Well, not exactly but I did have the privilege of writing about the new movie release Moneyball, as a guest blogger for Talent Management Online. Click over to read about what lessons can and should be taken from Moneyball and applied to the workplace.
‘Consequences’ Articles
Workplace Tips from Brad Pitt
NFL Kick-Off: Can the Pats write a new ending to the Haynesworth and Ochocinco sagas?
It’s that time of the year again, when diehard football fans anxiously await the start of the new NFL season. This off season has been particularly interesting. Yes, because of the lockout but more so because of the ‘shuffling’ of players and coaches around the league. One in particular caught my eye and has me wondering if it was a sound business decision or not.
It appears that the New England Patriots have bought themselves a “peck of trouble” when they signed both Albert Haynesworth and Chad Ochocinco. It is not unlike what I saw in my former clinical practice where a person would marry an alcoholic with the sincere belief that he/she could reform the other. Not that it can’t be done, but it is in fact rarely done. Albeit, history has been on Bill Belichick’s side, as he has reformed troubled players in the past, and I assume, he thinks he can do the same for these two. I, on the other hand, am not so sure.
First, there is no evidence that I know of that says that Ochocinco has shed any of his “it’s all about me” behavior. While everyone says he is a very talented receiver, the Pats may find that he may be more concerned about doing things that keep the spotlight on him than on the team. Not five minutes after he was traded was he calling out through the media that he wanted to “buy” his #85 jersey from his new Patriots teammate who had already been wearing that number in seasons past. There have been many other such examples that I won’t even go into.
As for Haynesworth, assistant coach Pepper Johnson, who has been entrusted with the “care and feeding” of Haynesworth, says that since he has reported he has done everything asked of him and he is working hard to make-up for the time he lost from training camp by reporting late. Johnson declares the “the past is past” and that he is only evaluating him on what he is doing now. Certainly that approach is needed but if he is to change the behavior that led to his being traded, it may take a different approach that involves effective consequences. Haynesworth has a long list of troubles with coaches, on-field incidents and off-field legal troubles. Johnson will need help from Belichick, other coaches and the other Patriot players. Whether that will happen is a long shot.
There is no question that reform of Haynesworth’s many bad habits will require a high frequency of reinforcement and potentially the use of effective consequences. Whether Coach Johnson has the behavioral knowledge and the ability to gradually shape new habits is suspect.
While I know that any behavior can be changed, I am not sure that the Patriot coaches and supporting players have the behavioral knowledge and the patience required to reform such well-established dysfunctional patterns of behavior on the part of Ochocino or Haynesworth. It’s been said that they are looking for redemption from past failed seasons. I hope they are as there have been too many “talented players” in sports that have flamed out before they delivered the performance their talent promised.
Parenting and Behavior: Examples from Real Parents
I want to start by saying ‘thank you’ to those who sent me stories of how you applied the tools and principles of behavioral science to your parenting challenges. I wish I could recall all of the stories I’ve heard through the years but in the end what is most satisfying to me is seeing people light up about how well the behavioral technology worked and how it leads to positive behavior where previously it had been problematic, and in their view, unresolvable.
With that, I share the following stories, from real parents, about the positive impact the science of behavior has had on their personal lives:
Learning to Drive
When my son, Sam, was learning how to drive, even though I knew better, I found myself only calling out the things he did wrong. Once I realized what I was doing wrong; I had to force myself to pay attention and identify the things he did right, and then specifically tell him about it. The first behavior I made a point to notice was following the speed limit. After watching him drive across town for a little while, I told him I noticed how well he did in following the speed limit. He was so happy and proud that I noticed, and said “I know! I do it all the time!” His response reinforced me to start noticing more of what he does right. I then made a list of specific driving behaviors to remind myself to observe them such as, maintaining 3 second following distance, making complete stops, or stopping with enough space to see the bottom of the tires of the car in front of you. I only picked one at a time so that I wouldn’t overdo it. It really made me realize the strong tendency to fall back into the pattern of only noticing the things he does wrong. Without a deliberate effort to watch for specific behaviors (that I had to write down and look for), I would have fallen back into the old ways.
Household Chores
Pinpointing seemed overwhelming to me when I thought about my work environment but it became more manageable after I first applied it at home. I learned its importance when working to teach my son John to wash the dishes when he was about 7 or 8. It was his task at night to wash and my task to dry. When we first started, I was confused when he left the kitchen with several dirty pots and pans in the sink and went to play. I said “Wait a minute, you’re not done!” He said “Yes I am!” I said “What about these?,” pointing to the dirty pots and pans. He looked at me begrudgingly saying “You said I only had to do the dishes!”
What Makes Them Happy
My daughter used an approach to identify things that were reinforcing to her twin daughters when they were 18 months old. She wanted to determine effective reinforcers for behaviors associated with toilet training and also for other toddler behaviors. Individually, she placed several objects in front of the first child and whatever item the daughter picked first was identified as a reinforcer. She then placed the remaining items in front of the child and repeated the process until 3 items were identified. She then went through the same process with the second child. Once she did this with both girls, she had effective reinforcers. It’s worth noting that reinforcers do change so the process, or a modified version, will need to be repeated over time. By the way, the twins picked different objects.
Seeing Eye to Eye with Your Teenager
While I thought I had tried everything to improve my relationship with my teenage daughter, our relationship still felt strained. After learning about the 4:1 Rule (four positive comments to one negative), I thought it was worth a try. Over a one week period, I consciously worked at applying this rule, and did so as genuinely as possible. I saw improvement in the first day and kept at it. By weeks end, our conversations had significantly improved, and were even enjoyable. This not only taught me how to improve my personal relationships but it also taught me that when you focus on the positives, you see more things you would have otherwise not seen.
Safe For What? Why most of us are focusing on the wrong things when it comes to safety
Who doesn’t want to be safe? But, more times than not, organizations focus on safety for safety-sake instead of as the gateway to quality, cost and production. In this latest video blog, Dr. Aubrey Daniels shares a broader discussion on safety in the workplace and the benefits of using a scientifically based approach to gather and track data. Learn why the data of safety is behavior and how matrices can help you identify the right behaviors and get them to habit strength.
For more on the topic of workplace safety, visit our many safety related articles on www.pmezine.com.
Schools and our Children: Administrations and the U.S. Education System get a failing grade
School bells may be ringing across the country but I am convinced now more than ever that we are not prepared to provide the best education possible for our kids.
I was disheartened to learn of the cheating scandal that is rocking the Atlanta Public Schools. And to further hear of the reoccurring issues with the government’s No Child Left Behind program. More than half the nation’s schools are in jeopardy of failing to meet reading and math adequacy standards. More than half! Monetary implications aside, what are we doing to today’s youth? And to our nation’s future?
It is clear, as was evident in the Atlanta Public Schools fiasco, that what was well-intended when the No Child Left Behind program was initiated has set up a culture of penalty and punishment if targets are not achieved. It can be said based on past history that the federal government spends little time when it designs regulations to consider how to create student success through policy. Little thought of how such a policy, if designed thoughtfully, can shape educational cultures of delight where students learn at high and steady rates. What we see instead are policies that often set a goal—and attach a penalty if the school does not do it.
What No Child has done is create threat and fear, in the administration, with the teachers, and even down to the students themselves. Teachers and administrators who participated in the Atlanta scandal, it’s fair to surmise, were doing what they thought ‘best’ in the name of avoiding the loss of funding they would be awarded by meeting government-set standards.
A major overhaul needs to be undertaken in Atlanta and across the country; and we must look to the context—the requirements that are naïve at best!
Much of what is wrong with these programs can be fixed and the yield will be outstanding and effective teachers and students that reach higher levels of learning. The solution is an understanding of behavior, not from a common sense perspective but a scientific one.
I believe the Atlanta Public School has done the right thing in firing school personnel who have been caught changing test scores. Not that cheaters cannot be changed but in my experience, lying, cheating and stealing have always been firing offenses. The problem in changing such behavior is that it is very difficult to put immediate consequences on the negative behavior (i.e. changing test scores) and therefore it makes the delivery of effective consequences necessary to change the bad habits difficult to manage.
Although I am sure that the problem was produced by ineffective leadership at the highest level that deliberately or accidentally created a system that tempted wrongdoing, it is better to eliminate those who folded under the pressure to produce false results.
The incident reminds me of when I was a lieutenant in the Army. If I heard it one time, I must have heard it one hundred, “I don’t care how you get it, just get it. And by the way I don’t want to know how you get it…” Although I am sure this was never said by school administration, the pervasiveness of the behavior indicates that the pressure was there.
Until there is an administration where leaders understand the direct and indirect impact of their policies, procedures and management and supervisory behaviors on the behavior of teachers, the problem will not go away. When you award a bonus for increasing test scores, you can hardly claim lack of culpability in the scandal as there are people who will lie, cheat and steal to get it. They may think they are working for the greater good—the survival of the school system, the obtaining of needed resources for the children, and of course, their own self-interest—continued employment.
When you only look at results and not behaviors, people often find “more than one way to skin a cat.” Taking the test for the student is one. That slippery slope of how we reach incredibly wrong decisions often starts with subtle or visible threat and fear, not from the ‘bad character’ of a few. In spite of the bonus, I am confident that most people who were caught did not do it for the bonus but because of the negative consequences around failing to produce the required progress.
I submit that all staff in the system is there for one reason – to help children learn. By doing some reverse behavioral engineering (RBE), the criticality of those jobs can be determined fairly quickly. By RBE, I mean start with the student and ask how a job helps the student learn. Of course the main responsibility falls on the teacher. Therefore most staff positions should exist to support the teacher in being effective in the class room. In my experience, most staff positions make it more difficult rather than easier to do the job.
As far as testing goes, the teacher should be evaluated on the number of children who perform to some standard or show significant improvement – not an average for the class but the number who are successful. The teacher’s success metric is ‘number of individual students making progress above their baseline’. Dr. Fred Keller, a pioneer researcher and teacher said, “If the student doesn’t learn, he wasn’t taught.” Local administrators should be measured on the number of successful teachers, and so on up the line. Rewards and punishment should not be delivered on results without factoring in how the results were obtained. This means that teachers should be observed so that inefficient and ineffective practices can be determined and corrected when they happen. The measure of observer (coach) effectiveness is whether teachers ask for the help. Artists want people to see their work; athletes want people watch them play; musicians want people to listen to them play. Why would teachers who are good at what they do not want people to see how they do what they do. They will when they are successful. If coaches (i.e. administration) help teachers teach more effectively, they want people to know and will welcome observers in their classrooms. What this means is that results will never be a surprise as problems will be identified and corrected in real time. Over time most of the observations will be positive as the students will be achieving at high rates.
In 1983, Dr. B.F.Skinner wrote in “The Shame of American Education” that the data showed that the technology of teaching existed to teach twice as much in half the time. That was almost 30 years ago. It has been done in only a very few places. It has been verified and documented in the toughest of schools and with a wide variety of students, some who are labeled as hyperactive, from poor homes, without qualities of persistence, without learning being a value in their home environments, all the things that have been said about why teaching is so hard. These processes have created eager learners, wanting to go to school, teachers who find joy in their impact, parents who are amazed and delighted with new found love of learning in their children and our society that benefits as these students go on to make a difference in our world. What better time than now to do it in the Atlanta City Schools and throughout the country.
Overreliance on Antecedents: Do Policies, Memos, and Safety Signage Work?
You can walk into any work environment where safety is a major concern and see the signs on the wall, signs like “Protective Gear Must be Worn At All Times.” But why is it, that often times, employees tend to dismiss these warnings and work unprotected?
Safety signage, policies, memos and, yes, even training are considered antecedents. They only prompt behavior. To effectively build a proactive and safe work environment, you must have effective consequences in place to drive consistently safe behavior.
In this latest video blog, Judy Agnew, co-author of Safe by Accident?, discusses the natural tendencies toward using antecedents to manage safe behavior and what managers should do differently to create a consistent and safe work environment.
Horrible Boss? KILL them with kindness…or more specifically, Positive Reinforcement!
With all of the hype surrounding the new movie release “Horrible Bosses,” it forces those of us that have had a horrible boss in the past to relive our own experiences.
In an article I read this week on the topic, How to handle a bad boss (without killing them), a few anonymous people spoke up about their own dreadful experiences. I was surprised, although knowing what I know about positive reinforcement I’m not sure why, that in each example, they put up with the bad boss behavior rather than do something to combat it. I realize it’s normal to have ‘fantasies’ of bad bosses getting their just desserts but why not do what you can to redirect bad boss behavior?
Unfortunately most executives, looking only at results, don’t see the organizational costs of bad boss behavior. You certainly don’t get discretionary behavior but you almost always get reduced personal output that spreads to other employees not directly affected by the “bad boss”. It is not infrequent that employees resort to some form of sabotage.
Just as your boss changes your behavior (attitude, motivation, etc.) you also change hers. Although most people don’t realize the impact their behavior has on the boss, it can be significant and can turn a bad boss into a good one. The problem is that most employees do not see it as their responsibility to train the boss. However, if your life is made miserable by living with a boss 40 hours a week, it will benefit you to take on the task.
It bears repeating, as I say this quite often, that if you think that you get too little recognition or positive reinforcement for what you do at work; think of your boss because he/she gets less. Before you act (if even just in fantasy) on ousting your boss, try any or all of the following. Knowing what I know about the science of behavior and positive reinforcement, your work environment, and your relationship with your boss, is bound to improve.
- Look for some improvement on the part of the boss. Don’t look for large changes, but for any small behavior that is an improvement over the usual. Tell him or her that you appreciate how they handled something at work or a decision that they made. Find something to positively recognize your boss for not only today, but next week and even next month. Positive reinforcement is the most effective way to change any one’s behavior, even the boss.
- Say ‘Thank You’ to your boss. Thanking your boss for something that he or she has done that is helpful to you in some way is always appreciated by the boss. Bosses usually only get the bad news about things people don’t like; it’s rare that they hear about things they do that people actually like.
- Tell your boss what’s going on. Keep the boss informed about things that ARE going well. Bosses usually only get the bad news about things that aren’t going well. Give them a reason to celebrate what is working.
- Help your boss be successful. Respond positively to initiatives, priorities and decisions set forth by your boss (assuming, of course, that you think they are good). Any time you help your boss be successful, his or her behavior will likely improve.
- Help others on your team. Go out of your way to help others who are working to implement and address the boss’s initiatives and priorities. This causes most bosses these days to relax as they are able to see that the total burden of creating results does not fall on their shoulders.
A little positive reinforcement goes a long way to improving bad boss behavior. All people need positive reinforcement to do their best – bosses included. You have the ability to strengthen your boss’s good habits and improve other behaviors by how you respond to the boss’s behavior. Positive reinforcement will do the trick. Learn as much about it as you can. Doing it at the wrong time, in the wrong way or the wrong place will make things worse, but if you do it right and do it often, you and your boss will be the better for it.
A reversal of fortunes: Who is Really Appraised By the Performance Appraisal process?
Now, I know I’ve said this before but, just because something is printed in HBR doesn’t necessarily make it true or valuable.
I was reminded recently of an article in HBR that provides tips for how to do effective performance reviews, Ditch Performance Reviews? How About Learn to do Them Well? (Written by University of Michigan professors Maxim Sytch and D. Scott DeRue) For as much as I am asked to comment in the media about the annual performance appraisal process, it is clear to me that organizations absolutely insist on keeping them around. You see, business has been “tweaking” performance appraisals for more than 50 years and it is still the occasion for the most contentious interaction between employee and manager. Tweaking a bad system, while having the potential for making it “less bad,” cannot make it good or effective. Much has been written attributing the “badness” to the frequency of appraisal. This HBR article suggests that increasing the frequency from annual to quarterly will improve its effectiveness.
While frequency is an issue with the annual review, going from an annual to a quarterly appraisal will not address the frequency issue in any significant way. In fact it just keeps employees in a perpetual state of agitation over the process—they are not over the negative emotion of the last one before it is time to do it again. It bears repeating, as I have said this many times before, “the best job people will ever have is one where they know at the end of every day how well they have done.”
The real problem of performance appraisal is not how often or even how well the appraisal is done, but the fact that it is a divisive, labeling process. Once employees have been labeled as “average or below average” it is very difficult to shake the label.
Years ago I was employed by the Georgia State Department of Vocational Rehabilitation to give IQ tests to children to determine if they qualified for State services of various kinds. Qualification was based primarily on low intelligence. One day a young boy I was testing, looked at me and said expectantly, “If I do good on this test will I be able to get out of Special Ed?” I can’t tell you what I said because the question depressed me to the point that at that moment I began to question the value of the knowing one’s IQ. Soon after that I quit giving them. Since he had been labeled “Special Ed”, I knew that the chances of this boy getting into a regular classroom were slim and none. Unfortunately, once you have the label, you are treated as though you are the label. I am sure there will be readers who don’t like that fact that I am writing about special needs children in the context of writing about a “sacred cow” of business. However, the process is essentially the same. Once an employee is labeled “average” only the rare bird will escape the label. The label creates certain expectations about ‘the labeled” and any opportunity to demonstrate they are not the label only provides others that you are the label, “That was really good for someone who is only of average ability.”
You need not respond to this blog by giving me examples of people who have overcome the process. I know there are some but I assure you they are the exception. There should be only one business reason for giving an appraisal (I prefer to rename it, “progress report.”) and that is to help the employee improve.
The mission of a boss at any level of the organization is to “create successful employees.” In this sense a performance appraisal of direct reports is a scorecard of the boss’ effectiveness, not the employees! How about that for a surprising turn of events?
Professors Sytch and DeRue have it all wrong. Comparing one employee to another promotes mediocrity, not excellence. Let’s get rid of this outdated, ineffective, wasteful labeling process and get back to focusing on an effective coaching process that creates an achievement-oriented culture.
And all the people said, “Amen!”
For more about the problems of performance appraisal and some ideas about what to do instead read OOPS!: 13 Management Practices That Waste Time and Money.
Gambling with Safety
Why companies unknowingly put
themselves at risk
It’s probably a fair statement to say that companies are interested in supporting a safe work environment in their organizations. But it is all too apparent through today’s news headlines that organizations gamble with safety, including Sky Express, a bus company that had a recent deadly crash in Virginia. While bus companies and other government regulated industries have legislation in place to protect the public, private organizations are on their own to ensure that their safety practices yield safety by design.
In this latest video blog, Judy Agnew, co-author of Safe by Accident?, discusses the misnomer of incident rate as a predominant indicator of a company’s safety level and why companies need to invest in the science of behavior in order to manage all aspects of safety.
What You Might Not Know, but Should, About the Effective Use of Measurement
Measurement gets a bad rap! In business, measurement can be used to solve problems and help companies perform better, but one of the most frequent uses of measurement is to identify performers who aren’t measuring up. What I have seen over my many years is that while clients think they understand measurement, there is a lot they don’t understand including how to use it to improve company, employee, and individual performance.
The following is adapted from my management classic, Bringing Out the Best in People, and gives you what you need to know about how to effectively use measurement.
- Why use it: The purpose of measurement in a performance management system is to use it to enable employees to do better. Measurement alone does not change behavior but rather provides the data to help create conditions where people see opportunities for improvement. Measurement is most effective when it is used as a tool for delivering positive reinforcement. Celebrate improved measures and instead of delivering punishment for low measures, work with employees to improve.
- Overcoming resistance: Employees typically want to avoid measurement because history tells them that it is usually accompanied by negative consequences. If people in your organization try to avoid or delay attempts to install job measurement, and you want to begin measuring more precisely, there are two things you should do:
- Increase the frequency of positive reinforcement for desirable behaviors as they occur in the workplace.
- Pair reinforcement with existing measures.
- How to Measure: There are two basic ways to measure: counting and judging. Counting is generally recognized as the best way to measure because it is more objective. When you can, you should count. Be warned, counts that are not paired with positive reinforcement when improvement occurs will give you only marginal improvement. When you establish a measure using counting, consider using the raw data rather than a mathematical function, such as percent. The further you move away from raw data, the more data you lose. By examining the raw frequencies you might be able to spot a problem and correct it much earlier than if you had only percent measures. If you don’t know the actual frequency you can’t adequately evaluate performance.
- Rate not Rank: One of the most frequently used, yet ineffective, measurement methods is ranking. Any method that sets one employee against another is counterproductive to getting improved employee performance across the board. In ranking, there can be only one number 1 and only a limited number of winners. By using ratings, you compare performance against established criteria. In this way, it is possible for everyone who meets the required criteria to be rated as a top performer. A company of winners will be a winning company.
- Use behavioral measures: When measuring behavior, it is important to compare behavioral measures against results. If behaviors are judged to be good but the results are not, you may have the wrong pinpoints. The behaviors you originally pinpoint may have to be revised and/or refined a number of times until they give you the desired pinpointed result.
- Celebrating small changes: One of the most important reasons for establishing a good measurement system is to enable you to see small, incremental changes. Most improvements do not occur suddenly. Frequently improvement has begun and you hardly notice it. Many initiatives have been canceled when progress was under way, but there was no measurement system in place to let anybody know about it.
I’m sure I don’t have to sell you on the importance of measurement in business. In business, we have to keep score. But measurement used to set the occasion for positive reinforcement has benefits that you may never have imagined. More than keeping score, measurement can help you significantly in your efforts to bring out the best in people.