way to try to boost their morale and signify that they’re a strong part of the firm and that they’re appreciated.” This quote cracks me up because it shows the almost total lack of understanding of the laws of behavior.
I can assure you that Mr. Sorrentino has no data showing that the way these investment banking firms structure bonuses improves junior bankers’ performance, retention or morale. It is naïve to think that you can treat people poorly day to day, give them money at the end of the year and think that will create the feeling that “they’re a strong part of the firm and that they’re appreciated.”
The reason these firms can get away with wasting millions of compensation dollars is because practically every company in the industry is using the same poor uninformed compensation practices. Therefore, no firm has an advantage or disadvantage. The customer pays the freight.
If these firms ever get to a point where they must operate in a more sound way financially, I can suggest several things.
- Every problem cannot be solved with money, even on Wall Street. What causes people to quit and go to another company is more about the way they are managed than the money they make. If employees are treated poorly, they will leave for a dollar more. If they are treated well, it will take a lot more to hire them away. Make no mistake, loyalty cannot be bought. Big bonuses have often helped a disaffected employee start a competitive company or retire early.
- Bonuses that are not earned, more often than not, do not strengthen productive behavior because that is not the contingency involved in receiving the bonus. While upper management believes that annual bonuses increase loyalty and performance, they do neither because they don’t have to be loyal or productive to receive one. They have to do just enough to stay on the payroll. Of course management doesn’t believe this because if they did, they would make immediate changes where nothing would be automatic that was not individually earned. A system where employees knew the personal accomplishments they had to achieve to earn the money would be far superior and less costly.
- Forget what rival firms do. Focus on promoting to management only those who have good social skills and an understanding of the science of behavior. Pinpoint the behaviors and results that are valuable and generously reinforce those behaviors and reward those who produce the results. That way, the only thing that executives will have to “mull over” will be how to spend the money that is left over.