How to use what is not there to improve what is there

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Yesterday I was reading an intriguing Chnagethis manifesto by Matthew E. May called: Creative Elegance – The Power of Incomplete Ideas. May argues the there is a great power in leaving things out. A concept he calls “the missing piece”:

What isn’t there can often trump what is.

May gives examples from art, TV, film and business to demonstrate that sometimes, creativity can be achieved not by creating something new, but by deliberately taking something out or leaving missing pieces. And these inspiring examples got me thinking of other examples where this idea could be used.

Example one – the missing piece in the feedback process

When I teach and evaluate feedback skills I always emphasize to people the importance of asking and listening first and only then deciding on a course of action. I am constantly surprised to see smart people go into a conversation without first understanding the other side problem – is it lack of knowledge, is it misunderstanding or is a shortage of ability. Until you understand that, you cannot really contribute anything to the other person. I just realized that what I am talking about is how the missing piece changes the conversation. How without this information, the conversation is a totally different one.

Next time I am going to give this class I am planning to use the example from the manifesto (which I am not going to ruin for you) to show how powerful the missing piece is and what happens the minute we discover it.

Example two – the unnoticed employees

Similarly, I remember when I was a course commander in the Israeli Air force I was leading a course which was comprised of participants who lacked motivation and had a lot of discipline problems. Usually, we spent a lot of time dealing with and giving attention to the people who were undisciplined.

Until one day we noticed something. When we do that, the phenomenon spreads across the course participants. By ignoring the “regular” soldiers, those who did not give us any problems and focusing on the trouble makers, we were not only unable to take care of troublemakers, we created more trouble makers. We were pushing those who did not act up to act up, as they, like any normal human being, wanted the attention and recognition for a job well done.

I think this relates easily to the workplace. How is your time divided? How much time you spend with you under-performing employees compared to others? How many times to you recognize, award or give feedback to the employees that are not overachievers or underachievers, but are simply doing their job. If, as Woody Allen says: “80 percent of success is just showing up“, don’t we need to make sure we do not ignore those people who are doing everything that is expected of them?

Example three – lack of friction

Lastly, it made me think of a post by Bob Sutton that I read a while back and left a lasting impression on me. The post was called on noticing what you don’t notice, and this is what he wrote:

It is one of those phrases that applies to all sorts of things, great customer experiences where good things happen and your feel no friction, organizational practices that are seamless and painless, and even government services that seem designed to reduce the burden on you.

Sometimes, Sutton claims, the really great services, are the ones that are transparent, that we don’t notice they are there. Or in other words: the missing pieces.

So, how can you use the idea of the missing piece to improve your business, teamwork or personal life?

Elad

Earning not winning

Photo: Dave Bullock (eecue)

I am a regular reader of the Incentive Intelligence blog and enjoy it very much. Today, I read a really interesting post about the negative use of the word “but” titled: Incentives AND Recognition – Forbes Article AND Some Thoughts. You should read it. I was distracted by one sentence in the post, representing an idea Paul writes about in his blog a lot:

Incentive programs are NOT contests and awards are earned NOT won

The last part of the sentence is so important and so powerful I get blown away by it every time I read it. Some might say this only semantics. But semantics have power. I wrote this in my e-book:

In her book, “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success“, Psychology Professor Carol Dweck, describes a study she and her colleagues conducted with adolescences. They gave a few hundred students a non verbal IQ test. When the students finished the test, they praised them for their results. Some students were praised for their ability: “Wow, that is a really good score, you must be really smart“. Other students were praised for their effort: “Wow, that is a really good score, you must have worked really hard“. Both groups had equal scores to begin with, but after the praise the groups began to differ.

Students who were praised for their ability were not inclined to taking on new tasks. They did not want to expose their flaws. They wanted to keep their smart appearances. In contrast, the group that was praised for their effort showed a different behavior, they actually asked for new challenging tasks to handle!

After interviewing the groups, the researchers gave a new test, much harder this time. The ability group reported feelings of failure. Most of them, when asked to describe their feelings of failure, said: “We are not so smart after all”. More importantly, the ability group, who reported enjoyment of the first test, told the researchers they did not enjoy the second one. In contrast to the ability group’s reaction to the second difficult test, the effort group did not see their lesser results at the second test as failure. When confronted with their failure in the second test they mostly said: “we will just need to put in more effort in order to succeed”. More importantly, they reported enjoyment from both tests. Even the one they failed!

Later, both groups were given an easy test again. The ability group performed worse than it did in the first test. They lost their faith in their ability. The effort group actually performed better than it had done in the first test. They used the harder test to enhance their skill. Not only did they enjoy the ride, in the long run, it improved their outputs.

We need to acknowledge, everyday, the results are not a windfall. They do not just happen. They come out of hard work. And it is the hard work that we want to incentivize. Not every type of hard work off course, but hard work that leads, in the long term, to desired results.

A few days ago I wrote about the difference between decisions and outcomes. And while I believe in outcome management I am also a big believer in the idea of processes. Not standardized processes that confine people in bureaucratic prisons. Individualized processes that are the product of experience, thinking and the understanding of our own uniqueness. And the only way to do that is focus on the effort and the work we put in the created the desired results.

Nothing worth gaining is ever gained without effort. And the effort is the important part of gaining it. As usual, my epic fantasy readings give me another perspective. In Best Served Cold Joe Abercrombie writes:

…It was what you gave out that made a man, not what you got back…

Elad

Misguided self-perceptions and finding your strengths

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I am reading Guy Kawasaki’s book Reality Check these days. It is like reading many important checklists about how to do just about anything in business. Strange, but interesting. Anyway, in one of the first chapters he talks about why is it better to invest in young inexperienced entrepreneurs than in serial entrepreneurs. One paragraph in that chapter caught my eyes:

Serial entrepreneurs fill new roles in their next companies. For example, in the first company the person was an engineer who became the vice president of engineering. In the next company, she is the CEO and founder. Just because you are good at designing chips doesn’t mean you’re CEO material. You may end up not doing what you’re good at and doing what you’re not good at

I am constantly surprised how people have misguided self-perceptions. They are so good at something and they usually even enjoy and love doing it. Sometimes they feel a state of flow when they are doing it. But something, society, greed, conventional wisdom or something else I cannot fathom, tells them – hey – you should try being a manager. You should try doing something else. You are better than this.

I wrote about this in my E-book:

It is not uncommon to see someone who was very good at his job and is promoted to be a manager. When he was part of a team or even a solo player, he excelled at his job. But when you put him in a managerial position, which is not his comparative advantage, he just can’t handle it. This is interesting. Usually this man actually wanted the promotion even though he was happy with what he was doing and even though he does not like to manage people. We are so used to the Hierarchy Thinking Model and not the Comparative Advantage Thinking Model, that we actually want positions that our abilities are not compatible with. The reason being this is just the way we know the system works. Well, the system sucks! The problem is that not only this man can’t handle the job of a manager, he also can’t handle the truth … He does not have what it takes to be a manager. And I am not just talking about an application of the Peter Principle. This man is actually unhappy being a manager! It is not his comparative advantage. Bill Gates got it when he put Steve Ballmer to manage while he did software development, so why can’t it work for all of us?

I admit this is a natural phenomenon. You know what, it happened to me not a while back. I found myself looking for a career, I am not 100% share was for me. I am actually struggling these days to find a career path that will allow me a better use of my strengths.

It is not always a bad idea to try new things. If we don’t try, we will never know. And sometimes, the only way to discover your strengths is to do something again and again and fail at it. As long as you enjoy failing at it (not being cynical here, seriously, read the post in the link).

However, if we can’t be true with ourselves we will never be able to reach our full potential. If we become managers and our most important job is to help our employees find what they are good at and help them excel at it, there is no way we can do that before we go through the same process with ourselves. And it does not matter of you are a serial entrepreneur that made millions of dollars or if you are just a novice trying to find your place in the world. You can do better, for yourselves and others, by finding and using your strengths.

Elad

It’s not about you

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On B-net Australia, Steve Tobak, writes about The Ten Rules of Great Teams:

Great groups and great leaders create each other

Every great group has a strong leader

The leaders of great groups love talent and know where to find it

Great groups think they are on a mission from God

Great groups see themselves as winning underdogs

Great groups always have an enemy

People in great groups have blinders on

Great groups are optimistic not realistic

In great groups, the right person has the right job

The leaders of great groups give them what they need and free them from the rest

I was going through this list and noticed something. The list mentions the idea of leadership a number of times (even though I think mostly management is a better term in this case), but it does not differentiate the concept from the group. The leader and the group are both part of one concept. And that reminded of something I wrote a few weeks back:

They way to create a shared story is not using your employees as instruments, but treating them as partners. And if you treat them as partners, the results will follow. It is more than making sure the job gets done. In order to get the job done, you can put processes in place. But a manager needs to think beyond getting the job done and beyond the process. A manager, as a facilitator, needs to create the conditions in which these processes take place. Conditions that lead to flow, joy and happiness.

Authority is not about telling people what to do either. The worst damage you can do is giving clear instructions because it prevents the communication inside the team and prevents the development of people. It means that there is a big chance the team will fail when you would not be there. And it is not about you, it is about your team. It is about completing the task together.

As things happen these days online, connections are created . Just a few minutes after reading the B-net article, I read Marshall Goldsmith’s post on the Harvard Business Review blog “Leadership isn’t about you“:

Charlie thought about my question. “As a coach,” he said, “you should realize that success with your clients isn’t all about you. It’s about the people who choose to work with you.” He chuckled; then he continued: “In a way, I am the same. The success of my organization isn’t about me. It’s all about the great people who are working with me.”

Maybe it is time to stop worrying about ourselves. It is time to realize that nobody cares about us. Being a great manager or leader is not about us. It is about connecting people to something bigger. It is about creating a shared story. It is about creating great people and great teams.

Elad

Learned Helplessness and Managerial Uncertainty

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This post is the fifth (and last) post in a series of posts I am writing on lessons about managing people from the book Predictably Irrational, by Dan Ariely (for more post in the series, see 1, 2, 3, 4).

In the additions to the 2nd edition Ariely added a chapter called Thoughts about the Subprime Mortgage Crisis and Its Consequences. In it he writes this:

All creatures (including humans) respond negatively in situations where things don’t seem to make sense. When the world gives us unpredictable punishments without rhyme or reason, and when we don’t have any explanation for what is happening, we become prone to something psychologists call “learned helplessness.”

Let’s think about a business environment. In your office or in your team, how much uncertainty is present? And no, I am not talking about general uncertainty which is a part of every business. I am talking about managerial uncertainty. It is a kind of uncertainty that revolves around what behaviors are expected and what will be the rewards or punishments to them. It is uncertainty about how decisions that affect people are being made.

Just think about all the times that your manager waited until the last moment to give his team the news. The last time there were rumors in the office about what is going to happen. The last time you knew something is going on, but did not understand what is going on. The last time you got a decision dictated to you without understanding why.

I wrote here a number of times that I think a leader’s job is to take care of the future. To try and dissipate the natural fear that is part of the uncertainty the future holds. But managers have to deal with uncertainty as well.

In investment theory there is a term called systematic risk. This term defines the risks of the entire market. This is differentiated from the unsystematic risk which is specific for a company or industry. What is the difference between them? You can take care of the unsystematic risk with diversification, while you cannot care of the systematic risk.

A manager cannot take care of the systematic risk. The future. It is a leader’s job. It is the leadership uncertainty. A manager is in charge with the present. And he needs to take care of the risks associated with it. Take care of managerial uncertainty.

So, how do you take care of managerial uncertainty of the present? One word. Transparency.

As managers we need to make sure that our employees do not get to a state of learned helplessness. That they understand the connection between cause and effect in the workplace. That they understand how decisions are being made. That they understand the process of management. In the legal field there is term called Procedural Justice:

The notion that fair procedures are the best guarantee for fair outcomes is a popular one. Procedural justice is concerned with making and implementing decisions according to fair processes. People feel affirmed if the procedures that are adopted treat them with respect and dignity, making it easier to accept even outcomes they do not like.

When people understand the system and the system works “the way it is supposed to”, they don’t have to live in a state of uncertainty, even if the result itself is uncertain. They don’t have negative reactions and they don’t go into a state of learned helplessness. It is time we put some transparency to work in order to deal with the managerial uncertainty.

Elad

The curse of knowledge and recognition

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Yesterday I wrote about the importance of noticing employees. One of the things I emphasized is the importance of not only noticing people, but actually letting them know that you noticed:

In order to be really unpredictable but also create an effective response to our rewards, we need to notice our employees.  And it is not enough to notice, it is also important to let them that you notice. Most business people will tell you that marketing is all about perception. The qualities of your product are not as important as how people perceive you r product. I think we should employ similar thinking to our employees. Noticing our employees is important but making sure that they know we are noticing them is just as important.

(And today I got some empirical evidence to back that up).

After writing this I kept on thinking about why do some managers notice their employees but don’t tell them that they noticed them. The answer came to me today while I was reading a chapter from Guy Kawasaki’s book Reality Check called: The Sticking Point, where Kawasaki interviews Chip and Dan Heath, the writers of the book: Made to Stick. In the interview they mention a term I described in this blog before called the curse of knowledge. The curse of knowledge basically means that we have problems explaining things because we already know them, which make it hard for us to imagine how someone who does not know what we know sees it. This means we need to actively seek where our assumptions about the knowledge of other people are wrong.

And the same happens to us when we see an employee doing good work. We assume that the fact that we saw him and know what he did means that he knows that we saw hum and knows what he did. What is the solution? Taking the opposite assumption. We need to assume that our employees never know that we noticed them. Then make it a priority to let them know that we did. Let’s overcome the curse of knowledge and starting noticing people.

Elad

Did he notice me? On perceptions, noticing, management and education

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I am constantly amazed how my interest subjects are overlapping. I wrote in this blog a few times about how I find management lessons in reading epic fantasy. Another subject that correlates with my interest in managing people is the subject of education. Lately, I started following an interesting blog dealing with education by Angela Maiers. Yesterday she wrote a post called: “Two powerful words: I notice” about the importance of noticing students in the classroom. In the post she referred to a quote from the movie Shall We Dance uttered by Susan Sarandon character, Beverly Clark:

We need a witness to our lives. There’s a billion people on the planet… I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you’re promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things… all of it, all of the time, every day. You’re saying ‘Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness’.

And I think this approach is not only important in marriage or as a teacher in the classroom but also as a manager of people. I am a passionate person and usually I do my job as best as I can. And I know from my own experience that there is a high correlation between whether I felt noticed and my motivation. Actually, over the years I discovered how much I yearn for recognition and how frustrated I feel when I am not noticed. In my e-book, I described this story:

After 8 months of internship, my boss took me to lunch, and offered me to stay at that firm as a full time lawyer once I pass the bar exam. I told him that what troubles me is that I did not get any feedback. I only learned by trial and error and a little by watching what others do, and not by direct feedback. I said I would like that to change if I was to stay. He was genuinely surprised. He said to me: “Well, if I were not happy with you, you would have already known”. When I think about it, I still can’t quite grasp that reaction. But it really stands for how people usually feel. If there is nothing wrong, there is no need to say anything. Frightening!

While I know it is dangerous to extrapolate from my own experience to a general rule, I found that while not everybody feels the same, many people do. When I teach motivation in the Israeli Air-Force I talk about the expectancy theory of motivation by Victor Vroom.  One of the main concepts in this theory is that there needs to be a clear connection between the effort people put in and the optional reward. According to the theory, one question people ask themselves before they act is “will somebody notice what I do?”. The theory is not straightforward but when I talk about this part and ask for an example, almost all the students in the class have one. Too many of us go unnoticed.

Just yesterday I wrote about the unpredictability of rewards and its importance.  In order to be really unpredictable but also create an effective response to our rewards, we need to notice our employees.  And it is not enough to notice, it is also important to let them that you notice. Most business people will tell you that marketing is all about perception. The qualities of your product are not as important as how people perceive you r product. I think we should employ similar thinking to our employees. Noticing our employees is important but making sure that they know we are noticing them is just as important.

Elad

The unpredictability of rewards

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This post is the fourth post in a series of posts I am writing on lessons about managing people from the book Predictably Irrational, by Dan Ariely (for more post in the series, see 1, 2, 3).

In the additions to the 2nd edition Ariely added a chapter called Reflections and Anecdotes about Some of the Chapters. In it, he describes the idea of the schedules of reinforcement, which is a term coined by the behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner. In simple terms, it means that when and how often we reinforce a behavior can have a dramatic impact on the strength and rate of the recurring appearance of that behavior. We would expect that a constant, fixed reward system will create a more recurring behavior. But what the experiments actually suggest is that variable reinforcements actually are more effective at creating a high steady rate of behavior.

And that got me thinking about how we reward and recognize employees. Do we do it once a year or once a quarter? Do we do it during a quarterly report or an annual meeting of the employees where the employee of the quarter is declared?

We know that predictable rewards are not as effective as unpredictable rewards, but still, most companies and managers stick to a schedule of predictable rewards. Why? Well, my guess is that it is just easier. As a manager, I don’t need to think and worry about my employees all the time. Does it really matter if I do in once every quarter for an hour or if I do it 30 times over the quarter for 2 minutes each time? But, the fact that it is easier does not mean that it is right (like most conventional wisdoms). We know nothing worth gaining is ever gained without effort.

A few posts ago I wrote about an important principle in feedback called – consistency. The same words could be used to describe the right approach for rewards and recognition:

Consistency – feedback should be given all the time. Not at a predetermined time once a quarter. But all along the year. This is where I disagree with Bratz. The question is not whether you had one meaningful conversation with your manager once a quarter. The question is how often during the quarter did you have meaningful conversations with your manager. Conversations that create value for you and are not done just to fill some kind of form or requirement from HR. If constructive feedback is given consistently, the answer will be all the time. And if it is done all the time, there is a high probability that we are dealing with a good boss.

How unpredictable are your rewards?

Elad

Who should choose the reward?

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This post is the second post in a series of posts I am writing on lessons about managing people from the book Predictably Irrational, by Dan Ariely (for more post in the series, see here and here).

In the additions to the 2^nd edition Ariely added a chapter called Reflections and Anecdotes about Some of the Chapters. In it, he revisits chapter 4 where he discussed the differences between social norms and market norms. Just to fill in the gap, one of the main ideas of the chapter is that money changes relationships. There is a difference between the social norms (doing a favor, giving a gift and so on) and market norms (paying with cash). Cash changes the relationships and actually can de-motivate people where it is supposed to motivate them.

This is one of the examples Ariely gives:

Imagine that you work for me, and that I want to give you a year-end bonus. I offer you a choice: $1,000 in cash or an all-expenses-paid weekend in the Bahamas, which would cost me $1,000. Which option would you choose? If you are like most people who have answered this question, you would take the cash. After all, you may have already been to the Bahamas and may not have enjoyed being there very much, or maybe you’d prefer to spend a weekend at a resort closer to home and use the remainder of the bonus money to buy a new iPod. In either case, you think that you can best decide for yourself how to spend the money.

Ariely claims, due to the effect of market and social norms, that giving the employee no choice, thus giving him the vacation, will make the employee happier:

I suspect that both your and my best interests would be better served if I simply didn’t offer you a choice and just sent you on the Bahamas vacation. Consider how much more relaxed and refreshed you would feel, and how well you would perform, after a relaxing weekend of sun and sand, compared with how you would feel and behave after you got the $1,000 bonus. Which would help you feel more committed to your job, more enjoyment in your work, more dedication to your boss? Which gift would make you more likely to stay long hours one night to meet an important deadline? On all of these, the vacation beats the cash hands down.

While I agree with the comparison between the cash reward and the none-cash reward (and there is a lot of empirical evidence in the book about that), I have a problem accepting the assertion that giving no choice at all is always better. As Ariely mentions himself, the employee might not want the Bahamas trip. Do we really want to give the employee a vacation he does not want? I am not sure that Ariely meant to say that we should not offer a choice between a number of none cash rewards, but the way this paragraph is phrased, definitely suggests that.

Now, while I know there is not only a problem with monetary rewards (cash), but also a problem with too many choices, I still think that an employee will be happiest if he receives a reward that he actually wants (and I know that sometimes people don’t know what they want). I will admit that my assertion is not backed up by empirical evidence and only by my own limited experience and by what I learned and read, but the mere fact that people are different must make us realize that different rewards will work differently on different people. So, while we need to realize the dangers of cash, we should also remember that the best way to motivate our employees is to understand them and what makes them tick and give them the ability to choose what is best for them.

Elad

Taking the hurdles of employees out of the way

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I was going over some of Tom Peters presentations on his website (yes, I had some free time today, and a good friend reminded me of this amazing source of great ideas about management – Thanks Tommer). These presentations are not always easy to understand  without the commentary, but some of the content is really mind-blowing! I was going through this presentation where I encountered this sentence:

Peter Drucker once famously said, “Ninety-percent of what we call ‘management’ consists of making it difficult for people to get things done.”  There is more than a grain of truth to that. On the other side, and there can be an “other side,” I see the manager’s principal role as identifying things that get in people’s way (by asking them!) and meticulously getting those things out of their way. Thence, you could call the boss the CIRO, or Chief Impedance Reduction Officer, or my choice, CHR, Chief Hurdle Remover. In any event the idea is that this is a/the primary task the boss performs—and that it is a systematic, pro-active affair (e.g., on the daily agenda).

Wow!

Managers’ job is to find ways to help people excel. They do that by understanding them, what they do and what troubles them. By helping them find and use their strengths. By helping them reach a state of flow.

Doing that is not easy. But a good place to start is to try talking to people. What about?  Telling them once a week, how they made a difference this week and actively helping them create that difference.  Making sure you have an answer to these three questions. And one of the simplest ways is just asking them a simple question:

What do I need to do in order for you to excel at your job?

This quote by Peters deals just with that. You would be surprised by the answers you would hear to that question and by how easy it is to solve some of the problems they have. And you would be even more surprise of the level of engagement these people will reach when you actually solve these problems and give your employees the feeling that you are putting them first.

Elad