‘Consequences’ Articles

When watching “LOST”; think “Washington”

February 25th, 2010

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lost1Last week at the insistence of Tyler, our Assessments & Surveys Guru, I watched an episode of the TV series, LOST, and boy was I lost!  I quickly concluded this is not the kind of series that you can join in on the 108th episode and make any sense of what is going on.  Characters are flashing forward, backward, and sideways; a series of numbers from previous episodes reappear; clues to old mysteries pop up around every turn in the jungle path; and challenges to leadership are apparently on-going and critical to the preservation of the island and its powers.

As I was struggling to make sense of what was happening, I couldn’t help but think about Washington.  It seems to me that our elected officials are lost.  We elect leaders who create some followers and wander around till the followers realize they are not getting anywhere.  Then another leader emerges, or re-emerges, to say he knows the way out. After passing familiar landmarks along the trail, the followers realize the new leader is really no better than the last.  While some long for the last leader, some say that the new leader just needs more time to find the way, and others claim that only a new leader can ever hope to take them in a direction that will solve their problems.

A friend from New Zealand, Stig Ehnbom recently sent me a Spiegel On-line article on monetary policy, “China Has a Plan; Washington Doesn’t.”  His comment on the article was, “Considering also that China is buying up resources all over the world – mines, oil and gas deposits, forests, fishing rights, land for gowning food, water resources for farming and that China controls 95% of the world known REE’s (Rare Earth Elements) forming key parts in batteries and electronics for defense and imagery – China has a plan all right and working on it while we in the West are flying around the world attending conferences at exotic resorts exchanging hot air and dreams. Dreams without money (China has got the purse) are called hallucinations and it is a sign of senility to keep doing the same thing and expecting different results.”

Indeed we do seem to keep doing the same thing repeatedly, expecting a different result.  Politicians long for the days of Clinton or Reagan, acting as though nothing has changed in the world for the last 20 years and that the same things they did would work now.

The problem as I see it is even when we have a plan we never seem to learn from its success or failure.  In fact, we can’t even tell if we had a success or failure.

I remember several months ago when the $787 billion stimulus was being debated in Congress, a reporter questioned a Congressman about the wisdom of the stimulus.  His response was, “We’ve got to do something.”  In other words he had no idea whether it would work but thought that a $787 billion experiment, with no effective experimental design, was a wise thing to do.  Clearly, he was lost.  How many times have you heard a politician tell you that even though the country is not making progress on jobs, if we hadn’t done what we did it would have been worse?   I don’t think there is any evidence to support such claims.  How can they prove such a statement?  How can they prove that anything they do is helpful?  Most people seem to believe that the best situation for the citizens is when one party controls the White House and another controls the Senate and the House.  That way the politicians can work long and hard on laws that the President can veto.  At least their waste of time would not cost the taxpayers much tax.

I think Congress is  lost on most of the problems they are trying to solve.  Whether it is health care, global warming or the stimulus, politicians rarely put themselves in a position to be wrong.  With the possibility of being wrong, there is accountability – what politicians want from everyone but themselves. 

I think that every law that is passed and every government program that Congress institutes should include a document specifying its clearly intended outcomes, the measures of success, to include timelines for achieving it, and Senators and Congressmen who sign-on should be praised for success and required to stand and explain faulty logic and execution in their failures.  This way the public can see who is qualified to make our laws and spend our money in ways that really benefits the public they serve.

What is the probability that will happen?  It is about the same as the characters on LOST finding out their true purpose for being on the island. However, as the show’s creators insist, all of our questions will be answered in this final season. When might we expect such assurance from our elected officials in Washington?

Consequences, Leadership, Results

TARP: A classic study in poor contingency management by the government

February 23rd, 2010

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Last week Neil Borofsky, Special Inspector General of the Troubled Relief Asset Program, said   that a number of the bail-out’s key goals “have simply not been met.”  moneyThe question I have is who outside of Washington thought they would be met.  If you look at TARP from a behavioral analytic perspective, it is clear to anyone who knows anything about behavior that it would never work.

It has been pointed out by many writers that TARP funds served as a reward for risky lending practices and other money dealings.  Even Congress was surprised at the “business as usual” behavior of the banks that received the money.  If a bank was poorly managed and it received billions of dollars, what behavior would that change?  They still had lavish meetings in exotic places and they continued to give big bonuses.  Why not?  What gets rewarded gets repeated.  They fact that they continued to do what they had always done was proof that the bailout, even if inadvertently, provided reinforcement for those behaviors.

In an interview on Fox news Barosfky said that it’s “hard to see how any of the fundamental problems in the system have been addressed to date.”  I can’t help but think of a problem faced by many parents of teenage boys.  The son has a habit of not completing school work.  He comes to mom or dad and says he is going out with a friend for the evening.  The parent says,”You are not going anywhere until your homework is done,” at which point the son begins to plead his case.  Finally, worn down by his arguments, the parent says, “Alright, I am going to let you go if you promise me that you will come back in time to do your homework before you go to bed.”  There are a great many parents (some of them obviously work for the Federal Government) that don’t realize that they have just positively reinforced the son to make promises, not to do homework.  Next time, he will make a better, more convincing case for going out without doing his homework first.

If you give a bank billions of dollars and say, “I am going to give you this money but I don’t like it.  Nevertheless, since we are in such a bind I am going to give it to you anyway but with the understanding that we have to work on fixing the system” the bankers probably agreed they needed to do that and went on their merry way with a big sigh of relief.  If you don’t understand contingencies of reinforcement, you don’t have a prayer of fixing the system in any efficient and effective way.

What incentive was there in the TARP for personal bankers or mortgage brokers, people at the frontline of the financial institutions to change their behavior?  If the consequences stayed the same for people at that level of the institution, what behavior change would that promote?  What consequences were there for managers to change their behavior to support the changes needed at the frontline of the bank?

Most of the TARP recipients did not think about planning the consequences for those people who deal with the customer as the critical activity for promoting culture change.  If the consequences for behavior change are not right, the results will not be right and the culture will remain the same.  They should be planned first, not last.  Unfortunately in the case of the financial institutions, as far as I can tell, they were not planned at all.

The White House has proposed a tax on big banks.  For the love of Pete how will that increase lending to consumers and prevent foreclosures?  When you get the contingencies of reinforcement right, reaching the goals of TARP is a no brainer.  When you don’t know the basic laws of behavior, reaching those goals has about the same probability as winning from an airport slot machine.

Consequences

If you missed Undercover Boss, watch the re-run

February 11th, 2010

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After an intense Super Bowl game does not seem like a prime spot in the TV schedule to premiere a new show, but according to ratings, Undercover Boss proved to be one of the most watched post-Superbowl shows, and I can understand why. I thought it was a very good show, with a very important message.  If you did miss it, I highly recommend watching the rerun, particularly if you are a manager or executive in your company.  The show had humor, touching emotions, empathy, sympathy and revelations about work that I am satisfied executives can get from no other experience.

Photo Credit: CBS

The pilot episode was about the President of Waste Management, Larry O’Donnell, who went undercover and posed as an entry level employee for several different jobs in the company.   Although the presence of cameras weren’t well explained (it might have been the hour or the post-game let-down (I was pulling for the Colts) it didn’t seem to affect the employees as they seemed to cut the boss no slack.  He was even terminated by one supervisor because of poor performance.  He sorted cardboard from paper, cleaned portable toilets, did administrative tasks and collected residential garbage.  I won’t spoil the show by relating the details, but to say that I was personally touched by Larry and am sure that the experience changed him forever.

Let me list some lessons that I took away from the first episode:

1.       Every job is a skilled job.  The skills may not require a lot of formal education, but they are skills nevertheless.  Picking up paper on a windy hillside seems like a snap, until you have to do it.  You will probably learn quickly, as Larry did, that it requires more physical conditioning, coordination and persistence than you may possess initially.

2.       Every company has incredible people who give discretionary effort in repetitive, low-paying jobs.  What makes a job meaningful is determined by the consequences you experience daily, not the pay and benefits or the behaviors involved.

3.       People in “dirty jobs” often do them cheerfully and with pride.  Who would think that cleaning portable toilets every day could be done with a whistle, a smile and a lift in your step? For some employees, it’s all in what you make of it.

4.       Variance in how senior-level decisions are implemented is huge by the time they reach the frontline of the organization.   I predict that in future episodes of the show, many executives will be frightened by what they see supervisors doing in an effort to get the results required by policy and process changes coming from corporate.  This will always be a problem if initiatives are not started at the front-line.  This is the very thing that created the problems on Wall Street and Enron, to name two management disasters of the recent past.

Photo Credit: CBS

Hats off to Larry!  He is the kind of person for whom I would want to work. 

I don’t think that all the Undercover Boss shows will be as uplifting and rich in real human stories as this one, but I think all the executives will learn valuable lessons in leadership from the experience.  I predict that many other executives will try this (not on TV) and will make a mess of it. They will end up punishing more people than they reinforce and will in some cases punish the wrong people. 

Some executives will try to get the same information not going undercover but by visiting people on the frontline.  That won’t work for at least three reasons: First, you can’t watch frontline employees do what they do and understand all the things that impact the performer.  Second, watching employees do jobs that they have done for some time makes the job look easy when it is not.  Third, the fact is that when an executive watches employees work, it changes what they do and what they say to the boss.

Watch the show.  It will entertain you, surprise you, disgust you and possibly even educate you.


Photo Credits: CBS

Consequences, Leadership, Positive Reinforcement, Results

Still Driving

February 4th, 2010

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CB022007

My recent post DRiVE Me Crazy!, sparked a dialogue in the blogosphere and in particular, blogger Lisa (www.managementcraft.com) and I continued to trade thoughts.

Here is her last entry:

[Lisa] I believe in good, healthy, debate about things of importance like these, and I thank Aubrey Daniels for taking the time to share his thoughts on Management Craft. In his comment, he asked: “When you have a manager who for decades has never told one employee that he liked, valued or appreciated her work, how do you get him to the point of showing “admiration, gratitude, and care?”

[Lisa] This is a common problem, for sure. I would first ask, what is the root cause of the problem? On what basis is this manager deciding what to do, what to communicate, and how to manage? Often what I see is that the only training this manager has received has reinforced the wrong things (paternal practices, a focus on extrinsics, and that people are essentially machines – although it is usually phrased less directly) and that what needs to happen so that the manager can improve is a shift in his or her thinking about how to best manage people. Well intended structure with forms and check sheets will only reinforce the old and inadequate beliefs that underlie a detached management style.

Aubrey also asserts that he thinks we need to give managers pretty specific guidance. I wonder if he is suggesting that I think managers ought to be taught abstract and broad concepts and not trained on the specifics of what great management looks like. Actually, Aubrey, you and I agree that specifics are important. I think that the specifics we each recommend would be quite different, however (as related to motivation).

Also, I think that we know more about motivation – scientifically – than Daniels seems to believe.

My response

[Aubrey] In response to the question, “How do you get him (a manager who has never told one person that he liked, valued or appreciated their work) to the point of showing “admiration, gratitude, and care?” , you state, “I would first ask, what is the root cause of the problem?” My question to you is what if he told you that he never felt loved by his parents, that he studied engineering because he didn’t really like people and would rather work alone but because he was an excellent engineer he was promoted to supervise an engineering function?

What would all that information about his past do to help you get him to the point where he was sensitive to the effort and accomplishments of those who worked with him and for him? Would his history change what you would do? Frankly there are a lot of opinions about whether a cognitive or behavioral approach would solve the problem, but few who have these opinions have ever had the task of actually helping such a person make those changes.

Over the last 40 years we have worked with literally thousands of managers who had that problem and been successful in helping these people achieve what others who knew them – before and after – called a “personality transformation” and all without invading their privacy or personal history. I am not suggesting that what you would do would not be effective, but as the scientist would ask, “Which of the two was most efficient?” As a student of science, you understand parsimony. If two steps would solve the problem, why would we need three, assuming equal outcomes. Only science can reveal the answer.

On another point you say. “…what needs to happen so that the manager can improve is a shift in his or her thinking about how to best manage people.” I would not argue that point except to ask, how do you do that? How do you get people to shift their thinking? Do you tell them, persuade them, and convince them? I can tell you that these attempts are at best inefficient and there is much scientific evidence to support it. A shift in thinking seems to follow a shift in consequences – not the other way around.

You say, “Well intended structure with forms and check sheets will only reinforce the old and inadequate beliefs that underlie a detached management style.” I don’t know the research behind this statement. I do know that although forms and check sheets don’t change behavior, they can be used as a way to shape behavior from a “detached management style” to one that is involved and empowering.

You say that, “We know more about motivation – scientifically – than Daniels seems to believe.” I don’t know who “We” is but if you mean that there is more that science has learned than I know, you are correct. I spend some of every day trying to catch up with what science knows, but after 74 years I am beginning to think I never will. In the end Science doesn’t care what I believe. It is what it is. I only hope to know more of what is real.

My concern remains. Too many popular writers present ideas as though they are scientifically supported when they are not. Because it is difficult for most people to tell which are and which are not, they take action that produces unintended and often negative consequences.

 

Consequences, Motivation

The “Underwear Bomber” Incident – My two cents

January 11th, 2010

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underwear bomber

Almost everyone has written or talked ad nauseum about Abdul, etc. so I might as well weigh in.  I am reminded of one of our customers in the carpet hauling business where they would put carpet on a truck containing what was to the managers an obvious error.  They would then ship it so that it had to pass through many hands as it was moved from Dalton, GA to San Francisco, CA.  I really believe that the Quality/Customer Service managers hoped that it made it all the way to California, because that way they could chew ass from coast to coast, their big positive reinforcer.

Certainly with Abdul there was plenty of positive reinforcement to go around all the talk shows and bloggers.  Fire or not fire.  Reorganize, or not reorganize.  Change the procedures or not change them.  The ideas were legion. 

In my opinion, firing would accomplish nothing, except increase blame and hiding mistakes.  Reorganizing would just lead to more reorganizing in the future wasting time and taxpayer dollars.  Changing the procedures would be useless if you don’t understand why the current procedures are not being followed.  No, to me the problem is a rare error problem and because there is little understanding of the behavioral processes that produce the rare error, these errors will continue to occur, often with disastrous consequences.

Think for a moment of the number of people on the “no-fly list.”  Although the actual number on the list is secret, the guesses range from a few thousand to tens of thousands.  Even if the number is 100,000 that number is a very small percentage of the number passengers flying daily. 

It is estimated that there are about 2,000,000 people flying every day.  When you consider that only a fraction of those on the No Fly list fly, on any given day, it is possible that a million or more people could be screened without encountering a No-flier.  The behavioral problem is that looking for something that almost never occurs produces extinction of the “looking behavior.”  No matter how vigilant the performer tries to be, the low number of reinforcers produced by such low rates of occurrence is almost guaranteed to produce an absence of the desirable behaviors at all levels of the process.

The sad thing is that behavior analysts know how to keep employees throughout the TSA chain vigilant and even enthusiastic about that kind of behavior.  The technology requires training to the level of fluency and then following up with exposure in the real situation at frequencies high enough to maintain vigilance.  I suspect that TSA screeners are not trained to fluency and that “checks” are too infrequent to create high levels of alertness.

The problem is that the actions by the President and the various agencies will appear to work because the problem occurs at such at such an infrequent rate.  In other words, there might not be another incident for a couple of years if the government does nothing.

I continue to sound the same alarm.  Until executives in the security system understand behavior as a science, there is not a chance that the system will attain and maintain the integrity that the public expects.  Let’s just hope that we don’t continue to repeat the same solutions that don’t have a prayer of working in the long term before someone realizes that there is a behavioral solution.

Behavior 101, Consequences, Positive Reinforcement

The Folly of Early Commitment in Washington

December 28th, 2009

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j0255561As one who studies behavior for a living, I couldn’t help analyzing last week’s “horse-trading” in the Senate around the health care reform bill.  Do the leaders in Congress ever concern themselves with long-term consequences of their actions or is it that they just don’t understand the laws of behavior?  I think it is the latter because they think they are considering the long-term consequences, especially Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska who bargained his vote for a permanent dispensation for the Medicaid program in his state.  So let’s consider the laws of behavior as they relate to recent behavior in Washington.

The behavior is, “I am not going to vote for this bill as it currently stands.”  The consequence is millions of dollars for his/her state.  The laws of behavior predict more of that behavior in the future.  Will it be harder or easier to pass future legislation because of such inappropriate rewards?  You can bet that it will be harder.  Of the several Senators who were reluctant to vote for the bill, as far as I have been able to determine, all of them were paid to vote for it in the end.  Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana reportedly received $300 million in Medicaid subsidies for her state in what has been called by some, “the New Louisiana purchase.”  Senator Nelson reportedly received a permanent exemption for Nebraska from increases in Medicaid funding.  Interestingly, this was given to the state because Nelson was holding the Democrats hostage over the abortion language in the bill.  Personally, I don’t get it.  He was so concerned about the abortion issue that he capitulated when given Medicaid money.  Nelson’s response, “I didn’t ask for a special favor here, I didn’t ask for a carve out”   I guess because he didn’t ask for it, it makes it ok.  It seems like I remember many bribery cases where the same defense was mounted.

Putting issues of bribery, etc. aside, what is the impact of these decisions on the legislative process?  For one thing, it makes the other Senators look weak since they didn’t work as hard for the citizens of their states.  The other thing is that it shows them the advantages of holding out. Don’t be surprised if more hold out in the future.  If “holding out” is rewarded, you can bet there will be more of it.

Another defense that has been put forth by the leaders in Congress is that “this is the way the legislative process works.”  I have news for them.  That may be the way that it worked in the past when the “horse-trading” was done in smoked-filled back rooms in secret but with the new media, that can no longer be done.  Legislative actions are subject to different consequences now.  In the past Nelson’s behavior may not have come to light for months, if ever.  Now it is known almost immediately and he is already receiving considerable backlash, even within his state.

The other issue for Nelson is that if he thinks his decision has made him more popular in his state, I think he is in for a surprise.  I suspect that most Nebraskans don’t really care much about Medicaid because they don’t expect to be personally affected by it.  Most Nebraskans do care about the character and decisions of their Senator.  If he will sell out on one issue, what will it take for him to sell his vote on others?

Behavior is lawful.  We know that behavior that is positively reinforced will occur more often.  Stay tuned to see what behavior is being positively reinforced.  I am confident that Congressional leaders don’t know.  However, they won’t be able to keep it a secret because the increases in their behavior will give it away.

Consequences, Leadership, Positive Reinforcement

The reason some athletes think they are above the law is because they are!

December 21st, 2009

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umpireMy opinion of Falcon’s head coach, Mike Smith, dropped several notches week before last because of his action in the Babineaux case.  For those who don’t follow the Falcons NFL football team, Babineaux is a star defensive player for the Falcons.  He was arrested earlier in the week for felony possession of marijuana, an expired license tag, no valid driver’s license, really dark tinted windows, and a burned out tag light.  As one blogger wrote, “why not just wave a big banner saying, “STOP ME, I HAVE DRUGS!!” Jeez….some of these guys are just absolutely clueless.” (more…)

Consequences, Leadership, Performance

Missed Tackles + Missed Blocks = Tebow Tears:The Danger of Being #1

December 6th, 2009

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number1I confess to being a Gator fan. Darnell Lattal, President and CEO of ADI, is an Alabama graduate and fan. I don’t know what to call her, a Tide? I sure won’t call her an elephant. Alabama uniforms are not even crimson, but a kind of dull red. Crimson Tide, it’s a joke!  Enough bitterness (sour grapes), already. Alabama won and rightfully so.

I was deeply disappointed with the Florida loss to Alabama this weekend. It was so bad that my friends didn’t even tease me about it. While I was disappointed with the loss, I was not surprised because staying on top is very hard to do and I saw it coming. I believe the Gators won many of their games this year by not playing their best. In several games, they played only good enough to win. With the talent they have, I expected that they would blow the competition away but instead struggled with several teams on their schedule. Only one of their opponents, LSU, remains in the top 25 and the winning score, 13-3, could hardly be considered a rout.

 All of this aside, I am still a loyal Gator fan. However, it caused me to think about how difficult it is to be number 1. If you understand behavior, you realize that the natural consequences, particularly rewards and positive reinforcers, often work against bringing out the best in athletes, students and employees who are on top of their game. This is particularly true when the gap between number one and number two is large. What it means is that you can often execute poorly and still remain number one. In the case of the Gators, you can miss a few blocks, tackles and pass-coverages and still win. The problem is that skill sets become more variable every time the behavior is less than optimal but the outcome is good. In other words, you inadvertently get positively reinforced for bad habits. I believe this happened to the Gators for weeks until it caught up with them this weekend.

 If coaches, managers and leaders don’t have a good understanding of behavior, this is a usual ending. If the natural consequences don’t support the behaviors you need, then you have to create them. It is difficult for a coach or a manager to practice fundamentals with seasoned performers who are on top. However, it is absolutely necessary to prevent and correct the breakdown of critical behavior patterns. It takes a keen eye and knowledge of reinforcement to develop tactics to correct and prevent such occurrences. Success often causes performers to take their eyes off the ball as there are many things that dilute their focus – ask Tiger.

Avis Car Rental Company has it right. I don’t know about their execution but the natural consequences tend to favor number two in their competition with Hertz. Avis is reinforced for trying harder; Hertz is by remaining number one even when they really didn’t try harder.

I just hope that for the rest of this month, the Gators will get lots of drills on the basics so that when they tangle with the Cincinnati Bearcats in the Sugar Bowl all that will be left will be only a little fur and a full stomach for Albert, the alligator.

Behavior 101, Consequences

Does Money Make You Smart?

August 19th, 2009

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Let’s say that you make business decisions where the impact on the future of the business is not well-thought out. The decisions are praised by Wall Street but, even so, turn out to waste the resources of the business over the long term. Let’s also say that in an effort to grow the company fast, you buy assets above market value to close the deals quickly, hire talented employees and pay them outlandish wages in order to get up and running as soon as possible. You also have little understanding of how to effectively motivate people but believe that money is most effective. In particular, you believe that money will buy you the right talent, since you believe money is what matters most to talented people. Therefore, you either use salary, bonuses or other perks to motivate them.Then let’s say that as the result of current economic conditions, your company has fallen on hard times in no small part due to the excesses created by your growth strategy and financial excesses. (more…)

Behavior 101, Consequences, Incentives, Mergers & Acquisitions, Performance Appraisal

Talk Does Not Cook Rice

June 4th, 2009

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Kim Jong-Il

On hearing of the North Korea test of a nuclear bomb, Obama said, “The U.S. will take action.” I hope he will. However, I am afraid that he meant that he will get other people (U. N. and China) to tell North Korea to stop their nuclear program.

The title of this post is a Chinese proverb which contains a scientific discovery about behavior: antecedents don’t cause behavior, i.e., telling someone about consequences doesn’t change behavior unless the telling has been paired consistently with consequences in the past. One thing that we can count on about our government, past and present is that there is a lot more talking than there is action. This means, of course, that the application of consequences is inconsistent and the impact on behavior is questionable. (more…)

Behavior 101, Consequences, Leadership