Positive Influence

Only Leaders Can Change a Culture

2010-06-06T09:52:00.005-04:00

If you Google “Organizational Culture,” you get over 4,000,000 search results. Wikipedia has one of the first results, and as you scan the description you immediately began to blanch with confusion. If you work in a corporation that will soon undertake a “culture change” initiative, you may begin to tear up. Here is the first paragraph of Wikipedia’s description:

“Organizational culture, or corporate culture, comprises the attitudes, experiences, beliefs and values of an organization. It has been defined as the specific collection of values and norms that are shared by people and groups in an organization and that control the way they interact with each other and with stakeholders outside the organization. Organizational values are beliefs and ideas about what kinds of goals members of an organization should pursue and ideas about the appropriate kinds or standards of behavior organizational members should use to achieve these goals. From organizational values develop organizational norms, guidelines or expectations that prescribe appropriate kinds of behavior by employees in particular situations and control the behavior of organizational members towards one another.” Wikipedia

For all I know, this definition is as good as any—and there are many. Only the most optimistic individual can look at this conundrum of sociology and anthropology and not become overwhelmed. Secretly, many organizational change consultants believe that corporate cultures cannot be changed. Anyone who has worked for a large company acknowledges that change of any kind is ponderously slow—if the company changes at all. The analogy most often heard describing a corporation’s resistance to change is that it is like “turning the Titanic.”

Many leaders have tried various types of culture change. Well funded and well planned culture change efforts have a history of failure. A lot of time and money spent with negligible results—except the noticeable number of frustrated employees whose productivity has suffered from the time spent away from their jobs. Many employees feel they are trying to do things differently when the old ways are comfortable and seem to work perfectly.

An organization’s culture is like a personality; personality and culture have similar characteristics. Both are complex—the relationship between various facets of their structure and function—cause and effect, are difficult to isolate. You change one thing here, and it changes something else over there. The corporate personality has deeply rooted tendencies…traits…identifiable and predictable ways of responding that are akin to the things humans do that many consider to be genetically driven—hardwired. And, most of us have an intuitive feeling that most of these core “traits” are not changeable.

Many people would say, “It comes with the business.” Some businesses, by the nature of the work and the types of people needed to do that work, have a unique identity much like a human personality. Trying to change the culture in a mining operation, an automobile plant, a chemical plant, a university, a dress manufacturer, or a software company to elicit “new ways of doing things…a new culture,” is like trying to change a professional football player into a dress designer. There are “traits” that accompany these businesses that are not easy to change, and perhaps the idea of trying to do so is “fooling around” with something we should be attempting to understand, but not change.

It appears to me that most culture change efforts fail because they do not discriminate between those facets of corporate personality that are hardwired (virtually unchangeable artifacts of specific businesses), and the more easily influenced behaviors associated with doing ones work. For instance, if you want employee in a steel mill to work more safely, it may be easier to prompt him to remind a coworker to “stand out of the line of fire,” than it is to try a safety culture change effort. In a typical culture change initiative, the objective for the employee may be to “develop a commitment to safety,”—and objective which is laudable but abstract.

The ultimate objective of most organizational change initiatives, culture change, or performance improvement initiatives is to change employee behavior—what employees do (in very specific, micro-defined ways or in general terms), how frequently they do it, when they do it, and the extra effort they exert (value-added behavior). Interestingly, a unique quality of each culture is that much of the behavior that is approved or disapproved is unwritten. Policies and procedures may demand one way of doing things, but practices—the “way we do things around here,” may require another

Leaders have the ultimate influence on employee behavior through the values they express in decisions, priorities, and promotions—through all the consequences they apply to their direct reports—which are then propagated through all the management hierarchies companywide.

Most books on leadership and management attribute leadership style as the factor that most significantly affects employee behavior. They imply that a leader’s style translates into the values and priorities that control employee behavior toward the customer and the product. Leadership style, values, visions, missions—all form the background for employee performance, but more immediate, situational factors comprise the ultimate influence—the real “behavior controls.” For a background on how this works, read my previous blogs and look for discussions about “supervisor-employee dialogs.”

Leaders influence culture, but how is a question answered in hieroglyphics. One would not fault any leader for throwing up his or her hands and allowing what-ever consulting company gets hired to use what-ever definition they want and lead the organization down what-ever special path they advise to evaluate, change or create the culture that is supposed to get the job done. Perhaps a leader’s behavior will change the organizations culture slowly, incrementally over time—perhaps, but more often a leaders values and priorities quickly and directly influence employee behavior—the behavior of managers and supervisors toward their employees and hence the behavior of the employees toward the work, the product or the customer.

When reduced to its lowest common dominator, leader values and priorities translate into what an employee gets punished and rewarded for—the behavior that his or her peers, their supervisor or their senior leaders sanction, applaud, allow, and approve of. It is apparent that a change in leadership creates changes in an organization’s climate—new priorities, performance expectations, and strategic direction—sometimes quickly. Parallel to these leadership-induced requirements, existing systems and processes—the “old way of doing things,” continues to exert their influence on employee behavior.

There is already too much literature and complex reasoning circulating about leadership, and their role in cultural transformation and managing change. I only have a few simple suggestions that might simplify understanding. I have heard them repeated by many subordinates of leaders—repeated to me, but not to the leader himself or herself.

Leaderships’ effectiveness in general, and in particular leaderships’ ability to manage change would be enhanced if they were educated in the way employee behavior is influenced by the culture, systems, processes, the physical environment, and supervisory verbal behavior. Most leaders do not understand how immediate, real-time consequences influence what an employee does, how frequently they do it, or whether they stop doing it. They regard positive reinforcement, rewards, and recognition as necessary but not critical to business success. They often have a vague and incomplete understanding of what drives daily employee behavior; this is a liability to the overall mission of the business and at best, a risk to profitability.

Changing a culture takes a long time, the straightest route to performance improvement and enhanced profitability is to change behavior. Specifically identify the employee behavior that will help the employee, work unit, or department excel and use the strategies discussed on this blog to increase the frequency—the strength of those behaviors. Use your knowledge of behavioral principles to control the factors that govern what an employee does on the job—today, moment by moment. The management technology to influence behavioral probability is available. A supervisor can change an employee’s job performance—today! Immediately!

The key to employee performance and job satisfaction is the frequency and quality of his or her interactions with their supervisor. Work dialogs—what is said and how it is said to an employee—establishes the context for supervisors to say things that encourage or discourage the quality of an employee’s work, the quality of the product, and their relationship with the customer. In a work dialog, the supervisor reinforces and punishes employee behavior—whether they know it or not. Leaders and all levels of management need to know how they impact employee behavior and use that knowledge for positive influence.

Reward, recognition and incentive systems are often barriers to effective leadership. All levels of management can become dependent on programmed rewards as replacements for hands-on coaching and supervision. Existing reward systems directly encourage the behavior that leads to the prize—the money, the payoff, or the award. A leader may be trying to create a customer focused culture, while the existing reward systems may encourage cost control or productivity; the customer may be secondary. Reward and recognition systems should be evaluated for the impact they have on teamwork, quality, ethics—and many other factors that can be usurped by compelling tangible rewards. Rewards and recognition practices represent an organizational system that influences other systems—particularly the social system, human behavior—in profound ways. They often lull the organization into a sense of well-being—a quiet before the storm of unpredicted issues gathering on the horizon.

Re-energizing Your Behavior-Based Safety Process

2010-04-06T14:25:00.003-04:00

Creating a successful Behavior-Based Safety (BBS) process is a challenge, and companies around the world are addressing that challenge as you read these lines. Barriers to success include:

Leadership’s failure to “behave” supportively – that is they do not say and do things that convince employees that safety is value #1 – and their priorities and decisions do not support the BBS process and the removal of systems barriers to safe behavior

Trying to implement “off-the-shelf, packaged” BBS processes that are not adapted to the culture of the site’s country, business, work group, and specific job functions

An inability to transfer ownership of the BBS process to middle management, frontline supervision, and frontline employees or create a partnered process with Leaders

Dysfunctional observation processes – the result of poorly trained observers, checklists that are too generalized and not specific to the individual and work groups, and unsafe conditions and systems that are not identified and translated into action plans that are immediately addressed and resolved

The BBS process does not have effective data software that collects and organizes critical information that is reviewed and actionized by the Steering Committee and Leadership

Failure to institutionalize a social contract between all employees – Leaders, managers, supervisors and frontline employees – that encourages each employee to protect their coworkers through positive intervention when they see unsafe conditions or unsafe behavior

At the moment, your organization may be grappling with one or more of the preceding failure-traps for BBS. There are many organizations that have overcome these obstacles and have created smoothly functioning processes. But, the issue of sustainability surfaces in every BBS process regardless of the organization’s success in the first year or two.

As the problems are retired, the activities are less productive

Change, improvement and problem solving activities have plateaued

Employee learning, growth and development has peaked

If your company has implemented BBS successfully, 90% of existing safety issues will be addressed and resolved in the first year. In addition, most employees will become highly aware of their job behavior and safe work behavior will become a habit. At this point, most employees will begin to think that high rates of observation are uncalled for and the Steering Committee and Leadership roles will be less critical.

These realities set the stage for boredom and complacence. The initial necessity for improvement elicits high levels of interest and activity which in turn create energy and urgency. When most of the improvement is obtained, the context changes and all of these factors are diminished. Hence the ever-present quest for “a shot in the arm,” a phrase you hear at every safety conference. “How do we keep our employees engaged in BBS?”

You’re Asking the Wrong Question

The reason you never get a good answer to the question, “How do we keep our process exciting and keep employees engaged?” – is because you’re asking the wrong question. The real question is, “How can we generalize employee skill sets developed in our BBS process and provide interesting and challenging opportunities for them to apply their learning, tools, and experience?”

Most companies attempt to renew and reenergize their BBS processes by invoking the same rhetoric and rationales they originally used to promote employee buy-in and participation. They say the same things louder, more flamboyantly, or innovatively – but, they are still just trying harder to get employees to do the same things – more enthusiastically.

A core precept of Employee Engagement is the idea that continuous development, education, and training encourage employees to extend the reach of their behavioral skill sets and competences to new applications, challenges, and tasks. Doing the same thing over and over again leads to boredom, disinterest, and attentional drift.

Many companies default to tangible or financial rewards to reawaken employee participation and achievement in their BBS process. This usually results in renewed interest and involvement – in the short term – long range it creates problems. Financial or tangible rewards for behavior changes employee perceptions about the value of the tasks and outcomes being incentivized: They ask, “Why do they have to give us something extra to do these things?”

Most employees assume that safety is a value if the existing performance management/reward and recognition systems are applied to safety-related behavior. That is, if you can be disciplined, fired, positively evaluated, recognized (social awards), promoted, raised, or bonused for safety related behavior – then it must be a core value. When you introduce an incentive program – cash, gifts, catalog items, etc. – the assumption is that the behavior you are asking employees to engage in is somehow outside the parameters of the organizations value system.

They see the behavior incented as a “program,” a temporary collection of tasks and objectives outside the scope of their traditional performance management system. The behavior and results the incentives are applied to are perceived to be tactical, not strategic; priorities not supportive of or targeted toward an organizational value.

Next installment:

How to Energize Employees to Sustain BBS

Incentive Programs: Manipulative Quick-Fixes That Destroy Employee Engagement

2010-02-04T12:13:00.005-05:00

Oddly, in this “unmotivated” world, it’s difficult to find anyone who really is unmotivated. Whenever I ask someone if they are motivated, they say yes. Yet, everyone believes there are a vast number of unmotivated people out there, even though no one admits to being one of them.

This view is reflected by the fact that when a company is having a bad sales year, the management team instantly starts shopping for motivational programs for their salespeople. If production is down or product quality is poor, the first step on the problem-solving agenda is to blame lackluster performance on unmotivated employees.

Management seems to think that its key productivity problem is related to motivation−a fact that is substantiated by the $100 billion spent last year on incentives. This is a lot of money to spend on the solution to a problem that (according to employees) does not exist. If we all think we’re motivated; are we all wrong? Could we be unmotivated and not know it−like having a disease without any symptoms?

Sports coaches are admired because they are good “motivators.” Some university coaches can earn $50,000 for giving a lunch speech to businessmen who are keen to hear the coach talk about how they motivate their players. But, if Notre Dame has a poor season, the casual observer immediately thinks that the team needs a new coach−one who can “motivate” the team more effectively.

Have you ever heard an athlete express the need for motivation? ”Yeah, we lost the game last night because we were unmotivated.” It may sound absurd, but the prices of goods and services are increased considerably by the cost of so-called motivation− financial incentives, awards, cups, mugs, shirts, hats, travel, spot-cash awards–all of these and many more types of incentives increase the cost of everything we buy and sell.

So management spends billions on programs, gimmicks, and goods to motivate their employees who, when asked, deny the need for any of these things. Many more problems are hidden behind the motivational myth camouflage–the easy catch-all that quickly attributes organizational performance failures to employees “not trying hard enough.” It’s a myth perpetuated by management since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution: if management can’t identify the cause of a problem, they blame it on lazy employees.

As it turns out, improper problem solving is the culprit here. The key to solving any problem is to first precisely identify the causal factors. Even the science of medicine did not make much progress until diagnosis (problem identification) became more accurate. Around the birth of Christ, for example, most people believed that diseases were sent as punishment from the gods. Treatments were aimed at pleasing the gods so that the disease would be taken away. Hippocrates believed the body had four humors: blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile. If a person was ill, it meant that an imbalance existed in their humors and so they would take a treatment−such as having their blood sucked by leeches−to return the balance to normal.

The modern organization hasn’t been around that long, of course, but since its inception, management has made a similar mistake by identifying performance problems as the result of “poor motivation.” As mythical solutions go, this is a good one. You cannot see motivation, or count it, or take a picture of it. Hence, it’s an easy way to take the focus off of management performance and place the blame on the employees.

Some people will argue that they can see motivation, when they really mean that you can look at performance data and if it is not to your liking, you can say that poor motivation led to low performance. So really, motivation is a mythical “something” that we pull out of the hat to explain why performance is poor. In an attempt to sidestep the blame for a plethora of performance problems, management came up with a perfect foil–the unmotivated employee.

The “motivation” problem has consumed more time and money than any problem in the history of capitalism. The incentive industry employs tens of thousands of people and generates billions of dollars in annual sales, so we know the root of their motivations. However, assigning performance problems to poor employee motivation has misdirected organizational problem solvers and delayed the identification of the real causal factors that seriously inhibit employee performance. Systems deficiencies, process malfunctions, job design problems, and nonparticipative management styles have been overlooked until recently because America’s management was too busy ferreting out the intricacies of the great motivational crisis.

Contrary to popular belief, when employee performance improves in the presence of small incentives, it is a good sign that the organizational system within which the employees are working is dysfunctional. The incentives are only temporarily causing the employees to circumvent and overcome the restraints that typically limit their performance. In dysfunctional organizational settings, incentive efforts can have a significant immediate effect because the discrepancy between employee performance and their potential to perform is so desperately broad. The gap between actual employee performance and performance potential is the widest when organizational systems and process problems have not been addressed.

The problems that incentive systems, motivational programs, and manipulative reward strategies create are, in the long term, crippling to an organization’s competitive functioning. Some negative effects of overusing incentives include the following:

1. Incentives become entitlements. Managers and employees become addicted to the constant barrage of doo-dads, baubles, trinkets, and award paraphernalia. The annual budget for motivational programs, speakers, and incentives becomes part of the corporate culture and employee compensation. Eventually, management can see no way to decrease the budget for merchandise and cash, because employees see these perks as part of their compensation.

2. Incentives weaken management skills. Why should managers and supervisors learn to facilitate employee performance or address issues that obstruct their performance when short-term incentives appear to do the job for them? This way, managers can abdicate their responsibility for developing their employees and leave it up to the “motivational” system. The core job of managers is to encourage employee engagement and effort through discussions about the work with the employee. Most managers believe that incentive systems and motivational programs negate the need to have meaningful conversations with employees about the work or to develop any relationship with them whatsoever.

3. Incentives devalue the customer, the product, and the work. Constant rewards for work behavior imply that there is no inherent value in doing the right thing for its own sake. The message is that one does a good job or improves because of the award at the end of the rainbow. As a result, employees do not engage with the company’s mission. Why should they? The mission is obviously not meaningful if the job is only worth doing for a T-shirt or a ball cap.

4. Incentives enslave employees. Meaningful work to most people is about the value of the work being done and about the feeling that they are creating that value through their own volition. Incentives indenture employees to toil for the next small prize or award. The employee, forced to accumulate points and scores to validate his or her extra effort, is driven by the next incentive in the queue. He or she soon loses the sense of personal accomplishment one feels when one creates something of value. Like a mercenary, one’s work is cheaply sold for the next bit of praise or reward that management won’t release unless that employee earns his/her share.

5. Incentives erode teamwork. In the midst of motivational programs, incentive initiatives, the competition for recognition, and the lack of any meaningful relationship with the organization, co-workers begin to compete against each other for merchandise and accolades. Mentoring and coaching become much less frequent. Sharing and support vanish. Performers strive to distinguish themselves from their co-workers; they seek to ensure that they are given credit for each and every achievement. Selflessness and the team spirit vanish, because the distribution of merchandise and other rewards creates a system of winners and losers.

6. Incentives destroy management/employee relations. In such an environment, managers seldom seek to coach or build relationships with their subordinates. They see employees as cogs in a wheel driven by the motivational machinery. This incentive machine depersonalizes the employees in the eyes of managers. Similarly, the employees see the manager as the handler coaxing them with the perennial dog biscuit in hand. The manager controls the distribution of goods, and as such incurs no positive regard from the employee. Employees resent being pulled back and forth like puppets by each new motivational program. They soon learn that when it comes to being recognized for a good job, there are many strings attached.

7. Incentives change self-perception. Selling out for merchandise does not increase self-esteem or enhance self-respect. The mercenary and the patriot see themselves very differently. The incentive frenzy has slowly erased employee commitment to the company along with loyalty to the customer and the product.

Unlike the short-term effects of incentives and rewards that must be continually innovated and redesigned lest they lose their novelty and impact, ongoing systems and process improvements permanently facilitate employee performance potential and strengthen the organization’s competitive capability. Over the last ten years, performance has improved significantly in those organizations that use participative management and problem solving to engage employees. These organizations encourage employees to identify and resolve the systems and process problems that restrain performance potential.

How would employees perform if their only encouragement was the traditional salaries, raises, bonuses, and promotions? Has the constant bombardment of merchandise incentives eroded the most valuable component of the worker’s self-esteem–pride in doing something well? Have the values that drove a strong work ethic been replaced with the instant gratification of trivial rewards? In the long run, the destiny of our economy and our global competitiveness will depend on the values promoted by our management practices. Doing something well and doing it right can remain an employee value.

Unfortunately, the management teams most likely to depend on incentive programs are also most likely incapable of or disinclined to identify and seek meaningful solutions to the organizational problems that limit employee performance. The strategic importance of management development has been overlooked and the easy gains of incentives have replaced management skills.

Fortunately, the quick fix mentality that created the incentive industry is slowly being replaced by responsible organizational change tools and strategies. Many organizations are in the midst of shifting from incentive-driven to values-driven cultures. However, the easy gains temporarily obtained with merchandise and other incentives are difficult to relinquish entirely. Management still carries a cumbersome carrot on its back.

Most employees don’t want these condescending programs in the first place. They want respect and just recognition and reward for a job well done. Following are the initial steps to help an organization transition back to the traditional rewards−promotions, earned bonuses, equitable salaries, and worthwhile raises− for performance excellence:

Engaging Work Dialogs

2010-01-23T15:35:00.002-05:00

I begin this blog with a declaration that I intend to validate throughout the body of this entry: The key to employee engagement is emotional commitment which is in turn most closely linked to discretionary effort. Rewards, transactional positive reinforcement (supervisor occasionally using verbal reinforcement), and incentives in general do not change behavior in the long term; the biochemistry of the brain—serotonin, dopamine, and other neurotransmitters—the chemicals of employee engagement, of emotions and learning—are most effectively catalyzed through ongoing manager activities and attributes. Reinforcing work dialogs, which in turn build reinforcing manager-employee relationships, are the most effective means of eliciting employee emotional commitment to the job and the organization.

In 2004, the Corporate Leadership Council published a study—Driving Employee Performance and Retention through Engagement: A Quantitative Analysis of the Effectiveness of Employee Engagement Strategies. They surveyed 50,000 employees in 59 organizations within 27 countries. These data support the results of many other studies on employee engagement: Individual acts of reward and reinforcement do not compensate for a negative relationship with one’s organization or one’s manager. The best way to achieve emotional commitment from employees is through the creation of an emotionally nurturing organizational environment—a “reinforcing environment,” a history of reinforcement--a reinforcing relationship.

Neuroscience and neuropsychologists—through new technologies like magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), positron emission topography (PET), and wave analysis can study reward and fear centers in the brain—in real time. The results of their research are finally being translated into management practices. The March, 2008, issue of H.R. Magazine has an article entitled, “The Brain at Work.” The article describes what happens in the brain when we have differing experiences at work—when someone says or does something positive or does something we don't like.

The article reports that when employees experience “social fairness and respect,” the neurotransmitter serotonin is released in the brain’s “reward pathway” creating a sense of well being in much the same way drugs and alcohol do. The association between a pleasant sensation and an environmental stimulus (someone saying or doing something we like) conditions a positive association with the stimulus (the person who said or did something we like). We feel good about that person—the positive emotion that facilitates emotional engagement.

When we are exposed to positive stimuli—when serotonin is coursing through our axioms and dendrites—the brain is in a positive mode to think, decide, create, and learn. Negative stimuli—someone criticizing, mocking, berating, or disrespecting us—create an opposite effect; our brain falls into a fetal position and its efficiency is crippled. Learning is facilitated by the neurotransmitters that are secreted when employees are provided some ownership in change processes; if they are told what to do, facilitative connections are repressed and resistance is evoked. Neuroscientists seem to be corroborating what our intuition tells us.

Since positive emotions are associated with high levels of employee engagement, and subsequently discretionary effort, it is clear that effective positive reinforcement enables that emotion-building process. Although the article states that “social fairness and respect” create serotonin-induced positive emotions, the author neglects to point out that social fairness and respect are abstract concepts which cannot be directly observed. Only the verbal behavior that represents them can be directly seen, heard, and perceived. I only know that you are fair if you “say or do” (a behavior) something that I hear and interpret as fair; that’s when the neurotransmitters start to flow.

My perceptions of being fairly treated and respected are cumulative; if you say 10 thoughtlessly critical things to me, one positive comment does not lead me to feel respected. Many organizations are trying to use rewards and recognition strategies and management positive reinforcement policies to compensate for negative organizational strategies and policies or for dysfunctional supervisory-employee relations--circumstances that create negative employee emotions and disengagement. In the end, it does not work. It is expensive and you add a new problem; the institutionalization of tactics that do not solve your original problem and money off the bottom line.

A supervisor, manager or leader is in a pivotal position to compensate for punitive organizational policies and practices through diplomatic verbal comments—using reinforcing work dialogs. Similarly, supervisors with poor interaction skills can destroy the well-intended efforts of organizations who have committed to positive employee strategies and policies. Conversely, a supervisor is well positioned to help employees sidestep the negativity of a toxic organization. No matter what you do to make your organization one that fosters employee engagement, the failure to create meaningful dialogs between your supervisors and employees will restrict your best efforts. The issue will not go away.

The Reinforcing Work Dialogs I have been discussing in the past few blogs are a powerful tool for creating employee emotional engagement in the organization. They provide a vehicle for continuous, interactive, participative feedback and communication from one’s supervisor or manager. The dialogs provide a comfortable, credible context for positive reinforcement—positive comments about employee performance and contribution—for demonstrating respect for the person and valuing of his or her job.

Positive reinforcement, properly delivered, is a continuous source of performance-encouraging, relationship-building serotonin. The neurology of fairness and respect reside in one’s history of interactions with one’s boss. Sparse contact, little or no communication or feedback, autocratic social style—all this creates a context that makes transactional reinforcement (the occasional positive comment about one’s job) destructive instead of constructive.

The reinforcing relationship created by effective work dialogs, creates the foundation to optimize employee emotional engagement and to support and facilitate all the key employee engagement drivers. It provides supervisors with an opportunity to reinforce discrete contributive behaviors--one behavior at a time.

The Most Powerful Tool for Positive Influence: Attention

2009-12-27T16:21:00.008-05:00

What is the most effective tool that you have to influence the behavior of others – whether you use it purposefully or by accident? The answer is so simple that most people can’t believe it. It is your attention – eye contact, grunting, nodding, giggling – any response you make to another person’s behavior affects that behavior.

Anything and everything someone in your presence says or does is being influenced by your reaction, your eye contact – even your obvious attempts to act disinterested are an acknowledgment that has an effect on the behavior they are engaged in.

If I come in to work and look solemn, distracted, and depressed – perhaps even on the verge of tears and you say, “Jerry, you look upset today; is there anything wrong?” You have reinforced several behaviors. Most people use their facial gestures and body language to express emotions they are not able to talk about. When you make a statement about that type of behavior (affecting depression), you have just positively reinforced the person for those behaviors.

Usually, when you ask the question about how they feel, they break forth with a lengthy narrative describing all the personal problems that have led to their looking distressed and depressed. As you look at them while they are talking, make facial expressions that indicate you are sympathetic, and make verbal comments that indicate you are empathetic – you are rewarding and reinforcing their cathartic behavior. Guess who they will seek out the next time they want a sympathetic ear about their personal problems?

Leaders are constantly seeking to find new ways to reward employees – awards, bonuses, and incentives – and they all work at various levels of efficacy depending on how they are used. The biggest, most appreciated rewards and positive reinforcers that exist are far less expensive and exotic.

Listening actively, looking someone in the eye and nodding, making a facial gesture of empathy or encouragement, gasping – saying things like, “You’re kidding!” or “Unbelievable!,” or “What did you say then?” Active attention is the most powerful tool you have for influencing others; the problem is that most people don’t know how to us it constructively and purposefully.

Here are some behaviors that will make you well liked, respected, and followed – yes, I mean people will follow you to the ends of the earth if you will do the following:

When you see friends and employees greet them with a smile and a hello. If you can’t smile, at least say, “Good morning; how are you today?” Or, “Hello Jim; how are things today?”
When people are talking to you (it does not matter what the context), look at them and nod your head or change your facial expression to let them know you are listening. An occasional verbal expression like, “unbelievable!” or “you’re kidding”,” or “and then what happened?” Will do more to get other to like you than any form of entertaining anecdotes or humorous and interesting comments you can make.
When people (your employees, peers, boss, son or daughter, wife or husband) tell you about something they did that you want them to repeat – whatever it is – acknowledge it with a word or phrase. “Dad, I greased the garage door opener;” You say, “great.” Or an employee describes some extra effort they contributed, like – “Jerry was falling behind so I took a couple of minutes to give him a hand; you say, “That’s going to ensure we hit our numbers today.”
A well placed word or non-verbal reaction can positively reinforce and reward better than a “Thank You,” or a “Gee, Jerry – I really appreciate your taking the time to help Bill catch-up.”
Most leaders, managers and supervisors go to workshops and training classes trying to come up with scripted, wonderful, glamorous, fantastic things to do or say when an employee does something of value. Stop trying to be dramatic and start trying to “pay attention.” Ask a question; listen; say a word that indicates that what they did will have a positive effect.When I say, “I took some extra time to clean up my area;” You say, “Excellent.” End of story. No fanfare; no marching bands; no plaque or hamburger or pizza or award or wordy embarrassing praise.
Understated verbal comments about value added employee behavior have a better effect than gushy, awkward accolades. Understated and natural words and expressions of approval work best. Words like, “Interesting, great, how did you do that? Can you show me how to do that? That’s going to help all of us, good idea, creative” – attention that communicates approval and acknowledges effort – that’s the most powerful, untapped opportunity for leadership that exists.When I was growing up, my father rarely said anything positive about anything I did – in school or out. When he did say something like, “not bad,” I was elated – I nearly exploded with pride and self-satisfaction. When an employee comes up with a great idea and the supervisor says, “That will work,” the employee is proud to know that his efforts are not going unnoticed.

Most of us want to influence others to do things we want them to do. The tools and methods – if the number of books on leadership are any indication – are complex and beyond the reach of the average person. WRONG; the tools and methods are so easy that nobody can make any money off of them; if supervisor and managers knew that all they had to do was stick their thumb up in the air and smile when they saw an employee doing something that was value-added, and that would cause the employee to do that more often – the consulting business would lose lot of revenue.

Talk to your employees; listen to them; maintain eye contact and nod your head; ask questions related to the context of the discussion; put in a word of approval or acknowledgment when they describe what they’ve done that will help.

I sat in a meeting with a senior executive recently where he began, “Jim, tell me how we can eliminate waste in the reprocessing area.” I nearly fell out of the chair. I spend so much time trying to get senior leaders off their soapboxes and out of their command-and-control verbal modes…I could not believe that this COO began the meeting with a question. When his direct report finished his answer, the COO had a perfect response; he said exactly the right thing to ensure the employee was rewarded. He said, “I think we need to try that.” The employee left the meeting beaming.

Positively Reinforce a Behavior: Recognize Accomplishments and Results

2009-12-03T11:33:00.002-05:00

There are some critical misunderstandings that cause a great deal of confusion when discussing different ways of acknowledging employee performance. The first is the reciprocal use of the term “positive reinforcement” and the word “recognition.” Positive reinforcement describes the outcome of an interaction between manager and employee that occurs while the employee is doing or saying something (behaving) of value. It describes a real time relationship between something an employee is saying or doing and an immediate positive experience or effect created by a management verbal behavior.

You lift the fork with filet mignon to your mouth and the lifting of the fork is positively reinforced by two immediate consequences: 1) the food gets to your mouth; 2) It taste delicious. So the behavior of “lifting the fork toward my mouth” has been positively reinforced. That’s what’s called a natural positive reinforcer; it was just you and the environment. No one else participated in your experience.

Now if you had a coach, parent, or supervisor and their objective was to get you to eat more, then when they observed you lifting the fork to your mouth and chewing the steak, they would say something like, “Excellent Jerry. You lifted the fork very smoothly to your mouth without spilling any of the food. You will regain all the weight you lost during chemotherapy very quickly.” This is known as social positive reinforcement and this is what leaders, managers, supervisors, coaches, and parents are supposed to be doing to elicit high levels of productive behavior from others.

You can see that to positively reinforce someone for a behavior, you have to be there when the behavior is happening—you have to see it, or in the case of verbal behavior you have to see lips move and words pronounced. Leaders, managers and supervisors cannot positively reinforce work behavior unless they are in the workplace—where employees are doing their jobs. An added requirement is that your verbal comments have value to the person whose behavior you are “attempting” to positively reinforce. If the employee doesn’t like you then the behavior you are attempting to encourage may not increase in frequency, and it may even decrease in frequency.

Recognition (in the context of appreciation for performance) is the presentation of a comment or a symbolic award or something that commemorates and acknowledges someone’s contribution. It cannot be for one behavior; it is usually delivered for a collection of behaviors that culminated in some favorable result. You don’t give someone a plaque for lifting a fork to their mouth.

Recognition can be verbal, but it still refers to a performance result—not just one solitary behavior. Someone might say, “The boss finally recognized Jerry’s hard work; yesterday he told him his quick change orders were really making our customers happy.” Then a comment about that might be “Jerry was recognized for his hard work.”

An incentive is not a positive reinforcer. Incentive is “something” that has been presented to an employee because they achieved some outcome (result) for the company. The purpose of using incentives is to provide the employee with something they want or need in exchange for increased effort—better performance. The incentive (an IPod), like recognition products, is based on employee results. Incentives are not delivered in real time—as a specific behavior is occurring. Incentive products are rewards for good performance. The word reward is most appropriately used when referring to money or tangible items presented to employees based upon some performance achievement.

The sloppy, undifferentiated use of these words seems harmless, but it really is a deterrent to effective employee engagement. To say, “We positively reinforced Jerry with a trip to Bermuda for reaching his sales target,” is incorrect. You can say, “We rewarded Jerry…”, or “We recognized Jerry’s sales performance…”, but you cannot say that you positively reinforced Jerry.

You could say, “While Jerry was on the phone with a customer, I heard him ask the customer if she was interested in the sweaters we had on special this week. I gave him a big smile and a thumbs-up immediately.” In this instance you positively reinforced “a” sales behavior—assuming that your smile and thumbs-up are positive things for Jerry. If he hates your guts and his behavior is not strengthened, we would say that—in spite of the fact that you attempted to positively reinforce Jerry—your smile and thumbs-up was a big turn-off to him. Matter of fact, he is telling all the other sales agents to be sure to avoid up-selling because it gets your attention and you may smile at them.

Management’s attempt to positively reinforce valuable performance behavior often fails for personal reasons. The employee doesn’t like the manager or think his or her positive verbal comment is scripted—it is being used in a calculating manner to manipulate the employee into doing more. Positive comments that are obviously insincere decrease employee engagement and create relationship problems.

So how do we ensure that employees receive positive reinforcement for the specific behaviors that are aligned with business success—the critical behaviors that increase profitability or safe behaviors that keep employees from being injured? The best vehicle for the successful delivery of positive reinforcement can be referred to as “monitoring”—checking with employees to see how thing are going, asking about needed resources, eliminating barriers and discussing priorities.

Active interest—stopping to talk with employees about work, give feedback and collect information—provides opportunities to make positive comments about the employee’s performance—natural comments that arise in the context of the conversation. Given that you have created a relationship of mutual respect, your positive verbal comments about the behavior you see can positively reinforce that behavior.

Research results tell us that leaders who show active interest in employee job behaviors seem to get results irrespective of other factors. That is, supervisors and managers who check on their employees, look at their work and discuss their performance—making positive comments when appropriate and corrective comments in a balanced, give-and-take dialogue—have the highest performing departments.

Positive Reinforcement is a Skill

2009-11-04T20:18:00.000-05:00

If you read the available management literature, you soon run into a mandate that is seldom questioned: Praise your employees often; give them a “thank you” when they do a good job; recognize their efforts; use verbal positive reinforcement for value added behavior. Supervisors and managers are told unequivocally, that this is the best way to increase performance, enhance supervisory-employee relations, create employee engagement, and increase retention—to name a few.

Why then do climate surveys and 360° surveys consistently uncover contradictory evidence? Why do surveyed employees working in companies with formal and informal recognition systems feel they are not being “recognized” for their efforts? Survey data is inconsistent, but results (by reputable sources) report “78% of the employees surveyed said they had not been recognized by their supervisor for their work,” and “52% or the turnover in business and industry is related to supervisory-employee discord,” (irrespective of what exit interviews say.)

Most books and experts teach that manager and supervisory verbal reinforcement should be delivered personally, immediately, specifically, sincerely, and frequently. There are other rules, but the net effect is that verbal positive reinforcement is a management goal; managers and supervisors are told to “find a behavior that deserves reinforcement.” At face value, this sounds appropriate and desirable. Unfortunately, there are a number of factors that may make it counterproductive to walk around the workplace attempting to deliver positive verbal comments to employees. When the wrong conditions exist, attempts to reinforce can backfire. For instance:

The supervisor just returned from a training class and the employee is suspicious about the supervisor’s motives in “saying something nice.”
The employee and the supervisor have a poor relationship—a history of disagreement, bickering, or hostile interactions.
The supervisor has poor interpersonal skills and makes all his direct reports uncomfortable; his positive response sounds unnatural; he makes employees nervous.
The employee’s peers have behaved similarly but were not noticed; the one employee received undeserved attention, so resentment is created among the work group.
The employee who received a positive verbal comment is a favorite of the supervisor or a personal friend.
The employee who received positive verbal comment has better equipment or easier tasks than the other employees, so it is easy for him or her to excel.
An employee had to work twice as hard as the employee who received a positive verbal comment because his equipment broke or for some other reason he or she had to overcome several barriers just to get his job done, and he or she did not received a positive verbal comment.
The employee who received a positive verbal comment just came back from time off for an injury; the other employees think he or she was malingering.
The supervisor has never verbally delivered a positive verbal comment to anyone before and has just started doing it; why are they doing it now? Employees are suspicious.
The behavior the supervisor comments about does not qualify for acknowledgment in the eyes of the other employees.
A few minutes before the supervisor stopped to deliver a positive verbal comment to the employee, the employee had been engaged in an inappropriate, unsafe, or destructive behavior.
The employee who received positive verbal comment for a behavior had a poor work history.
The employee who received positive verbal comment is the best performer in the group.
The employee who received positive verbal comment is embarrassed by public attention (other employees saw him receiving the comment.)
The supervisor’s positive verbal comment sounded rehearsed, practiced, and unnatural.
The employee who received a positive verbal comment is young and the older employees suspect favoritism.
The company is about to go through some layoffs and the employees suspect that whoever the supervisor makes positive verbal comments to is not going to be laid off; so they develop animosity towards that employee.
One supervisor delivered a positive verbal comment to an employee but a supervisor from another department just corrected the same employee for an inappropriate behavior.
The employees have heard “thank you” so many times that they no longer notice it. The phrase has lost its meaning.
The employees have seen all the supervisors trying to say positive things to their direct reports; this communicates to them that it is a job requirement and therefore has no value.
The employee who received a positive verbal comment has been disciplined several times within the last few months.
The employee who a received positive verbal comment is perceived by his peers to be a slacker who should be disciplined for poor performance.
The employee does not appreciate the supervisors positive verbal comments about his or her work because the supervisor does not talk to the employee about the work frequently or indepth enough for the employee to respect the supervisor's opinion about his or her work behavior.
The behavior that the supervisory chose to make a positive verbal comment about was a fluke; everyone who knows the job and what is really going on knows that it was a rare event, so the supervisors behavior is considered meaningless and symptomatic of his or her disinterest in the people and their work.
The company has several types of tangible incentives for performance and the employees consider the supervisor's efforts trivial and unnecessary; they want cash and gift certificates.
The company has jerked them around for years--making promises, surprising them with layoffs and pay changes. They don't trust anyone in management. Employees receive positive verbalizations as tactics intended to set them up for something negative about to happen.

I hope you are beginning to develop a sense of how the context—the circumstances, preceding conditions, history, situational factors, peer factors, supervisory interpersonal skills, company culture, and supervisory-employee interpersonal history coalesces to make the act of “wandering around the workplace trying to catch someone doing something good,” a risky and perhaps counterproductive activity. Any one of these items can negate the value of a manager or supervisor's attempt to positively reinforce an employee with a positive verbal comment.

In addition, when any or several of the preceding factors exist it is reasonable to assume that the supervisor's efforts will create an even greater relationship problem; it will throw fuel on an already incendiary situation. When the context is not supportive, attempts to reinforce employees with intermittent "stop by" visits are more likely punitive; the supervisor's unnatural act is aversive and the effect on employee morale, performance and engagement is also negative.

I suspect that employees in Fortune 500 companies are aware that their company has a corporate reward and recognition strategy, the purpose being to create a nurturing environment that “engages” the employee in the company’s values and goals—that indirectly motivates the employee to strive to perform. These employees have experienced countless celebrations, award dinners, award ceremonies, the delivery of jackets and hats for performance and the attempts by managers and supervisors to “treat them well.”

Most of these systems include recognition for “employee of the month or year; best performer; most improved; length of service; attendance; sales performance; suggestions; safety performance; retirement; and performance above and beyond. In addition, managers and supervisors are being held accountable for “reinforcing and recognizing” employee effort in order to elicit discretionary effort from employees.

Many company environments are saturated with positives and the employees have habituated to all this niceness. So much so, that they either no longer notice the companies attempts, they take it for granted (no longer see it as contingent upon their actually doing something exceptional), or they become cynical and scornful of this riotous facade. They see all the cash, certificates and merchandise as entitlements. Positive management attention for contribution becomes meaningless.

What is the solution? How do we reinforce and recognize employees in a meaningful way; how do we do we create retention and job satisfaction in a manner that achieves the objective—to show employees that that their efforts do not go unnoticed—that they make a difference? The answers are here, and here, and here.

Positive Supervision

2009-10-04T10:44:00.003-04:00

Learning how to change or influence the behavior of others is simple in theory, but in the devil, as usual, is in the details. The books tell you to praise employees for good work. Sometimes they don’t like it because they either think you are faking it to make them work harder or they are uncomfortable because it is out of character for you.

You can be successful in establishing a more positive relationship with your direct reports if you read the series that begins below:

__________________________________________________________________

Positive reinforcement works; it fulfills every employee’s basic need to feel valued—cared about by the organization, their supervisor and leadership. Positive reinforcement is precision recognition—it acknowledges the employees contribution in real time; it captures the moment when a valued added behavior—discretionary effort can be encouraged or discouraged.

Traditional rewards and recognition strategies do not facilitate employee behavior directly. They are most often presented for performance results and outcomes. Before the benefits of precise recognition—positively reinforcing specific behavior in real-time—were well known, management assumed that kudos received for results influenced the critical behaviors that led to those results.

There are several problems with this assumption. When an organization chooses to reward a job or department performance result, they cannot be certain that all the behavior that led to that result is in the best interest of the company. Subtle pressure associated with awards and recognition practices often encourages employees to do things—to engage in behavior that is detrimental to themselves, the team, the product and the customer.

Shortcuts, intra-team competition—even unethical behavior has been associated with employee competitive desire to “win”—to get the plaque, the jacket, or the picture in the company newsletter. Although the intentions of organizational rewards and recognition systems is appreciation and employee satisfaction, many employees are competitors and they want to be on top. Things can get ugly.

The top 10% of employees usually stay in the top 10%--given a fair opportunity. So they always “win.” Rewards and recognition systems seek to compensate for this by giving awards that are not related to performance, non-contingent awards—like, “the best attitude,” or “most positive team member, or “employee of the month.” These types of awards can trivialize a rewards and recognition process and derail their key objective of —to improve human performance.

In addition, assuming that employees are doing things in the best way to achieve the best possible performance outcome is often a mistake. High performers may engage in behavior that improves quality, productivity, or customer service but they do not share these “best practice behaviors,” with the team; to do so would disadvantage their opportunity for rewards and recognition.

Subsequently, institutionalizing the effective use of positive reinforcement in an organization is ultimately a risk management objective; a company’s performance and profitability is at risk when behavior is not effectively managed. Employee injury is an obvious liability to organizational effectiveness. The costs are well documented. Leaders and managers understand the critical importance of managing job safety behavior. Proper lifting, equipment placement, correct ergonomics—the behaviors necessary to prevent injury are precise and explicit.

Similarly, the effective application of positive reinforcement to specific, key job behaviors will increase productivity, quality, service and waste reduction. That is why overcoming supervisory and management resistance to the daily use of positive reinforcement is so essential to achieving the highest levels of human performance and engagement. The key to developing supervisory and management potential—to developing their skills, their ability to effect employee performance levels—is the precise, real time application of positive reinforcement to value-added job behavior.

Developing Positive Reinforcement Skill: Step 1

Think slow transition. Whatever you management style at the moment, any abrupt change in you behavior is over-interpreted by those you manage. Sinister agendas are proposed…word spreads rapidly; what’s up? The first change you need to make in you verbal behavior is to start eliminating words, phrases, comments and questions that convey negative expectations; blame, fault finding, parenting, dictating—you may have some destructive verbal habits that create a barrier between you and those you are supervising.

Self-observation is difficult. Our verbal habits are so ingrained that we sometimes even deny that we said something when a witness points it out to us. One bad habit that seems universal to anyone who parents, coaches or manages is the use of rhetorical questions to find out why someone has made a mistake—they either failed to do something we wanted them to do, or did it wrong. “What were you thinking?” or “why didn’t you think to ask? or “how do you expect us to get good service ratings if you behave like that?”

These kinds of questions only serve to emotionalize the situation—frustrating you and angering the employee. The accusatory tone creates a wedge between employee and supervisor. Other statements that purport to correct employee behavior but are equally destructive are things like—“You’re going to have to,” or “from now on, you need to,” or “start paying more attention.” Everyone is sensitive to the tone and intentions of language pointed toward them. If you have bad interaction habits, you need to identify them and eliminate them.

Many executive have personal coaches to help them develop positive interaction habits. In some organizations, supervisors work in pairs to help each other identify counterproductive verbal habits. They provide positive feedback to each other when positive verbal comments are made. Surveys that gather information from employees and peers can surface verbal habits that need to be changed.

Whether you identify destructive verbal habits through self-observation or some other means, you need to set the stage for the next part of Step 1—which will be to gradually increase the frequency of interactions with your employees. If you think your method of interacting is positive and relationship building, then move forward to the next phase described in the next entry.

Leadership Mistakes to Avoid

2009-09-15T14:28:00.006-04:00

Always try to say positive things about your direct reports when you are going to ask them to do something extra, or something onerous that no one else wants to do. You have to set them up right or they may try to back out.

If they are not performing well and it looks like you’re going to have to fire them, try not to make them suspicious. You don’t want to imply that they need to change their work behavior; that would make them sad.

Don’t attempt to learn too much about the actual work they do. All that detail gets boring. Knowing the job is their business. If you make a few mistakes – so what. You have a big job and a lot on your plate.

Only make comments about the obvious performance elements of their job, like productivity. Try not to address the details of their work – like the challenges they have to overcome to get the job done. Best not to get into the weeds.

Stop by intermittently to say something positive; keep it superficial and use the same phrase over and over again – like, “thank you.” You want to make them comfortable and confident in the fact that you are predictable.

Try to change your management tactics every time you attend a management seminar or workshop. Let them know that you are looking for any gimmick that will work for you. If it embarrasses them – too bad. It’s your job to get them to work harder, and it’s fair to use any tactic you can find.

Try to say nice things to them when you have to; avoid giving them performance feedback. Let them figure out how to do the job. If they can’t do that, well – too bad.

Spend quality time with your obvious favorites; socialize with the people who buddy up to you and kiss your ass. You’re only human. Besides, you don’t want to take up your highest performer’s time with chit-chat. Some of these people think they are as good as you are, always coming up with ideas for improvements and the like.

Let them know who the boss is. Use a tone of voice, gestures, and words that tell them who is in charge. Don’t be afraid to show a strong emotion; that’s your prerogative. If they can’t guess how you like things done…well, naturally you get furious.

If you really have to say something positive, try to gush, use emotional words, and make it theatrical. You can tell you’ve hit the mark if their face gets red and they look like they want to run.

When you’re trying to be nice to them, it’s best to use some kind of cliché. Frontline employees are simple people and they like repetition. Say things like, “good job, and thanks.” Or things like, “I’m going to have to give you a pat on the back,” or “here’s an attaboy for pulling that double so that Jim could go to the hockey game with me. You deserve a warm-fuzzy for that.”

Try not to collect any personal information about the employee. Asking about wives and kids and hobbies only makes you look like an ordinary Joe instead of the boss. Make sure they understand that you don’t fraternize with your subordinates – only the employees you drink with, or invite over for a barbecue.

Let them know that a lot of the positive things you try to do are part of a management game that irritates you as much as it does them. Let them know that your boss is making you treat them nice to get them to work harder. They will appreciate your honesty.

Be sure you make the same positive comments to each employee – even the ones who are not doing their work. You don’t want to appear biased.

Treat everyone the same, irrespective of the difference in their contribution. Don’t fall into the favoritism trap. Even the people who screw up and cause everyone else to work harder deserve equal treatment.

Don’t be afraid to offend an employee if they deserve it. Being parental, authoritarian or inappropriately emotional is just expressing yourself honestly. After all, you are the boss and have a right to vent.

Try not to be squeamish about taking credit for something an employee did or said. You are the boss and they work for you, so any thing they do is because you are a good manager.

Never ask their opinion about anything; it makes you look weak. If you wanted ideas you would come up with your own. Asking employees questions makes you look like you don’t know more than they do; of course you do. Why else would you be the boss?

If they manage to force an idea on you, tell them you will look into it and then just forget about it. The boss has a lot to do and goofy ideas are just a distraction.

Make a big fuss over the employee of the month, but don’t let the same person get it more than once. That’s not democratic.

If you ever get trapped into saying something positive at an awards ceremony or something like that, make sure you really lay it on about the high performing employee. “The reason Jim wins every year is because he is the best.” The rest of the people can just face the facts that they are never going to be on top.

If anyone asks you on a survey or an interview or in conversation whether you positively reinforce your employees, always say, “Yes.” Your subordinates know better than to contradict you. Leadership is nutty about this kind of thing and HR positively has a cow if you say you don’t. Let them know that praise, attaboys, warm fuzzies and pats on the back are part of your style.

Don’t forget to greet all your female employees with terms of endearment like, “Hi honey,” or “Hi there little lady.” Better still, just call them all the same thing. They like “honey,” because it shows you are friendly; they will believe that you really think they are equal to men.

You Can Change Behavior and Leave Personalities Intact

2009-09-02T10:00:00.003-04:00

Recently I’ve reached a personal “tipping point,” in regard to understanding human organizational behavior. Possibly, others have had a similar learning experience. At one time, I believed that I understood everything; I was patently certain that I could explain everything with a few basic precepts.

Time and experience eroded my self-confidence; the principles and practice of one discipline solved many problems, but left many unsolved. I started looking at other theories and disciplines—finding intriguing explanations for why people do the things they do. Unfortunately, the more I read the more confused I became. It was not unlike my experiences in reading philosophy (a fleeting experience I admit); I found something of value in every school of thought.

I saw that many apparently conflicting disciplines were talking about the same things using different words. The imprecision of language and the broadly different ways we experience reality lead us to explain things uniquely. Beneath the veneer of exaggerated differences lay complementary unification. Theories and explanatory models were isomorphic and homologous.

When one takes any approach, discipline, perspective, theory, or philosophy to its extremes, it becomes unintelligible. You can hardly blame anyone for seeking “the answer,”—the causal explanation. The ambiguity one experiences when confronted by several approaches—each equally convincing, but often mutually contradictory—encourages one to seek the psychological protection of one definitive answer. The riotous onslaught of authorities with their incontestable certitude drives us to seek some friendly port against this storm--one explanatory model of human behavior.

Each of us, by virtue of our genetics, developmental history, hormones, biochemistry, neurological makeup, behavioral history, the social context in which we are operating, and real-time situational factors is driven toward a way of interpreting what we see and hear—our special perspective. We are driven, heliotropically to engage the answers that best suit our nature; we are drawn like a magnet toward a world picture that suits us.

I struggled against the discomfort of trying to find a path through the maze. The book stores’ shelves hold hundreds of books on management theory and leadership, and the shelves of college book stores house dozens of competing theories that inform the authors of those books. The experts defend their fortresses of theoretical primacy, but I saw many interdisciplinary opportunities and salient synergies. When the rush of alternatives and competing ideas reached cognitive critical mass, I had my “tipping point.”

Organizations appear to go through a similar search for a comfortable understanding of their own dynamics, but since groups learn differently than individuals, thought and theories do not become organized and differentiated—learning is slow. Because organizations usually learn very slowly, the tipping point for an organization may only occur after performance problems have reached a critical mass.

Subsequently, many companies have gone through legions of performance improvement initiatives and supervisory and leadership training models. It is not unusual to find a business unit training their managers and supervisors in strategies that have conflicting theoretical underpinnings. Profiles and assessments that tell leaders and supervisors “what kind of traits, style, or personality,” they have are interesting, but using and applying the information is problematic. The ROI is seldom investigated.

Therefore, practical necessity demanded that I assign behavioral psychology—Applied Behavior Analysis, with its powerful principles of positive reinforcement, to its proper position in my understanding of organizational behavior. Behavior Analysis provides one with information about “why” someone in an organization (or any setting) says or does something. The behavioral platform presents a causal algorithm—a root cause analysis template for human action.

Lean principles and Six Sigma are robust tools for eliminating waste and improving quality in organizational processes. Similarly, Behavior Analysis is a powerful tool for explaining what environmental factors—what specific, precise physical or social factors—cause or caused an employee to do something (to behave in a certain way) and whether or not he or she is likely to behave that way again. Behavior Analysis brings the same explanatory rigor to human behavior that Lean brings to waste and Six Sigma brings to quality.

If you are creating an improvement storyboard, a Pareto chart, a fishbone diagram, a tree diagram, an activity network diagram, an affinity diagram or a behaviour-based safety checklist you need to know what a behaviour is (be able to accurately identify a specific behaviour without confusing it with characteristics, results, and fuzzy generalizations), determine what prompts the behaviour (like a ring prompts you to “reach for” your cell phone), and what encourages you to continue to behave that way (what reinforces the behaviour, as when you reach for the cell phone—open it up—and viola, there is someone on the other end to talk to.)

Does understanding what prompts a behaviour and what causes it to happen more than once explain all we need to know about people and organizations and management? No, but across the globe human performance is limited because leaders, managers, and supervisors do not understand the fundamentals of behavioural causation. They don’t know that much of the behaviour they see is not prompted by complex personality variables, but by immediate, situational factors that can be controlled to ensure that people behave in ways that support their best interests (safety being the most important)—the best interests of the product, their coworkers, and the customer.

If you have reached a personal “tipping point,” input overload, critical dysfunctional mass in trying to understand why people do the things they do, keep reading this blog. I can’t explain the meaning of life, but I can tell you why your teenager begs for money.

Applications of Behavioral Technology Before BBS: Part 2

2009-07-08T08:47:00.003-04:00

Behavior-based safety (BBS) processes, borrow heavily from the science of behavior analysis, using behavioral tools to decrease at-risk behavior and increase the frequency of safe behavior. Many behavioral tools, included in but also in addition to those used in BBS, enable organizations to influence the behaviors that drive overall business success. Part 2 offers suggestions about how to capitalize on the skills, time, and investment you've made in Behavioral Technology through the implementation of BBS.

Why Were Many Behavioral Processes Not Sustained?

Why were processes with such profound effects on performance data not institutionalized and integrated into the policies, practices and values of these organizations? Why did most of these applications last no longer than a year? Although this is a subject of debate, the short answer is that the processes began as separate initiatives that ran parallel to the processes of the organization and that were mainly management driven.

The longevity of non-integrated, stand-alone initiatives driven solely by management depends on stability in the management ranks. Replacement of the management champion (usually the plant manager) created uncertainty and the initiatives lost focus and energy. The fate of the process was sealed when the new manager replaced any pre-existing management system, no matter how effective it appeared to be, with his/her own approach.

What Was Missing?

Those who have concerns about the sustainability and vigor of a current behavior-based safety initiative, might ask, “What was missing from the processes that fizzled?” The answer is that, first of all, these early initiatives ignored two important elements – employee involvement and continuous improvement.

One of the mistakes made in early attempts to apply behavioral technology to business issues was an emphasis on teaching managers and supervisors the intricate details of behavior analytic science. This created some educated and effective performance managers, but it did nothing to ensure the institutionalization of the concepts and principles throughout the organization’s systems and processes.

These applications often failed to include workers in problem-solving sessions; behavioral tools were seldom integrated into management systems; they existed as a parallel process with special action plans and, deadliest of all, they required more paperwork! Systems issues causing performance problems were not typically identified and resolved using the process and behavioral technology applications were structured as programs, becoming what its practitioners had striven to avoid…flavor-of-the-month status.

Sustaining Behavior-Based Safety: Borrowed and Integrated Tools

For processes to endure, they must become integrated into the systems and practices of the organization. They must be interwoven into the core of the culture. They must become part of the way things are done, indistinguishable and interdependent. Any stand-alone or parallel, performance improvement initiatives, including BBS, sooner or later will be abandoned.

So, how do you avoid the program du jour dilemma?

· Transform your behavior-based safety initiative into an integrated process that extends the use of its existing tools and structures to a broader range of performance objectives.

· Go back to the tool chest. There are several powerful behavioral tools that will deepen and enrich your current process by solving a wider range of problems. The more problems a process can resolve, the higher the probability it will be institutionalized and sustained.

· Don’t weigh your systems (and personnel) down with additional forms and reports that could be seamlessly joined with existing data and feedback mechanisms.

New Applications

The behavior-based safety processes you have been using and refining can be extended to new opportunities with results as significant as those you have obtained in safety:

Business drivers

o Customer satisfaction

o Cycle time reduction

o Defect reduction

o Systems improvement

Using employee involvement and continuous improvement processes, upstream analysis can be applied to business performance variables. Behaviors related to problems and solutions are identified and the performance environment (systems, design, conditions, etc.) is changed to support behavior that will improve performance.

Observational skills

o Identify new behaviors for performance improvement

o Identify significant behavioral variations

Observer skills in evaluating the overall work environment and identifying specific behaviors encouraged or discouraged by environmental factors can be applied to discovering better ways to do things. Behavior that leads to improvement can be added to processes and tasks.

Advances in BBS Observational Tactics

2009-07-02T10:39:00.002-04:00

A common complaint among companies that have been implementing behavior-based safety is that, over time, there is a distinguishable loss of interest – among all employees – leaders, managers, supervisors, and frontline employees. The robust energy exhibited in the first few months has deteriorated; the observations, meetings, and interest have devolved into a monotonous routine.

At every conference I hear BBS champions and Safety Managers voicing the same request: “Do you have any ideas about how we can give our BBS process a ‘shot in the arm?’” BBS processes in which observers are enlisted voluntarily suffer more conspicuously than companies that have institutionalized their BBS process as a job requirement and a “condition of employment.”

As an aside, I believe that BBS processes should be voluntary until employees are familiar with the process and have refined and customized tactics to functional efficiency. At some point you have to ask the question, “If BBS is essential to ensuring our employees work more safely, then we need to make it mandatory.”

Safety training, job safety analysis, incident analysis, accident investigation, hazard identification, safety audits, safety policy, permits, emergency response – all these practice and many more are not considered options; they are institutionalized and mandatory components of safety management. Similarly, observations – work sampling for safety – should be an essential and obligatory part of safety management.

Getting back to the issue of how you can reenergize your BBS process, in previous blogs I have suggested some alternatives:

Performance Observations – use observer skills to identify behaviors that add value to quality, productivity, teamwork, reduce waste and more.
Employee Initiated Observations – allow employees to spontaneously initiate an observation of a coworker and record those data
Emergency/Critical Task Observations – identify situations, tasks, conditions that are rare but possible. Allow observers to watch employees doing drills for their particular circumstances
Workgroup/Team Observations – use observers to watch teams working together routinely or during intermittently scheduled non-routine events like plant shutdowns for major maintenance

I have just added the last observational practice, and I am aware that some companies are already doing observations of work group “results” as well as behavior. For the most part, BBS observations are based on predetermined checklists that are developed based on data review of incidents and injuries.

The variations I am suggesting are within the skill sets of properly trained observers – that is, observers who have been trained to discriminate, define, and identify specific, observable behaviors and provide a written description of that behavior in a way that allows others to make an observation using that description. If your observer group thinks that “has a good attitude about safety,” is a behavior you are on a slippery slope.

A well trained observer group should be able to watch an individual or team task being performed and identify value-added behaviors, list them, and communicate that list to other employees. If one employee does one thing that saves time or product waste, a trained observer should be able to discriminate that behavior and pass it on to other employees – thereby saving the company time and money.

Many companies do not know enough about Behavioral Technology to ensure that their observers are more than “list-checkers.” If your observer training class does not include a strong section on how to identify behaviors from non-behaviors, then your observers are not going to be able to add value to the observational process by identifying behaviors that will create a safer working environment.

You should be able to provide the following assignment to your trained observers with the confidence that they will be able to do it effectively:

“Warren, would you and Mary do an observation of the shift-change in Head Stack Assembly. I want to see if we can identify any behaviors that can be changed or added or deleted to decrease wasted time and improve the hand off. We’ve been having some operations problems that seem to be related to communications, but I want you two to observe what they are doing and saying and let’s see if we can smooth out the process.”

If properly trained, Mary and Warren should be able to handle this assignment without any problem. They should be able to come back with a list of specific behaviors that employees can say or do to make things run more smoothly, cut out waste, and improve efficiency. Once the list is developed, then it can be used as a checklist by everyone involved in the shift change or it can be used by the observers in a formal way – to do observations.

Safety observations of individuals working together – looking for coordination, cooperation, task alignment, proper sequencing, and peer support are logical applications of observer skill sets. The use of observational checklist on individual workers performing task sequences is important, but only one application of the observational process; limiting your observers to this application creates boredom, disinterest, and is a waste of the resources and investment you’ve made in observer training.

If your BBS process was properly implemented, then your steering committee can meet with a selection of observers and organize the proper tactics for implementing any one of the 4 suggestions bulleted above. Behavioral Technology is about understanding how to identify value-added from wasteful behavior in an organization.

Six Sigma, Lean, and many other initiatives seek to eliminate waste and increase quality and service levels. BBS is based on the application of Behavioral Technology to safety and the identification of a safe from an unsafe behavior is one use of its principles. Challenging your observers to apply their learning to other organizational performance opportunities is a key to maintaining their interest and enthusiasm and ensuring that your company receives the highest return on their investment.

Applications of Behavioral Technology - Before BBS: Part 1

2009-06-30T10:45:00.006-04:00

Behavior-based safety (BBS) processes, borrow heavily from the science of behavior analysis, using behavioral tools to decrease at-risk behavior and increase the frequency of safe behavior. Many behavioral tools, included in but also in addition to those used in BBS, enable organizations to influence the behaviors that drive overall business success. In fact, the tools of behavioral technology have been applied in a wide variety of business and industrial settings, consistently improving human performance by at least 20 to 30 percent.

It is time for organizations to fully utilize the behavioral technology that is the foundation of their behavior-based safety processes. Organizations could and should maximize the investment made in BBS by expanding, adapting and applying behavioral technology and employee observational skills to the company’s strategic operational outcomes – productivity, quality, Six Sigma, Lean Principles, Wellness, and so forth.

Behavioral tools, employee participation, observational skills, steering committee involvement can all be utilized to build upon and add value to your current BBS process. A systematic integration of behavioral tools into all areas of operations would not only improve performance and your training investment, but would also strengthen your existing BBS process.

How Were Behavioral Tools First Applied?

The first applications of behavior analysis in the work environment occurred in the early 1970s. Ed Feeney at Emery Air Freight, Richard Mallott at Western Michigan University, and Aubrey Daniels at Behavioral Systems applied behavioral technology to organizational performance problems and attained significant improvements. Key performance objectives for a business unit were targeted. The variables selected included quality, productivity, timeliness, error rate, cost control and turnover.

Behavioral technology brought some tools to management practices. The notion that we should be managing behavior “what people do at work,” instead of trying to change their personalities (using inspirational rhetoric to change attitudes), was a new one. Leaders, managers, and supervisors did not know what a “behavior” was or was not. The behavior of “putting on your safety glasses,” is clear and obvious today; 30 years ago safety management was not that precise. Effort was dedicated to changing an employee’s attitude about safety – getting him or her to “think safety,” and to be “conscientious” about safety.

Other ideas that behavioral technology brought to management was concepts like “positive feedback;” providing employees with specific, timely information about what they “did right” that would improve safety or performance. Until behavioral technology became popular, the only feedback employees received was information about what they were doing wrong.

Finally, the concept of positive reinforcement – the idea that value added behavior and good performance should be recognized, rewarded, celebrated, and acknowledged was unheard of 40 years ago. Safety recognition was stalled on downstream indicators and results. No one understood that when an employee was rewarded for “doing something right,” they would tend to repeat that behavior.

In the 1970s, we trained managers and supervisors in the science of behavior analysis, and then they created action plans to apply behavioral tools systematically. They identified important behaviors that would improve quality and productivity and reduce waste. We initiated performance measurement, and graphically presented daily performance feedback. When performance improved they regularly and promptly delivered recognition and reward to employees.

These early applications brought significant performance improvement in a short period of time. The introduction of a performance management system and positive recognition and reward created almost instant operations improvement when used correctly. Turnover was cut in half, absenteeism reduced by 70%, productivity increased by 40%, machine running time increased from 75% to 98%. Results so staggeringly successful, that Roger Milliken, the owner of Milliken textiles systematically applied behavioral technology in 60 of his plants. Milliken later became the first Malcolm Baldridge Award winner.

Although some of these methods are practiced in today’s business environment, keep in mind that measurement and feedback on behavior were conspicuously missing from most organizations in the 1970s. Also, most managers and supervisors were not trained in managing performance and tried to motivate workers by threats and intimidation. The transition from "my way or the highway," management styles to "Reward and Recognition," based management has been a long one - full of missteps and wrong turns.

More about this in Part 2.

Reviving a Struggling Behavior-Based Safety Process: Use Observational Capability to Improve Quality and Productivity

2009-06-24T15:04:00.003-04:00

Sooner or later you hit the wall; your process becomes routine…your observers are going through the motions…they may be pencil whipping out of boredom. Employees have lost interest; it is getting harder and harder to keep the steering committee interested in meeting.

Anyone who is involved in Behavior-Based Safety (BBS) for any length of time is going to go through this down cycle and hear other companies voice these same complaints. The answer is too simple to get much attention: Apply trained observer skills in other areas of organizational performance.

Your trained observers know how to identify specific behaviors – safe and unsafe. Why not apply that skill to other types of behaviors? What employee behaviors might decrease costs? What behaviors might improve efficiency – save time, redundancy, parallel efforts, improve communication, decrease waste, and improve a system or process?

BBS observers need to stick to safety, but what about the observers that have been trained and are not currently doing observations, or all the people who have rotated through their role as observers and are no longer doing safety observations?

Trained observers understand “behavioral root-cause analysis” (often referred to as the ABC Analysis). They know how to identify the factors that contribute to behavioral causation. You don’t have to have a Six Sigma Process or a Lean Manufacturing initiative in place to organize your trained observers to identify behaviors that either create waste or the behaviors themselves are a waste of time.

I’ve never had a job where I didn’t ask the question, “Why are they asking me to do this? It’s a waste of time.” I bet you’ve had the same experience. Not only do employees routinely identify job behaviors that waste time and money, but they usually have a suggestion about a behavior (or behaviors) that will work better – save time and money.

If your company has implemented BBS, you’ve already invested in training your employees to “observe what works and what does not.” If you are not using that investment to improve quality and productivity, you are leaving money on the table. All you have to do is ask employees to identify behaviors in their job that can be deleted or behaviors that need to be added to the job. The same goes for processes and procedures – let your behaviorally savvy employees help you find a more efficient way – a better behavior.

You don’t want to go “lean” on safety behavior. You want to make sure that employees have the time and take the time to be safe; you do want to eliminate (go lean) on behavior that wastes time and resources.

Gather a few of your trained observers – active and inactive. Explain this approach and ask them what they think is the best way to apply it. Maybe each observer could collect ideas from employees; maybe each employee is asked to “observe” their own jobs and identify behaviors they have always wanted to delete or add.

The idea of “doing it lean” is pretty appropriate for the economic times. Employees who are bored with “just doing safety observations,” may find it interesting and novel to use their skills to eliminate waste – to reduce costs to the company and insure people keep their jobs.

Safe behavior, quality related behavior, productivity related behavior, efficient behavior, time-saving behavior – it’s all behavior – what people do on the job. Why not turn behavior-based safety into behavior-based quality, and behavior-based productivity. Not doing more; doing it differently or not doing something that doesn’t work well.

Using BBS Observation Skills for Emergency Preparedness

2009-06-13T14:07:00.002-04:00

If you are implementing behavior-based safety correctly, you have taught your observers what a behavior “is,” or “is not” – meaning they know a behavior from a non-behavior. A behavior can be observed; a non-behavior, like “thoughtfulness,” (the word implies a state of mind, not directly observable behavior) cannot be directly observed. We can only observe behaviors (something someone says or does); we use the word “thoughtful” when we later summarize all the specific behaviors for someone else.

So when I say Bob is really “thoughtful,” I am usually summarizing my individual behavioral observations, perhaps over time and in different circumstances, rather than say, “I saw Bob open the door for a female coworker, send his wife flowers on their anniversary, phone a sick coworker, help a kitten out of a tree, and visit his neighbor in the hospital.”

Your observers should (if you are allowing them to evolve their skills and rewarding them for new ideas – new approaches) be developing good “observational skills” – like Sherlock Holmes, they should be picking up on increasingly fine-grained discriminations about what they see others doing at work. And hopefully, they know the difference between a state of mind (something they can’t see) and a physical behavior (something someone says or does that can be directly observed and counted.)

“Performing observations” increases an employee’s self-awareness about their own job behavior; they become more vigilant and often rehearse their movements self-consciously in accord with observational checklists. They anticipate possible contingencies – variations that might create risk or lead to an incident.

“Being observed” has a similar effect. Although knowing that you are being observed may create a level of self-consciousness, that is not a bad thing. Self-consciousness is a heightened state of awareness – a more intense state of mental focus. Physical and mental practice are important components of building or rebuilding work habits – of creating new neurological pathways – often referred to as “habits.”

Any company implementing BBS – observing people at work for all the reasons stated above – should also use the observational process to develop emergency response practices and behaviors to a level that equips employees to react automatically to prescribed situations. Most jobs functions have either “high-risk” tasks, or high-risk situations – many of which have been identified because of past accidents or near-misses.

Even if there is not precedent, a brain-storming session about almost any job allows us to identify potential circumstances where we will need to react quickly and automatically to the situation. In most cases, when emergencies happen – because they are usually rare events – no one is prepared and chaos prevails.

The media is rich with examples of crisis situations where unprepared employees panicked and the consequences were dire. Each of us has an emergency brake in our car; if your brakes fail coming up to a stop light, will you have the presence of mind to quickly reach down and pull (or push with your foot, an even more demanding emergency response) the emergency brake?

If you are honest, you know full well that you would probably panic and keep stabbing the foot brake harder and faster. The only way you can be prepared for that specific emergency is to get in an empty shopping mall parking lot and practice quickly coming to a stop using the emergency brake. Even better, if someone in the car cues the stopping crisis by yelling “stop!” or “tricycle!”

Trained BBS observers can work with employees to help prepare them for the most likely job-specific, hazardous, at-risk situations. Observers can take 5 to 10 minutes to watch one or more employees practice their response behaviors in high-risk situations where the employee will not likely “pull up the handbrake.”

The idea of practicing to handle emergency situations is not new. The notion of using BBS observers to provide employees with feedback while they practice “what-if,” scenarios for job specific situations is new – to me. If you have been using your BBS trained observers (which should include every employee, but that’s another discussion) to strengthen emergency, crisis, high-risk, and unanticipated circumstances, then I apologize and please send me an email and tell me about your experiences.

Your employees may not have to land an Airbus 320 on the Hudson River, but I’ll bet you can think of some situations where an employee or a coworker may need to perform a proportionately dramatic response. Your coworker falls from the scaffold and is hanging by his safety belt. You are the only one around; what do you do?

There are a thousand similar possibilities, but like at-risk behaviors, there are some more probable than others. If we don’t practice our responses in these likely circumstances, we are unlikely to react decisively and effectively. This is just one more potential opportunity to profit from the observation process and build increased interest in the observer role.

Put Some Energy Back into Your BBS Process through Employee Initiated – “Lean” Observations

2009-05-11T12:31:00.002-04:00

I’m not advocating that you discard the 30 minute observational audits you have come to know and love. Of course you need a thorough assessment of the work setting to encourage a thorough assessment of risk, but everyone knows that after a few years – even months – these things get pretty routine and uninspiring.

I’m continuing to advocate putting some sizzle back into your behavior-based safety process by encouraging employees to carry observation cards in their back pocket and to perform spontaneous, brief observations of their peers – when their peers ask for the observation.

The key point here is the observation checklist; let’s think “lean” for a moment. But maybe you can’t – you can’t change your observation process because you paid a consulting company $MM dollars for a process and if you change it they will sue you. Bet you think I’m joking; check your contract. Some of the big consulting houses claim that a particular way of applying a BBS process is their proprietary property – they own it – and they may own your process and you can’t change it.

Hopefully you are not one of those companies in bondage to a BBS process that is running you, not you running it. But if you have some latitude – if you can be creative – try the idea of focusing on a few behaviors that are relevant to specific jobs and work groups. I said a few “behaviors,” not categories like “lifting ergonomically correctly.” More like “feet pointed toward the object being lifted or moved.”

Behaviors are very specific muscular movements; they can be observed as they are stated: “Places safety glasses on your face before walking into the door of the plant.” Instead of, “Is wearing proper protective equipment.” Verbal behavior is extremely important in the workplace. We are humans (most of us), with the ability to communicate fairly precisely through language.

For instance: “Joe, this box is too heavy for me to lift alone; would you give me a hand?” That is a verbal behavior; it can be observed and counted and reinforced. On Joe’s observation card – because there has been a recent rash of sprains and strains or because of changes in through-put or the work process has increased the need for lifting behavior – we include this behavior: “Ask a co-worker for assistance when an object exceeds the specified safe weight.”

Instead of going to committee on this, the employees are encouraged to place behavior on their “Lean Observation Card,” that they are concerned about or that have recently surfaced as risks. They are in control of the risks they encounter and they can solicit help from their peers or supervisors.

They pull the very short, personalized card out of their back pocket, walk up to a co-worker in their work group and say, “Hey Jim, would you check me out on for a second? I’m trying to break a couple of unsafe habits; I’m always twisting when I lift and I can’t seem to remember to align my feet with the object. If I don’t align properly, scream at me like my wife does (just kidding), let me know. I’m keeping a personal graph on my safe behavior to make some changes.”

Uh Oh, you say; “That’s not gonna work.” No employee is going to keep a graph on their own behavior. They can’t self-manage the way a manager or supervisor can.” (J, another blog topic). Frontline employees can do anything that they think is reasonable and puts control into their own hands. You provide the organizational template – orient them to the process, give them the right…the paper and the place and they will do the job.

One of the problems with BBS is that it assumes the best way to change behavior is by providing positive feedback to an employee for working safely, and that will “reinforce the right behavior.” Well, there is nothing wrong with that, but what’s wrong with allowing, preparing, advocating and training people to self-manage through the use of checklists and co-worker engagement? Acknowledging that employees can take charge of their own behavior will, in and of itself, encourage behavior change.

Let’s summarize:

Employee self-management
Short, in the pocket behavioral checklist
Employee can change for relevance and impact
Employee keeps their own measurement
Employee asks co-worker to “Check me out”

Benefits:

Augments existing lengthy observational process
Creates increased level of employee empowerment
Increases the “look out for each other” factor
Decreases the stigma about being watched
Behavioral samples more valid

I’m sure you can think of other benefits. Talk to your employees about this process; see if they think self-management and peer engagement is a good idea.

Overcoming Objections to Behavior-Based Safety: Let Employees Initiate the Observation

2009-05-10T13:18:00.003-04:00

When I wrote my last blog about this, I expected a rush of responses about how this idea would transform the ethos surrounding BBS – that the idea would create insights and epiphanies. I expected corporate safety managers and BBS facilitators to gush about the empowering possibilities it released.

Maybe I did not make myself clear: Employees initiate safety observations with their peers; the idea of protecting your coworkers is taken to a new level. You hand your personal safety card to a coworker, supervisor, or BBS observer and say, “Hey…check me out.”

I’m amazed how literal the marketplace is; “Oh no, so and so wrote in his book that you have to do observations this way or that way.” Folks, BBS is not rocket-science – it’s work sampling. Do random samples of people working, and let them know when they are behaving safely or not. Identify anything in the environment that prevents them from behaving safely, or anything that could make it a safer place to work and expedite the solutions and opportunities.

What about pencil-whipping; how can we trust employees to be honest about what they see or do? Well for one thing, why would you ask someone to watch you work to help ensure you don’t have any bad habits and then want them to lie about what they saw? They are not going to use your name; there is no discipline attached. It’s about self-protection and peer protection.

Yes it is important to keep the data accurately, particularly to record any issues that might impede an employee from performing their work safely. Many companies go wrong because they don’t understand that it is important to use this process positively. You want to reinforce employees for helping the company remove hazards and reduce risk.

It reminds me of the old days; years ago employees were punished for making mistakes - which of course had a direct influence on mistake-hiding and dishonesty. Suddenly, there was a big “aha,” an epiphany; isn’t it really better if employees report their mistakes – that they come to management with problems that could result in unplanned problems or injuries.

Instead of shooting the messenger, it became clear that even though a supervisor is not happy to hear someone confess about a mistake or a problem, the response they have to rehearse is, “Thanks for bringing that to my attention; what do you think we should do to fix it?”

The quality improvement movement in America caused most organizations to rethink the ways they related to frontline employees. The epiphany is really a behavioral one: “Decide what behavior you want to reinforce – consciously decide. Don’t let spontaneity determine whether you thank and employee for bringing a problem to your attention.

My mantra is to increase empowerment for frontline employee in safety. The more they do to protect themselves and each other, the safer the work place will become. Employee willingness to help each has to be somewhat formalized; left to their own devices, people are reluctant to nose into other peoples’ business. “If the fool wants to do it that way; let him. It’s his funeral.”

Those days are over and if you get employees together and train them briefly about the value of behavioral self-awareness and the role their peers can play in facilitating safety self-management – it can happen.

My recommendation is to do a pilot. Take a portion of you workforce – a workgroup or department and try my approach. Do an orientation, ask them to discuss how, when, what, and who. Let them design the details of the process. Allow employees to whip out an observation card and ask a coworker to check them out.

The reason this seems impractical to many organizations is that their observation checklist are 3 pages long and they require 30 minutes to perform. Employees can each have a checklist that will fit on a 3” by 5.” The behaviors on the card should be essential to that person – their circumstances and risks. The precision and focus of this type card accelerates the reduction of at-risk behavior.

Keep it anonymous and positive. Let the employees themselves make a commitment to give each other feedback and keep them safe. I naturally look out for others. I’ve saved a lot of people from getting hurt because I stopped them from walking out in traffic without looking or made them wear their seat belts.

I think this kind of thing is infectious. If you allow an employee to feel good about helping a coworker, that good feeling spreads and becomes an epidemic of thoughtful behavior.

Behavior-Based Safety Evolution: Employee Controlled Observations

2009-05-06T15:36:00.003-04:00

Thousands of companies around the world are performing employee observations – the same way. You design an observations system, you create an observations checklist then you perform an observation and record the data.

One big problem is that many people don’t like being the object of an observation or the company culture does not favor people watching each other and giving feedback – even if it is positive.

The solution is to put control of the observations into the hands of the employees; when an employee is ready for an observation, he takes an observation form (or card hopefully) and approaches an observer with whom he is comfortable. Instead of being observed, he requests an observation.

It sounds like a small change, but I think it has big implications. For one thing, why shouldn’t I be able to have some input to my safety observation card? What’s wrong with training employees to play an active role in their own safety – as well as look out for their coworkers?

I might have an unsafe habit I want to break; maybe I am concerned about a specific aspect of my job where it is good to have some help – an observer who is my safety angel; someone to watch over me. Sound too “soft?”

There are a lot of people who do dangerous jobs in America; and, a lot of jobs have very dangerous tasks that have to be performed routinely or intermittently. Why not allow an employee to take his or her safety card to a “safety facilitator” (I like that better than observer) and say, “Hey Jim, how about giving me a look while I’m up here. I want to make sure I put all the safety steps in.”

Lets make observations employee controlled and “on demand.” An “On - Demand” observation is discretionary. An employee can get the oversight they want from a peer; he or she can help themselves build safe job habits by asking someone to make sure they put in all the steps and procedures.

So, let’s take the observation process to the next level:

Let’s allow employees to initiate an observation when they want one
Allow employees to add behaviors, conditions, or practices to their observation list that they want on there.
Allow employees to move to the next level of safety management – “self-management.”
Let’s move to a new level of comfort with the behavior-based safety process – employee controlled observations.

I think this is just the kind of redesign that will put new energy into your foundering, struggling, strangling, suffocating….am I going too far?

How to Know When to Use a Freelance Behavior-Based Safety Consultant

2009-05-05T15:26:00.002-04:00

In a Webinar I did on April 30^th entitled, "BBS on Life Support: What to do when a BBS program sputters,” I recommended that companies whose BBS processes need oxygen should find a good freelance consultant to come in and help them identify strengths and weaknesses – barriers and opportunities. In other words, get an objective, third-party to do the diagnostics on your process.

This is the most economical way to solve the problem, and in today’s tight times, the people who write the checks will appreciate a frugal solution. But, you need an economic solution – not a cheap one. Safety is important and you don’t want to risk employees losing faith in the BBS process or thinking that you don’t care enough to do the right things to reinvigorate your BBS process.

Most of the time (big generalization here) leadership support is the problem, and much of the time the problem is not them – leaders may want to be supportive, they may think they are being supportive – but no one has told them specifically what they need “to do” (behavior) on a daily basis to ensure the BBS process succeeds. The core problem is that in-house staff is usually not enfranchised to lead the leaders.

When an outside consultant comes in – a good one with the right credentials and bed-side manner – he or she can candidly give the feedback to leadership; the good, the bad, and the ugly feedback about their behavior. She can tell the President or plant manager or department manager what they need to be doing and saying to support the observers and the steering committee; how they need to sell the process and change the culture.

I’ve seen large organizations and small business sites that are each equally uncomfortable finding, selecting, and managing consulting advice. It is not easy to screen prospective consultants; some of them are good salesmen and poor technologists; some are geeky and strange but they are great problem solvers and have very creative solutions. One thing they all require is likeability to be successful. I’ve recruited, hired, and managed dozens of consultants in my consulting career; one common trait that is essential to their success, is likeability – the friendliness and warmth that allows them to bond quickly with employees and earn their trust.

“Why not just go to one of the big consulting companies and have one of their consultants come in to help?” Several reasons; one is that they are probably just going to tell you what they told you before – only harder. They will tell you that the reason your BBS process is not working is because you did not do what they told you to do. They said that you had to do it a specific way and you modified it a bit to make it fit your business or operations exigencies. It’s a no-win situation for you.

Or, they try to sell you more training, books, DVDs, workshops, certifications, or surveys. The reason your BBS process is not working is because you have not spent enough money with them. Also, it is not a good idea to go out and select a new consulting company to install another process over the old one; that is not a good solution. That’s throwing good money after bad. The reason that BBS processes don’t work is not because one consulting company has a better or worse process than another. As Shakespeare said, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings."

Going out and hiring a consulting company that walks in the door with a sales agenda and a canned methodology a robot could deliver is not the answer to sluggish BBS processes. A good, clean, objective diagnosis is the answer. Nine times out of 10 you have problems because the Steering Committee is ineffectual and that’s because leadership is not supporting them properly.

Soon, I will have my new website www.bbsfoundations.com up and running. You will be able to trade BBS success stories and failures with other companies. In addition to a forum section on information sharing, there will be a section to share feedback on consultants – to talk about the BBS consulting companies, training events, workshops, conferences – to get the real scoop on what’s worth your time and money and what’s not.

I will also have a section where you can review a list of freelance consultants – men and women with BBS experience in your business and your region - who have the experience and credentials to give you intelligent, economical advice; people who are willing to help you for a day or a week; experienced consultants who will help you without breaking you. I will screen them and check their credentials before they go on the site, and you can be sure that they are the kind of people you want to work with - on your terms.

My experience tells me that there are hundreds of companies around the world that are about to give up on their BBS processes – because they can’t identify their problem and implement a simple solution. I hope www.bbsfoundations.com can help.

Maintaining a Healthy BBS Process

2009-05-01T14:45:00.002-04:00

In a recent Webinar, I attempted to address some of the issues that are facing the thousands of companies implementing behavior-based safety around the world. Anyone reading this knows that there are a multitude of problems, but if you look closely, and objectively, you can identify them fairly rapidly.

In my Webinar, I tried to identify with clients and prospective clients; I tried to present a perspective that served the listeners interests not a particular consulting companies interests. Yes, I am a broker for BBS services for more than one BBS consulting firm. I’ve worked with many others, so I am not completely without bias, but I also have seen enough approaches to know that there is no one best way to implement and sustain a healthy BBS process.

If you read my blog, you will see that my 40 years of working inside business and industry has given me a view point that does not always align with any of the companies for whom I design methodologies or sell services. So if I see something being done that is not in the best interest of the client, I say so. The people who work with me tolerate me for some unknown reason.

There is no “one way” to implement behavior-based safety, and using a large consulting company or a college professor does not guarantee that you are getting the best advice. In the questions that I saw from the Webinar there were some central themes that reappeared and I will address one later in the blog.

Within a week, I am will have a website operational at www.bbsfoundations.com. On this website, anyone can register and enter a question about the BBS process. If you have a home grown process and people have lost interest - you can ask about it. If your company is downsizing and people have become too distracted to participate, then ask “We have lain off half our employees; how do I keep them interested in observations when they are afraid of losing their jobs?”

On this website, people from around the world can provide you with an answer – their answer. Some may be off base, but I bet there are thousands of companies in the same boat. Maybe you will get a solution; maybe just empathy – but the answers you get from other concerned BBS implementers are bound to be helpful. I am trying to create an international BBS user’s group – a learning laboratory that will allow you to accelerate your learning without the bias of a consulting company’s self-interest.

I would guess that BBS consulting service providers will be join in to answer questions. That’s OK; you will get some free expert advice and you will just have to sort through the self-interest to get to the wisdom. BBS is about the wisdom of the group – the value of using front-line employee experience and intelligence - the value of implementing a system that enables employees to help each other.

One question that I expect to see often on the www.bbsfoundations.com website will be about lone workers. Many businesses and industries have employees that work alone, and now that we are in an economic crisis many more employees will be working alone.

Everyone knows that pilots use checklists to ensure that they do everything they are supposed to do; they have a lot of responsibility and they can’t afford a mistake. Before the space shuttle takes off, the astronauts go through a long checklist to ensure that nothing if overlooked.

For many years, I have been advising clients to enable all employees to create and apply behavioral checklists – to include behaviors that are critical to performance and/or safety. If employees are allowed to work together to identify critical behaviors, then those behaviors can be self-tracked. These types of checklists are powerful tools to help employees do things everyone thinks is important.

In a BBS process a lone workers checklist should be shorter than the typical peer-to-peer safety observation checklist. Make them short and sweet – just prompt the employee to self-observe for the behaviors that historical data and situational factors tell you are essential.

Usually the self-observation is prompted by a call on the cell from someone or they are beeped by the dispatcher. If the employee is driving, you can used a visual cue to prompt them to do a self-inventory of their driving behavior – like, when you see a Starbucks sign check your speed or the distance to the car in front of you.

Make sure you use the data positively. Reinforce employees for doing their checklists. If you punish them when they record an omission or an unsafe behavior, then they will pencil-whip the card next time. Reinforce them for doing the self-observations and you will see that they will self-manage the at-risk behavior.

Intermittently, you can have someone “ride along” or pop in on someone working alone to do a safety observation. But the real emphasis should be on developing a checklist that includes the behaviors that put them at risk or the equipment or practices that will keep them safe. I’m sure if your reading this you have your own opinion or experience with “lone-workers,” and we will be able to hear them when www.bbsfoundations.com

Behavioral Safety Observations: A Two Dimension Approach

2009-04-27T08:46:00.007-04:00

Observational checklists are an important component of every behavior-based safety process, but there is a lot of variability in the items, the length of the observation list, and how the observations are accomplished.

Length – some observational checklists are several pages long; they are more like safety audits than behavioral observations, while other lists have as few as 3 or 4 behaviors.
Items – many observational lists have warnings, instructions, and practices; some have very specific behaviors – ergonomically precise.
Lists vary in focus; many check every possible combination of possibilities while other lists focus on at-risk behaviors that statistically have proven to be lead to employee injuries.
Some observations lists require 30 minutes plus to complete while the short behavioral list can take less than 30 seconds.

So what is the best type of list to have? What gets the best results?

The data is inconclusive; every type of checklist has the potential to reduce injuries – and 15 years of highly variable in-house and out-house checklists – that have led to favorable results, indicates that the checklist itself is not the most critical factor in BBS process success.

In my opinion, every behavior-based safety process should have two types of observations checklists:

A thorough audit that incorporates all the conditions, precautions, behaviors and practices relevant to the department or work group. These audits would be about 30 minutes long, comprehensive, and performed on a frequent basis.
A two or three behavior checklist that observers keep in their back pocket which they can whip out and check off in 10 or 15 seconds; a checklist focused on critical at-risk behaviors that the work group upgrades as the work environment requires.

The first, lengthy observational audits should be scheduled; the second, opportunistic behavioral observations should be spontaneous – when the work requires certain at-risk behaviors to be performed, or when employees are working together and can do quick observations without interfering with the tasks at hand.

The two-dimensional observation strategy allows you to obtain both comprehensive data and a high number of unannounced observations – for increased data validity. Announcing observations has always been the preferred method; it eliminates trust issues and allows employees to become comfortable with being “watched” while they work.

The fact that employees behave differently when they know they are being watched has been eschewed by consulting providers and broadly in the literature, but anyone with commonsense knows that it corrupts the data and makes the value of the observation questionable.

If you participatively engage your employees in spontaneous, brief observations (anonymous of course), you can collect hundreds of data points per week and the data is more reliable - it reflects the way employees are really working. Using this type of observations, you see employees doing their work naturally – not self-consciously. It is imperative that you get the permission and involvement of all employees in this process.

The short, critical, in-the-pocket observation list combined with the longer, more thorough audit type observations enriches and deepens your observation process. There is no absolute authority on observations, and for the last 20 years announced lengthy observations has been the method of choice.

The Critical-Behavior, in-the-pocket observation process has been used successfully in dozens of applications and the results have indicated that it is the observational process of choice when you want to impact employee safety quickly. One key element of the variable observation approach is to make sure employees are empowered to change the behaviors as needed. This ensures participation, and the robust relevance of the behaviors.

Many companies have overlooked true behavioral observations because they assume that safety is a complex topic and there are many factors that contribute to at-risk behavior – and I agree. But the belief that you have to have one or the other – that you cannot do both for increased impact – is overlooking the realities of the observational environment and its effect on employee behavior.

Behavior-Based Safety Leadership for Dummies

2009-04-11T15:47:00.006-04:00

Leadership gurus have made a fortune defining what leadership is and most men and women aspire to be identified as representative of the elevated stature associated with being a “leader.” Leaders have followers – they are purportedly charismatic and transformational. Managers have subordinates – they are transactional and influence through the authority provided them.

One recognizes that a transformational leader may also function as a manager, but the average manager cannot hope to attend a “leadership” course and learn how to be charismatic – how to inspire others to “follow” you. I hate to be cynical about something that on the surface appears to be a noble objective, but it is hard to overlook the facts: over the last thirty years the role of manager has been defined and redefined by book writers, consultants, and academics as facilitators, coaches, mentors, team leaders, servants, now leaders. The emphasis on leadership is likely to change its theme at any time.

I have been a behavior-change consultant for over 35 years, and during that time I have seen many trends, fads and fashions in the world of management training and development. The most interesting phenomenon is the corporate naiveté demonstrated by a willingness to buy every new leadership analysis, profile, style, inventory and assessment product that hits the market. The more expensive, arcane, esoteric, complex, and inaccessible – the more likely senior executives are to pay for it.

A few of the well know products include Blake and Moutons “Managerial Grid,” the “Myers Briggs Type Indicator,” the “Keirsey Temperament Sorter,” and the “Hogan Personality Inventory.” But every leadership theorist, business school, and consulting company has their own proprietary product that will place your personality snugly within their well-defined, assessment criteria. Fortune 100 companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars on personality inventories hoping to predict the leader/manager performance of their employees.

Most of us are not transformational, inspirational leaders; we are men and women who have authority thrust upon us by virtue of our performance, experience, and skill sets. So, to begin with the cold, hard truth I don’t think any of us are going to become charismatic leaders no matter how hard we try.

I do think we can learn to change our own behavior and the behavior of others – in fact we do that all the time, but we don’t do it consciously and constructively. We are constantly inadvertently reinforcing (encouraging) behavior in others that we abhor and extinguishing behavior in others that we would like to see more of.

Because behavioral principles are rather boring (except for the principle of positive reinforcement that has been abused and hyperbolized until it is dismissed as complimenting people to try to get them to do things for us), people rush to sexier material – like Freud, Jung, and Maslow, none of whose theories can be easily utilized in the office or on the shop floor.

In my 35 years of management consulting (behavior change, organizational change) I’ve made one or two simple observations that explain why Safety Leadership has become such a big, complex industry.

1. Contemporary Senior Leadership has no training or education in the basic principles of behavior change – in how you arrange consequences to affect the frequency of specific, individual behaviors. They typically think that the phrase “positive reinforcement,” was invented by Human Resources as a euphemism for “being nice to people to encourage them to work harder.”

In business school, they were taught some personality-driven, explanatory models for human behavior – old, outdated stuff by Maslow and Hertzberg that they quickly dismissed as effete and academic – divorced from the realities of cost and profit. These cognitive models usually culminate into one take-away: You can’t change people. Their personality is hard-wired from genetics, early learning, and neurological predisposition. The dissonance and contention between schools of psychology in regard to the causes for human behavior encourages distrust in the change models they promote.

Senior leaders don’t approach individual or organizational behavior change from a set of principle or a science; they use personal experience to guide them. Failing, making mistakes, appearing stupid, losing position to a peer competitor, not getting a promotion or raise, not being the smartest guy in the room – you work hard to avoid all the negatives. Nobody, not even your father, ever praised you – gave you positive feedback to encourage you in any specific way.

I’m not being cynical; I’m pointing out the philosophical-psychological-pragmatics of the business world. When someone has a “job,” you can use programs and incentives to get them to do more. When someone has a “career,” you don’t have to use incentives to get them to do this or that – they are self-driven; they bust their butts to do as much as they can – within the natural limitations of talent and cerebral endowment.

So most senior leaders don’t really believe that someone’s behaviors can be changed using differential consequences – positive reinforcement or negative reinforcement (please don’t confuse negative reinforcement with punishment; Google it – there is a big difference.)

2. Most Senior Leaders don’t know how to make change initiatives work. Organizational change – evolving an organization’s effectiveness by capturing information from its market environment – is a poorly perfected art. It is certainly not a science, because organizational change initiatives are not implemented using scientific methodology – data-basing change, using empirical evidence in pre and post analyzes to determine if training, development, education, processes, models or methods have really improved human performance.

Many leaders seem to think that supporting an initiative means writing a check to pay for the consultants.

Behavior-Based Safety leadership means behaving in ways that demonstrate that the value of safety and the importance of a BBS initiative are primary to the business – for good business and because the health and well-being of the people who work for you are more important than getting something done unsafely to make more money.

It sounds simple – and it is. The difficulty is that it is hard for anyone to tell leaders what to do. Everyone in the organization knows that leaders communicate their values by what they talk about, listen to, laugh at, promote, bonus, demote, and fire. So if they do all those things in regard to safety and your BBS initiative then everybody knows that it matters and they get on board.

Leaders reinforce, encourage, strengthen, cultivate, and incent the things (behavior, results) that they attend to in a favorable way. They smile or ask questions, or tell stories, or make decisions that favor, or bring up the subject often in public and private. Of course they can more formally include some language about it in the mission statement or in the annual report or in the CEO’s newsletter, but those platforms are generally considered to be rhetorical incubators which are meaningless compared to the pragmatics of who leaders smile at and what they become angry about.

So if you want to be a strong safety leader who creates a legacy around safety you just have to demonstrate the same obsession around the topic that you have for golf or wing-shooting. You attend meetings (sometimes at early or late hours) of safety committees and training classes. You make decisions that favor safe equipment, materials, engineering, and purchases. You do a behavioral observation, you look at the safety data, and you make sure that you keep your eye on the safety process.

One other point – you measure your behavior, just like we do in behavioral observations of employees at work. With your peers, sit down in a leadership meeting and come up with a list of things that you will do each week to support your company’s safety management system and its behavior-based safety initiative. Things that will ensure everyone knows it is a primary value. “I will attend a safety committee meeting at the Covington, Georgia plant next week. I will do a “Walkaround;” go out on the shop floor and talk to people about our BBS initiative and their thoughts, feelings and ideas about it.”

Make a list; attach points to each item; weight them if you want to prioritize an item or two, and then agree to review your list and your score with your peers each month. Hold yourself and your peers accountable for doing the things – the behaviors that will communicate that safety is the most important responsibility of your job as a leader and that of your managers and that of your supervisors. It is important enough for you to track your support. Do you walk the walk?

I know that it is more fun to take a personality inventory and review the findings. You want to know how you are diagnosed by one of these pseudo-clinical tests; much more fun than getting up at 4:00 A.M. to attend a BBS safety committee meeting. But, there is comfort in knowing what works and what doesn’t; what is real from what is theoretical. Stand up, show up, and speak up about safety. Forget the charisma workshop .

7 Reasons Why Your Behavior-Based Safety Process is Flopping

2009-04-07T14:46:00.011-04:00

In the last 15 years thousands of Behavior-Based Safety (BBS) processes have been implemented worldwide. BBS is the most commonly used process to obtain order of magnitude improvements in injury reduction. It is participative, preventive, and positive; it is the Six Sigma – the TQM for safety. Its core components are so powerful that it is hard to imagine how you can implement it and not get great results.

I’ve been selling BBS systems for 10 years, and I don’t have an agenda relative to methodology; I just want happy clients. So I listen when the people I talk to are frustrated; the companies who have attempted to implement BBS and the process foundered and stalled. Or, they are 5 years into a process that everyone has lost interest in and they want to talk about a “booster,” or something to “give us a shot in the arm.”

Amazingly, most people who have a failed system don’t have a clue why it isn’t working. Often, they will bring in another BBS provider (consulting company), in hopes that a new approach with new language will “work.” The employees get cynical, because the new process requires changes that don’t seem to make a difference. The average front line employee sees similar systems with different buzzwords; and they are right.

What went wrong? Why are there so many dissatisfied BBS clients, abandoned systems, bastardized hybrids, and home grown catastrophes? I can think of a few reasons, but I’m not going to pull out the worn-out “maybe you were not ready,” cliché. Most companies have decent safety management systems, and most companies are ready for “the right BBS process.”

Failures and lukewarm BBS systems all have a few common roots:

1. You Did Not Do Your Homework – there are several legitimate BBS providers, but there are also a lot of pseudo-BBS providers. Just because a company is large and has a big market presence does not mean they can implement a good BBS process. They just know how to sell and they let their brand do the talking for them.

Similarly, just because some guy went through several site implementations at the company where he used to work does not make him a good consultant, or someone who is qualified to advise other companies. When I say do your homework, I mean learn something about the core principles of BBS and compare that to the potential provider’s process.

Does the provider actually know anything about behavioral science – the research-based principles of human behavior? Are their consultants knowledgeable about the science of behavior-change, or are they safety professionals that have seen a lot of BBS? You might think that doesn’t matter, but when you discover that your employees are still taking risks and your supervisors are still favoring productivity and their paperwork over safety it’s good to have someone to ask…why?

2. You Got an Off-the-Shelf BBS System Instead of a Customized Process – the large BBS providers have standardized processes. Most of the time their consultants have been thoroughly trained in using a specific methodology accompanied by specific tools and printed material. The company usually has a book written by an authority that establishes their credibility.

When you have lots of pre-printed material, copyrights, trademarks,
and patents, you have inflexibility. They can’t change their process to
accommodate the nuances of your company, culture, or operation. They
tend to force-fit the exigencies of your safety management system into
pre-packaged assumptions and solutions. They can not do something
differently – even if they know it works better – if it contradicts
something that has been published in their sacred text…the book that
established their credibility in the first place.

3. No Pickles, No Lettuce – Special Orders Do Upset Us – You bought the big name and now they own you. Everybody in your industry knows that you use “X” company as your BBS provider. You have added a new appendage to your safety management system; “X’s” BBS process. It has so much notoriety, that your own safety process has lost its identity. It’s like marrying a movie star; you lose your identity – you’ve become Mr. or Mrs. Celebrity.

What you really needed was a customized process; you needed a knowledgeable, experienced BBS consultant to help you integrate the key BBS components into your existing safety management system. You should have a personalized system – adapted to your nation, region, industry, site, and work group functions. You needed input; an opportunity to learn the basics and make some of the decisions about how, when, and what.

But, the big provider used their clout to shout you down. They’ve done this dozens (even hundreds) of times before and you have to do it they way they want. There is only one way; their way. It is only later…many dollars later that you become aware that you could have screwed up for a lot less money if you had done it yourself.

But now it’s too late; they have you encircled by their lawyers. You can’t do this or that without their approval; if you do, you may be stealing their proprietary material or pirating their intellectual capital. If you want to use another provider in another plant, the big players may have to give you their permission.

4. You Bought Complexity Instead of Basic Tools – yeah, but all that detail looked so inviting. All that stuff. It was impressive; there were so many training meetings, team meetings, tools, books, continuing education classes, annual conferences, software upgrades – it was overwhelmingly. You think, it must be good, because it takes so much time.

Nobody told you (even though your intuition should have) that complex and expensive does not equal effective. Everybody thinks, “It’s just me; I think this is all too complex because I’m not smart enough to grasp it all.” You thought you were allergic to something when your eyes began to water while they were explaining the data software.

No, your intuition was on the money. Just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean you are simple. It may have too many pieces because it favors the providers selling process or their sales price. A BBS process can be implemented for 1/4th of the cost that some of the bigger providers charge.

5. Your Leaders Are Not Involved – I don’t mean they just wrote a check. I mean they are out doing observations, talking to frontline employees about BBS, attending Safety Committee meetings, and asking questions about progress and participation.

Leadership involvement needs to be tracked, measured; it needs to be public and they need to be accountability. The best BBS implementations have obsessed leadership; they talk the talk and walk the walk. They won’t let it fail because it is number one on their values list.

Leadership involvement communicates that the company cares about the well-being of their employees. It lets the public know that the organization has a heart. Customers like companies with a heart – with compassion, caring and respect for their employees.

Each leader needs to have a self-developed, self-managed checklist of specific support behaviors that they use to track themselves against – with goals and public transparency. Leaders need to meet and talk about their individual scores…and hold themselves accountable for doing the things that will make safety and your BBS process the key value in the company.

6. You Did Not Know When to Ask for Help – your gut tells you that the BBS process is not working. Employees are not enthusiastic – not even involved. Meetings are not being held – observation sheets are being pencil whipped. You don’t trust the data. Your process is dying; atrophy is obvious but you keep looking for a quick fix.

What you need to do is find an experienced free-lance or small group of credentialed BBS implementers and pay one of them to come in for a day and take a look around; talk to them and let them talk to the employees. There is no substitute for third party objectivity. There are plenty of experienced BBS consultants who have implemented dozens of BBS processes who are willing to spend a few days with you to give you some guidance.

Allowing your employees to meet with a BBS consultant and do some course correction and problem solving can energize them. It allows them to make changes their experience has identified – to make improvements that will customize the process to the work, the company, and the culture.

7. You Don’t Know How to Deliver Effective Feedback, Recognition, and Celebrate Success
What leadership attends to, what they talk about positively, and what they reward becomes the key values in an organization. Most supervisors don’t know how to interact with employees in a way that energizes critical behaviors – that helps performers identify value added behavior and change behavior that is not working.

Providing positive feedback during observations is critical to behavior change. Recognizing the people who are doing observations, and celebrating the up and down stream data improvements is important to creating energy and enthusiasm. Employees need to know that their behavior makes a difference. In some companies BBS involvement is a condition of employment.

Human behavior is determined by consequences; what pays off for you or what does not determines what you are going to do on the job. If your BBS system has not incorporated the basic principles of behavioral technology – of behavior change, then you are unlikely to be successful at evolving and maintaining your BBS process over the long haul. Celebrating and rewarding safe behavior is essential.

Take the Pain Out of Job Feedback Discussions

2009-04-06T14:56:00.002-04:00

One of the most difficult aspects of leading, managing, and supervising is providing performers with negative feedback. Most people report public speaking as their number one fear; for anyone in a management role, providing one-on-one negative feedback holds that number one spot. Many managers not only avoid feedback, they do not do provide it at all.

Annual or bi-annual performance reviews are hated by everyone—employee and manager alike. In many companies, performance reviews and salary reviews are synonymous; the performance review provides the rationale for whether one receives a raise and how much that raise is going to be. It is often humorously acknowledged that everyone is on his or her best behavior for a few weeks prior to performance review time.

Generally, supervisors dread the performance review like the plague. For a supervisor or manager, the term “performance review” connotes uncomfortable past experiences. Even the smoothest performance reviews are accompanied by disagreement and tense discussions. The really hairy ones can have confrontations, emotional arguments, and disagreements that can do permanent damage to employee engagement.

Performance reviews are anachronisms. The usual outcome is that employee and supervisor become aversive to each other for a month or two. Of course, the culprit is negative feedback. The employee does not want to hear it (it is aversive by definition), and the supervisor does not want to deliver it (and usually is not skilled in the art.)

The purpose of the performance review is to change behavior, and the annual performance reviews are undeniably ineffective in obtaining that end. Real behavior change is the result of daily interactions between manager and employee. At best, the performance review focuses on the effects of employee behavior on some performance result. Employee behavior is not changed in a review; it is changed in the work setting.

Secondly, because the experience is so aversive to the manager, he or she tends to stay away from negative feedback as much as possible. The end result of their avoidance behavior is that performance feedback important to the employee’s job success is suppressed. Many employees have been demoted or fired with little or no forewarning that they were not giving satisfaction in their jobs.

Managers and supervisors should provide their subordinates with constructive feedback on a regular basis—feedback about behavior, not just results. Employee performance—job results, are the outcome of numerous contributory behaviors that can be observed and identified by a knowledgeable supervisor—one trained in Behavior Management. The management of employee behavior—increasing the frequency of value–added behaviors and decreasing the frequency of dysfunctional or unnecessary behaviors—is critical to maximizing the performance potential of an employee.

Learning how to provide constructive feedback—particular corrective feedback, is the scorecard for performance management efficacy. If a supervisor cannot address behavioral discrepancies, then the employee can not improve their job performance. Most managers react to results, a downstream measure of human performance. Behavior is the controlling factor for all performance results. Understanding how to provide tactful corrective feedback for undesirable behaviors is as important as the prudent and efficient use of positive performance feedback..

How do you make bad news palatable?—you have to be relaxed. Tension is an incubator for reactivity and emotionalism. With the proper preparation, you can comfortably engage an employee even when you know that you are going to be discussing some of their performance deficiencies. Preparation requires that you remind yourself that the purpose of your discussion and the feedback is to “help” the employee.

If you repeat to yourself that your purpose is to facilitate, to coach, to help the employee—with truth and tact and legitimate concern, then you will relax because you have identified yourself as a positive agent in the process. A supervisor-employee performance discussion where both parties recognize the supervisor’s intent is to help, not hurt, can be one of the most reinforcing experiences in one’s work life.

It is entirely appropriate to begin a feedback session or performance review with positive, personal topics. Start the event by relaxing both the manager and the employee; talk about some topics that are reinforcing to the employee. Create a positive context from which to begin the discussion. Remember, you will not change any targeted performance behavior in a feedback session or performance review. What you can do is provide clear identification of the behavior you would like to see changed (increased in frequency or modified in some way), or the new behavior you want or perhaps a behavior you would like to see stopped.

At the very least, the feedback dialog will clearly identify behavior that is aversive to you as the manager. Most employees will attempt to avoid behaving in ways that they are certain their manager or supervisor does not like.

It is important to use provisional language in performance review; avoid categorical statements. Many supervisors pridefully affect an aggressive persona regarding employee feedback. They brag about “telling it like it is,” or “being direct and honest,” (often a euphemism for being callously critical.)

After you have had a few moments of positive conversation, you should begin the feedback dialog by pointing out the employee's strengths; “Bob, the quality and accuracy of your report writing is extremely high. I always feel that any job you do will be finished on time.” Beginning with positives is a fair and honest way to start the discussion. The supervisor has a chance to relax and the employee is not guarded. It is a good beginning.

Don’t confuse a feedback session, the purpose of which is to change specific behavior, with a problem solving discussion in which you have to talk about something that went wrong—a discussion in which you are talking with the employee to determine what caused a problem. You can stop and say, “What went wrong yesterday with the backup system?” without having to follow the guidelines for a feedback dialog.

At the appropriate moment in your feedback dialog, you can state your behavioral concern: “Jim, sometimes I feel like you do the work yourself when you could delegate it to someone else.”

Notice the use of the words “sometimes,” and “could,” to soften the comment. It would be easy to be categorical and preemptive as—“Jim, you always do the work yourself when you should be delegating it to other people.”

The first statement is likely to be thoughtfully received, while the second may create a defensive reaction. If the employee has, in the past, successfully backed down the supervisor by expressing outrage or emotional disagreement, he or she has been positively reinforced for that behavior (a good example of how positive reinforcement often encourages behavior we do not want) and may exhibit that behavior in this situation regardless of the diplomacy of the comment.

The manager's tone, body language, and the words selected (their connotations) effect the emotions of both the manager and the employee. The emotions need to be managed before you can deal with the performer’s behavior. If the manager uses accusatory words or blunt, critical words it makes the employee defensive and angry--which in turn shuts down his or her receptivity to important behavioral feedback.

If the manager understands Behavior Management, then he or she is prepared for the employee's reactivity. Leaders and managers who have been taught Behavior Management are aware of how their words and non-verbal behavior are acting as positive reinforcers and punishers in a performance review This training allows the manager to selectively reinforce the behavior of the employee during a feedback session--in real time. Although job behavior cannot be changed in a review setting, the employee's verbal behavior within that setting can be changed effectively.

As you identify a behavior that needs changing, like “Jim, sometimes I feel like you do the work yourself when you could delegate it to someone else,” then ask the employee a question about their response to your comment--a question like, “How do you feel about that?” or “Do your observations of your behavior agree with mine?” To ask an employee to observe their own behavior establishes a strong participative discussion environment; the employee is empowered to become an active participant in his or her performance evaluation. Most employees will react positively to this opportunity and eagerly participate in their own evaluation.

In this instance, Jim might say, “I am aware that I tend to do too much of the work myself, when I should be assigning it too someone else. It’s a habit I need to break.”

At this point, the manager can reinforce the response honestly (if you don’t feel it, don’t say it; the employee can tell the difference) by saying something like—“That was a good insight into your own behavior Jim. Are there any other behaviors you've targeted to work on?”

This response allows the employee to gain control of his own evaluation and make self-observations that his manager can reinforce. This partnership in performance management pairs the manager as a strong positive stimulus--as a reinforcer, and encourages Jim to take a self-management role in his own performance management.

One objective of Participative Behavior Management is to create a workplace in which managers and employees partner to reinforce and recognize value added behavior, another is to provide a employees with an empowered process that allows them to identify and influence their own behavior. We want employees to know how to identify and manage their own behavior; that is the ultimate objective of Participative Behavior Management..

The Emotional Roots of Employee Engagement

2009-01-25T08:43:00.004-05:00

Neuroscience and neuropsychologist—through new technologies like magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), positron emission topography (PET), and wave analysis can study reward and fear centers in the brain—in real time. The results of their research are finally being translated into management practices. The March, 2008, issue of H.R. Magazine has an article entitled, “The Brain at Work.” The article describes what happens in the brain when we have differing experiences at work—when someone says or does something positive or does something we don't like.

My perceptions of being fairly treated and respected are acquired one behavior at a time. If you say 10 thoughtlessly critical things to me, one positive comment does not lead me to feel respected. Many organizations are trying to use rewards and recognition strategies and management positive reinforcement policies to compensate for negative organizational strategies and policies or for dysfunctional supervisory-employee relations--circumstances that create negative employee emotions and disengagement. In the end, it does not work. It is expensive and you add a new problem; the institutionalization of tactics that do not solve your original problem and money off the bottom line.

Positive reinforcement, properly delivered, is a continuous source of performance-encouraging, relationship-building serotonin. The neurology of fairness and respect reside in one’s history of interactions with one’s boss. Sparse contact, little or no communication or feedback, autocratic social style—all this creates the context that makes transactional reinforcement (the occasional positive comment about one’s job) destructive instead of constructive.