‘Consequences’ Articles

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Why Wall Street won’t ever change their spending ways

January 13th, 2012

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business man with piggy bank on head and hands onI’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.

  1. 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.


  2. 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.


  3. 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.

Ask Aubrey, Behavior 101, Consequences, Culture "Change", Incentives, Leadership, Performance Pay, Positive Reinforcement, Results, Rewards

New Year’s Resolutions: Beware!

January 3rd, 2012

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MH900438914The origin of New Year’s Resolutions can be linked to pre-Christian times in Rome, thousands of years ago.  So every year about this time, I ask audiences where I speak how many made New Year’s Resolutions.  What I have noticed is that fewer and fewer have gone through the ritual.  Does that mean that fewer people are interested in carrying on this ancient tradition?  I think not.  In fact, it’s been reported that more than half of those that proclaim resolutions fail at realizing them. The reality is that most people who make resolutions don’t keep them – many don’t keep them even for a day.

The primary mistake people make in making resolutions is that they think that changing some personal behavior or habit is simply a matter of will power or “making up your mind.”  It is as if people who fail don’t grunt enough, don’t have enough resolve (how do you get more of that?), are not really serious (How can you increase your “really seriousness?).

The real mistake lies in not planning or managing consequences well.  It is easy to resolve to quit drinking, lose weight, start exercising, etc. but it is harder to plan consequences that you will actually be able to self-administer to get the behavior change you seek.  Therefore, the resolution is nothing more than a goal, and goals aren’t reached by grunting, wishing or talking; they are reached when you have consequences that support the behavior change.

Here are some practical suggestions to help you be successful should you want to carry on the New Year’s Resolution tradition.

  1. Plan consequences for behavior change. Allow yourself to do things that you like contingent on a certain accomplishment. In other words, if you resolve to do some project in your house, commit to getting it done before you sit down to watch your favorite TV program.
  2. Set very small sub-goals. The more, the better.  If weight loss is a target, set a goal of no more than one pound a week.  The trick is to set a goal that you are almost sure to reach.  Less than a pound is ok if you can reliably measure it on your scales.  Smoke one cigarette less per day; walk around the block.  No goal can be too small at the beginning.
  3. Post a graph of your progress at home or in the office where everyone can see it.  Set the parameters so that progress is easy to see.  Tell family and co-workers what you are doing.  Use social media to show results.  Put the graph on Facebook, Twitter, etc. The more people who see your progress will reinforce you for it and in return you will be more motivated to keep at it.
  4. Celebrate every success (every goal accomplishment), no matter how small.  Reward yourself.  Publicize your small accomplishments.  “I am one step closer to finishing that big report.”
  5. In addition to rewards that cost money (buying something for yourself, dinner at a fancy restaurant, a movie, some new software for your computer, an iPad, etc.) think of rewards that have a low cost or have no financial cost.  Use the “IF I do X, then I will do Y” contingency.  Or, “when I do X, then I will do Y.”  If your resolution is to clean the attic, basement or garage, simply say, “When I put something in the trash, I will watch T.V, answer my email, play a computer game or go to McDonalds for breakfast.”  You will be surprised how quickly you finish the task with this simple start as long as you maintain the contingency “When…then.”

By the way don’t do it in reverse which most people are tempted to do, that is, “I will work in the attic after I come home from McDonalds.”  I call that bribery since it reinforces the wrong behavior.  You get the reward for promising to do the behavior, not for actually doing it.  Not a good plan.

Most failures to reach personal or work goals result from poor goal setting and from failure to plan positive reinforcers for success.  If you start the New Year with small goals and a multitude of reinforcement, 2012 may be your best year yet!

Behavior 101, Consequences, Goals, Motivation, Negative Reinforcement, Performance, Positive Reinforcement, Results, feedback

There they go again: National ban on texting while driving

December 27th, 2011

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textingThere is no question that if no one used cell phones while driving, lives would be saved but so would not eating while driving or drinking a Coke or looking at GPS or talking to a passenger or solving disputes between children in the back seat or daydreaming or…(fill in the blank). It is a fact of life that distractions on the road are increasing and all of them increase the likelihood of an accident.

I believe that everyone who drives should keep his/her eyes on the road at all times and not attend to anything in or out of the car that would distract him or her. However, it ain’t going to happen. (Even in space the astronauts looked out the window.)

Cell phones are addictive in that they provide the user with a rate of reinforcement that is higher than almost anything else in the car. Therefore they are clearly the most dangerous. If we have just eaten we will not be likely to eat or drink in the car but if we have just talked to a friend while at the restaurant, it does not reduce the probability that we will not talk on the cell phone when we get back in the car. It may even increase it because we may remember something to tell the friend that we forgot when talking in the restaurant.

Employees at ADI responded to the NTSB’s recent national plea to ban cell phone use by making a pledge to stop using the phone while driving. It is a worthy goal. Only a week later, and none has been able to stop. They all said they are doing better but no one has stopped. Is it possible to develop a habit of driving without using a cell phone? It is, but it will take time, probably many weeks, even though they are not doing it under threat of getting a ticket or losing their license. It is a volunteer activity.

Why is it that the Department of Transportation only thinks of punishing those who do something wrong or dangerous as a way to stop the behavior? The first reason is that they want to give the public the impression that they are awake at the switch. The press release about “banning all cell phones” gives the appearance of taking the problem serious. Second, the statement by the chairman, Deborah Hersman that “We’re not here to win a popularity contest” makes it sound even more serious. Tough talk is often rewarded by the press and the public. Such speeches are make-work, “full of sound and fury signifying nothing.” In spite of appearing to be the right thing, they are the wrong thing to do for at least three reasons:

First, fining or even taking a license is a negative but uncertain consequence. No one using a cell phone thinks that s/he will get caught. When an uncertain negative consequence comes face to face with the positive immediate consequence of talking to someone about a problem, a girlfriend or boyfriend, an appointment, a dinner date, etc., the positive immediate consequence will win every time.

Second, the behavior of avoiding getting caught makes the use of the cell phone even more dangerous.

Third, how many times does the Department of Transportation have to come out with knee-jerk reactions and solutions with little evidence that they understand anything about human behavior until the public completely ignores their “warnings?” Think about compliance to speed limit signs.

I am bothered by drivers on the phone like everyone else. If a car is moving slowly in traffic or moving erratically, it angers me to see on passing that they are on the cellphone. However, I don’t want a legal or governmental solution since I know it won’t work. I also know that if a legal solution is advanced, it will never be repealed even though it doesn’t work.

I believe, as I have said before, that because of the positive immediate consequences provided by cell phone use, the only solution is a technological one. Make cell phones so that they will not work as long as the phone is moving. The sooner we come to that realization and put resources and time on that solution and less on pronouncements that won’t work, the sooner we will begin saving lives.

Behavior 101, Consequences, Negative Reinforcement, Technology

Improving Post-Accident Behavior

December 12th, 2011

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Predictability is one word you could use to describe an organizations reaction after an accident. It is quite common for organizations to jump to some kind of response after an incident or accident has occurred.  But do they always do the right thing?  In the latest video blog, Dr. Judy Agnew examines what typically occurs in the aftermath of an accident and why organizations should turn instead to more proactive measures of safety to better avoid the potential for future problems.




See also: BBS Basics Instructor Start-Up Package and BBS Orientation Booklet

Behavior Based Safety, Consequences, Leadership, Negative Reinforcement, Videos

Why Some Managers Fail at Getting Effective and Efficient Performance

December 7th, 2011

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 MH900399109To succeed in business today, everything must constantly be scrutinized. As such, leaders and managers are forced to evaluate and reevaluate performance; specifically the performance of their people and its impact on the company’s bottom line. For some, their role is rewarding and the path forward is clear. For others, they are left wondering how to get direct reports to deliver the performance needed to achieve necessary business outcomes.

Effective performance is not something that only lucky managers can achieve from their employees. It’s also not something you’re born with. For those who find themselves challenged to get desired performance from direct reports, it’s likely they have fallen victim to some common traps. Here are two traps that failing managers can fall into:  

Using ineffective management practices: In management, just because something doesn’t work doesn’t mean managers won’t continue to use it. So many practices have been institutionalized through the years that it’s no wonder managers think nothing of adopting them. Ranking is one such practice whose intention is to drive motivation to be the best but in reality it devalues the performance of all those who aren’t at the top. What managers don’t understand is that, among other things, it creates internal competition and doesn’t motivate the ones on the bottom to improve or those at the top to reach higher. Unfortunately, it often creates enmity between those ranked higher and those rated lower. The reality is that if you aren’t at the top, or close to it, this process becomes demotivating as they realize they will never be able to perform better than those above them. 

Another common, and unintentional practice, is when managers use the ‘you did a good job but’ approach when providing feedback or attempting to correct poor performance. When managers provide reinforcement for the things employees did right but then end it on a note of what more they can improve, employees forget the good and focus only on what they did wrong. If this is done often, employees hate to hear the good because they know some criticism is likely to follow. They also begin to suspect that the only reason you say something good is to set them up for bad news.

A frequent mistake in correcting behavior is to “sandwich” the problem behavior between two compliments. Managers are often taught that saying something positive before mentioning the problem makes the employee more responsive to the negative and by ending with a positive it protects the person’s ego. What it does, in fact, is to dilute the message at best and provide positive reinforcement for the problem behavior at worst. Break this bad management practice. It may make you feel better about the correcting but has a very unreliable impact on the performer.

These methods even if done with the best of intentions are demotivating and usually result in employees doing only what they are required to do.

Unintentionally rewarding negative behavior: When managers don’t understand positive reinforcement as a scientific concept many problems usually occur in an effort to build a positive culture. For example, the worst advice you could ever give or get is: Always be positive! While it sounds good and many people strive to eliminate negativism from their relationships, we know that if you are positive at the wrong time, you will get more of the wrong behavior. Behavior that you want more of needs positive reinforcement; Behavior that you don’t want, does not.

A question to ask that will help you avoid rewarding negative behavior is, “What does the person want?” If bad behavior gets him what he wants, you can count on the fact that he will do it more often. For example, I have heard people say that “All he wants to do is argue.” If that is true, then arguing with him will only increase argumentative behavior. Positive reinforcement is a powerful interpersonal tool. Use it well and it will result in healthy, productive relationships. Use it poorly and it will make you and those you work with miserable, unhappy and unproductive. 

To create a productive and happy work group, you must:

  1. Know the reinforcers of those who work with you – everyone is different
  2. Establish yourself as a positive reinforcer – pair yourself with the delivery of meaningful reinforcers
  3. Reinforce incremental improvement – the smaller, the better
  4. Don’t stop – continue as long as you want performance

Behavior 101, Consequences, Negative Reinforcement, Positive Reinforcement, feedback

Discipline and Safety: what you need to know before you act

November 22nd, 2011

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While discipline is important under the right conditions, it can also be overused and misused. In this video blog, Dr. Judy Agnew describes the potential problems discipline can cause if not used properly and the side effects that may result. She also discusses why organizations shouldn’t jump to conclusions and what they should do first instead.


Behavior Based Safety, Consequences, Leadership, Videos, punishment

Good Intentions, Bad Effects

November 8th, 2011

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ethicsGuest post by Darnell Lattal

Throughout the past several years, ethics has made its way into business headlines, more often than not for bad rather than good. What people may be surprised to know though is that to get an organization to behave in ethical ways, it takes more than good people seeking to do good. It takes more than rules of conduct.  Ethical behavior is what is shaped day in and day out by unintended consequences that occur as work is done. To “be ethical” requires a very deliberate focus on the impact, not the intention, of actions. It is also a clear-eyed review of how behavior got going to begin with and the unethical effects on the organization.  It requires looking ahead at impact, not what has happened but what could happen and evaluating the degree of harm or good such impact could have.

There are things that each of us can do to contribute to a stronger ethical workplace. The best way to protect you and your organization is to understand how consequences increase or decrease the likely occurrence of certain kinds of behavior now and in the future. Here are a few suggestions:

  1. Talk openly. Make ethics a part of your workplace culture by talking openly and often about it.  When you provide examples and take the time to communicate its importance, individuals will have a stronger understanding of how to avoid slippery slopes.
  2. Build ethics into hiring and training. Include ethics as part of your selection interview. Examine a person’s responses to ethical dilemmas and identify specific actions to take. Ask about times when they did something wrong and how they decided what to do. Look at a candidate’s ability to balance among conflicting values and how the individual might apply his/her judgment to “messy customer situations” or with coworkers. In training, have your employees define terms such as treating others with respect and how they demonstrate that in their behavior. Present case studies that require discriminations among choices and discuss the implications. Have individuals bring real-life ethical dilemmas to the team for discussion and resolution.
  3. Focus on consequences. Attach consequences to desired behavior and measure its occurrence. Extreme behaviors lead to immediate termination, but most actions are not stuff of moral outrage. Remember that ethical discrimination is shaped, reinforced, maintained and changed by the contingencies that surround and support individual actions. Make your expectations clear and then follow up.
  4. Define criteria. Establish a set of criteria to evaluate your own actions and share those with others.
  5. Support others. Encourage, model and help others establish a method to discuss actions and increase alertness to the ethical issues in everyday decisions.
  6. Monitor and enforce ethical behavior. Assure that structure and resources exist to monitor and enforce commitment to an ethical climate. Regular coaching and feedback, training sessions to increase skills, customer and employee feedback, structures, systems and processes that allow for the orderly flow of work are all important in reinforcing ethical behavior.

Be alert to what the longer term effects of consequences are for individuals and for the culture of an organization. The ethical traps, unintended consequences, are easy to fall into and none of us are immune from the fall.

Read more…

Behavior 101, Consequences, Culture "Change", Leadership, Positive Reinforcement

Personal Responsibility within a Behavioral Approach

October 27th, 2011

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42-15501641Guest post by
Judy Agnew

We have received much positive feedback on our book Safe by Accident and we are delighted that so many people find it helpful.  There is one issue that some people are struggling with so we want to take this opportunity to clarify.  Some readers are having trouble reconciling our discussion of the influence of organizational/management systems on at-risk behavior and the concept of personal responsibility for safety.  The question is: if at-risk behavior is found to be influenced by management-controlled organizational systems, does that let the frontline performer off the hook?

To some extent this is a philosophical issue.  The notion of personal responsibility is embedded in our culture.  It is present in our judicial, political and social systems and has served us well in many respects.  In a work setting, telling employees that they are “responsible for their personal safety” at work is helpful as a broad antecedent.  It sets the expectation that each person must do what they can to protect themselves and others.  The question is what specifically are they responsible for?  Telling miners they are responsible for their own safety and then sending them into a mine that is poorly ventilated and structurally unsound is absurd.  They cannot be responsible for their own safety under those conditions because they do not control them.  We think everyone will agree with this extreme example.  The difficulty comes with less extreme examples.  Workers who are trained in procedures but don’t follow them consistently, for example.  Our position is that there is shared responsibility in most cases.  Our concern with the notion of “personal responsibility” is that it sounds like an easy solution to a very complex problem.  We are sure that some of you have told employees in your organization that they are responsible for their personal safety.  We assume since you are reading this, that hasn’t solved all your safety problems.  Antecedents rarely do.

So where does personal responsibility fit in?

Let’s back up. The goal in safety is to prevent injury and illness.  If we say that people are responsible for their own safety, then it follows that if they are not safe, they are to blame. Our point is that blaming people for things that are, at least to some extent, outside of their control does not accomplish the goal.  If it did more organizations would be perfectly safe by now.  But let us be very clear: we are not suggesting that accountability (a synonym of responsibility) is bad.  Accountability is essential in safety.  However, it is critical that organizations first determine WHO should be accountable for WHAT.  The word, accountability, is often code for whom to punish.  The issue is not who should be punished but what actions will correct the situation so that it will not recur.  Although punishment is appropriate under certain circumstances, we see too often that organizations punish only the person at the point of the accident without fully understanding the systemic issues that have contributed. This is not only unjust, but it fails to rectify the situation.

Systems are designed and maintained by people.   Therefore, there should be accountability for those who control the systems to change the systems if they are faulty.  Once the systems are changed then everyone who works in those systems should be held accountable (positively reinforced for engaging in safe behaviors and corrected when they are not).  This is not about absolving personal responsibility–quite the opposite.  It is about establishing accountability, at all levels, that will lead to true improvement.  Frontline performers need to be held accountable for those things under their control.  They should be responsible for reporting hazards, providing feedback to keep peers safe, participating in safety meetings, talking to management when systems make working safely more difficult, offering solutions, and working to improve their own safe behaviors.  Frontline performers will be more successful in “taking personal responsibility for their safety” if they work in partnership with management and those who control the organizational systems within which they work.

Behavior Based Safety, Consequences, Culture "Change", Leadership, Motivation, Performance, Positive Reinforcement, feedback

Just do it!

October 26th, 2011

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Guest post by Christina Simms

CB055359Understanding why we procrastinate and how to beat it.

Having trouble whittling down your To-Do list? Do you find yourself saying (albeit with confidence) “I’ll get to that tomorrow.”? You aren’t alone. Procrastination seems to be the one thing you can almost always count on people getting done. But why do we seem to keep putting off for tomorrow what we could do today?

Every week I go through the same routine. I make a to-do list with the good intention of crossing everything off. I do the easiest, quickest things first; mark them off with a wonderful feeling of satisfaction and typically leave the more complex, challenging to-do’s for tomorrow. Before I know it, two weeks have passed and my list is that much longer.

People procrastinate on all sorts of things. We put off taking out the trash, mowing the lawn, doing our taxes, mailing Christmas cards. Most of the time, we find ourselves avoiding tasks because something about doing them is tedious, unpleasant, time consuming, or in some way negative. The science of behavior, specifically behavior analysis, provides not only the answers to ‘why’ but also how we can overcome our own procrastination.

The science of behavior tells us that it is consequences that determine whether or not we will do something again in the future. If you receive a negative consequence as a result of something you did (ie. a behavior) then you are less likely to do that behavior again in the future.  Alternatively, if there are positive consequences associated with something you have done, then you are more likely to repeat that behavior in the future.

Many years ago, Aubrey developed a tool to examine consequences called the PIC/NIC Analysis®. Again, the science tells us that consequences can be positive or negative, immediate or future, and certain or uncertain. The most powerful consequences are the positive/immediate/certain and negative/immediate/certain ones. In this age of instant gratification, procrastination has become even more prevalent. Lots of things are competing for our attention and the ones that win are the PICs because, frankly, they are more reinforcing to us. College students turn to Facebook instead of starting their 20 page papers, kids spend hours hooked on video games instead of cleaning their rooms, and 9-5 workers choose catching up on their favorite TV shows over an evening work-out.

This may sound like common sense, but if we all understood so well how behavior works, we wouldn’t be in danger of becoming Procrastination Nation. I turned to Dr. Aubrey Daniels for some wise advice about how to beat procrastination and get things done.

It is tempting to start by picking the low hanging fruit, but Dr. Daniels warns against this common practice. Instead, he suggests an alternative method to working through your To-do list. Start by making a list of everything you need to do. Next, rank the items from most desirable to least desirable. Now comes the hard part— start at the bottom of the list! If you can get yourself to do the worst half of the list first, finishing the other half will be a breeze. Dr. Daniels also recommends using the Premack Principle. Tell yourself “when I do this (undesirable task), then I can do that” (something fun and enjoyable). Of course the key to both of these solutions is to practice self-control, something that may take time to improve. Changing your habits can be hard to do, so start small and don’t forget to reward yourself as you begin to notice changes in how you approach your projects at work or chores around the house.

For more on the Premack Principle and PIC/NIC Analysis® read Performance Management: Changing Behavior that Drives Organizational Effectiveness

Ask Aubrey, Consequences, Goals, Motivation, Negative Reinforcement, Performance, Positive Reinforcement, Results

Incident Investigation: Using Science to Develop Safe Working Habits

October 20th, 2011

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Understanding human behavior scientifically is critical in safety, particularly when it comes to investigating when something has gone wrong. In this video blog, Dr. Judy Agnew and Dr. Aubrey Daniels explain how a scientific approach can lead to a safer workplace and why consequences are the most important thing in determining whether or not someone will do something again.


Behavior Based Safety, Consequences, Negative Reinforcement, Positive Reinforcement, Videos, feedback, punishment

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