The Business Sensei

What’s a Vote?

“Lord Nelson has a vote.”

“No Baldrick, Lord Nelson has a boat.”

                                               — Blackadder

In Blackadder’s London, some people may have a boat, but it seems that virtually no one has the vote. Today, of course, voting is a considerably more common occurrence than it was in Britain in the late 1700s, even if the results are not always quite as comic as they are when Rowan Atkinson gets his hands on the process. What, though, is a vote? We’ve determined that it’s not something in which one can sail, even if the process may sometimes leave people feeling a little seasick.

At root, voting is merely one of the six methods that a group can use to make a decision and move forward. Voting, or majority rule, is popular in large part because voting to make decisions is an obvious and central part of the larger culture of United States and other democracies.  In other words, it’s a culturally normative behavior.

Voting systems rely on several tacit assumptions: members of the group understand the issues; members are able to argue with one another effectively and resolve questions around the issues; members have developed a solid communications and social structure; members of the group will support the final decision reached by the group.

In small groups, these assumptions are often, though not always, valid provided that the group membership has developed fairly strong, trusting relationships with one another. As groups get larger, member connections become thinner and even the boundaries of group membership may become somewhat diffuse: it’s easy to see the boundaries of a specific department in a company, while it’s much harder to define the exact boundaries of a group such as “Red Sox fans.”

When the assumptions that underlie voting are violated, the voting system starts to break down in various ways. The most common, and obvious, breakdown is that the debate moves from a battle over ideas to a battle over votes: I don’t have to come up with good ideas so long as I can sell my ideas better than you can sell your ideas. Alternately, perhaps I can call the vote by surprise so your side won’t have enough people there, lock your allies in the restroom while the vote is being held, or otherwise take away your ability to influence the outcome of the vote. There’s a reason why many organizations have explicit rules requiring quorums and prior announcements of when a vote is going to be held, as well as rules specifying who gets to vote.

Claiming that the vote was rigged in some way is often a variant on the voter suppression approach: it’s a way of not facing the unpleasant reality that maybe most of the people didn’t like my ideas. In a large group, it’s particularly easy to perceive a vote as rigged if you happen to be surrounded by people who are voting as you are. This creates a false sense of unanimity as the local echo chamber reinforces the idea that “everyone” supports your view. This makes the actual result all the more shocking. The fact that sometimes a vote can be rigged does complicate this issue; fortunately, the larger the scale of the voting process, the harder that is to do.

Losers of a vote may also try to protect their ideas by consciously or unconsciously sabotaging the majority result: if the decision turns out to be “wrong,” even if because some members of the group kept it from working, then the losing party in the vote can claim that the group should have chosen their option instead. This behavior manifests in small groups fairly often, and can sometimes force the group to reconsider its decisions. Sometimes, though, the behavior is purely a means of saying, “see I was right all along!” even as the entire group fails. I worked for a startup or two many years ago that failed in part because of this type of behavior. For some people, being right was more important than being successful.

Depending on how the voting rules are set up, a majority rules system can degenerate into a minority rules system. Minority rule is another group decision making method, although frequently a dysfunctional one. In minority rule, the group adopts a decision supported by, as the name would imply, a minority of the group. Sometimes this is due to railroading the vote and not giving anyone a chance to object, sometimes minority rule is the result of each person assuming that they are the only ones who have doubts about a course of action, and so not speaking up. Sometimes, minority rule can result from a plurality voting system in which only a single vote will be held and multiple choices leave one option with more votes than any single one of the others, although less than half of the total. Some systems allow for subsequent rounds of voting with only the top finishers or have some form of preferential balloting in order to avoid this problem. Minority rule can also result from voter suppression or indifference.

Voting systems can also break down as individual people try to deal with the choices in front of them. Groups may move through a series of votes in order to reduce a large set of options down to a smaller number: in a sense, the group is sorting out its priorities and feelings about the different choices, making a series of decisions on potentially superficial criteria in order to reduce the decision space to something more manageable. At any point in this process, not all members of the group will always like the set of options that the group is considering. Sometimes this is because the group has already eliminated their favorite option; sometimes, it’s because members may not want to accept that other options are infeasible, impractical, or otherwise unavailable: members of a jury get to vote on each individual charge, but not on anything that wasn’t part of the court case, regardless of their feelings on the matter. Sometimes the group as a whole simply didn’t know about or care to investigate particular options that some members feel strongly about. In all of these cases, and others that you can probably imagine, individuals are left with a menu of choices that they might not like.

Group members may drop out of the process as their favorite options are eliminated, particularly if their only interest in the vote is a particular decision or outcome; depending on circumstances, this could represent a form of tunnel vision, as those members forget about the larger goals of the group and become stuck on one specific outcome. This can also be a form of trying to prove the majority wrong, as discussed above.  In some cases, other group members may become more invested later in the process, either because they didn’t care much which option was selected so long as they have a voice near the end, or because they realize that the vote isn’t going the way they expected.

The problem at this point is that, all too often, everyone involved in the voting process is totally focused on the choices and the process, not on the point of voting: it’s to make a decision that lets the group select a course of action that will, at least in the opinions of enough members, advance its goals. Which goals get prioritized is, in a very real sense, a consequence of the voting process: each decision, that is, vote, that the group makes is implicitly or explicitly prioritizing some goals over others. That’s it. A vote is nothing more than a decision making tool. That decision will have consequences of course, but so does not making any decision. Some voting systems allow for a non-decision, or “none of the above,” choice, which can force the group to go back and reevaluate the options. That can work well in situations where the decision is low urgency and the cost of redoing the process is low. Other systems, such as US Presidential elections, are designed to force a decision within a specific time frame. The implicit assumption is that it’s better to make some decision than no decision: no matter what the outcome, someone will become president.

In a small group, members might refuse to support any of the available options. If enough members make clear their unwillingness to support any option, this can force the group to reevaluate its decision space. However, this really does depend on how many group members feel this way: if it’s a small enough minority, the group will go ahead anyway. Holdouts who then refuse to support the outcome will often leave the group if they disagree deeply enough, or may be forced out by the rest of the group.

In a large group, it’s much easier to avoid supporting any of the available choices. This is particularly true with a secret ballot voting system: secret ballots make it easier for people to vote as they wish, but also make it easier to disengage from the moral consequences of a bad group decision. The larger the group, the less any individual feels responsible for the overall outcome. Thus, a group member can vote for an unlikely outcome, write in an outcome not on the presented list, or not vote at all, and simultaneously feel like their action is disconnected from the final result. This disconnect makes it easier to not feel guilt over a group decision that hurts other people and also not feel guilt over profiting from a group decision that they might have refused to support. This is particularly true in the plurality/minority rule systems discussed earlier. Arguably, though, all members of the group share in the responsibility for the decision and subsequent actions that result from it, particularly if they are in a position to benefit from those decisions.

Ultimately, voting is a tool that enables a group to make a decision, sometimes whether or not members of the group want to make a decision at that time or whether or not they like the (available) options. Sometimes what counts is that the decision be made and the group move on. Voting is thus a very powerful tool. As with all power tools, improper use may result in injury to the social structure of the group or potentially some members thereof.

What a Hissing Cat Teaches Us About Teamwork

One of our cats recently needed a course of antibiotics. Now, this particular cat is quite large, but also very sweet and has a purr that would put a motorboat to shame. Giving her pills is really a very simple task: pop the pill in her mouth, give her a treat, and we’re done. She never runs away, never puts up a fight, just gives me a dirty look and then gobbles up the treat. Thus it was that when we realized that we’d be out of town for a few days during the cat’s course of antibiotics, we didn’t think it would be all that big of a deal to have a friend come in and give the cat her pill.

As it turned out, the cat had a different opinion about this. The first night we were gone, we were treated to a series of text messages detailing the ongoing adventures of the friend who had come by to pill the cat. Apparently our sweet lump of a cat had transformed into Demon Kitty. She was loudly expressing her opinion, while ducking under pieces of furniture and also demonstrating her willingness to remove any human limb that happened to come in after her. At the first opportunity, she dodged past our friend and disappeared.

She did not get her pill that night. On the other hand, our friend was intact.

The next morning went somewhat better. Eventually, the cat did agree to eat the pill. The basic problem was that the cat didn’t really know the friend who came over, but once she came by the house a couple of times, the cat began to accept her. At that point, there was a relationship and the cat was willing to submit to being pilled. Cats don’t like people they don’t know sticking things down their throats or doing other unpleasant things to them. They don’t necessarily like it when someone they do know is doing it, but at least they are more likely to tolerate it.

Cats are suspicious of people they don’t know. They approach carefully, if at all. They want to take their time getting to know the person before they will tolerate much, if any, contact. Although we are less likely to hide under chairs hissing and spitting, people are surprisingly similar to cats. We are also suspicious of people we don’t know, although we do a better job of hiding it than a cat might. I’m not sure whether this says something profound about people or cats!

Like cats, we have a variety of social rituals and behaviors that we use when we meet someone new. These behaviors are the moral equivalent of cats sniffing at each other and checking each other out. These behaviors become increasingly important when a team is coming together, when a new leader is assigned to a team, or when a new person joins an existing team. In each of these cases, different members of the group need to build relationships with each other.

At first, those relationships are professional: distant, polite, and, above all, superficial. No one is quite sure of where they stand or what behavior is appropriate. What will offend someone else? What will embarrass us or another person? Which behaviors will help us gain status and acceptance, and which behaviors might get us thrown out of the group? Push people too hard at that point and the reaction can be quite strong. Think about groups you’ve been in: how often did you find yourself agreeing with an idea or a suggestion because you assumed that other people knew better or because you didn’t want to upset anyone? How often did what seemed like a simple suggestion or off-hand comment provoke an unexpectedly angry or intense response? Conversely, think about who has the right to criticize you: people whom you know well, or people whom you don’t? Superficial relationships produce lower quality work.

It takes time for those relationships to move from keeping people at a safe distance to actually engaging with the other person at a deeper, more productive level. It’s easy to say that in the office we need to focus on the issues, not the person, but it’s hard to do. The less we feel we have good relationships with our colleagues, the more we’re likely to feel that they are trying to shove something down our throat. It’s only after we’ve been working with them for a few months that we might really start to develop a sense of trust and comfort. That’s assuming, of course, that the process is handled correctly. Try to rush it, and it only takes longer. That sense of trust and comfort is vital, though, for actually doing high quality work.

As with cats, we have to take it slowly. Everyone involved has to recognize that mistakes will happen. So long as you don’t take anyone’s head off, it is the process of making mistakes and recovering from them that actually builds the relationship. Of course, sometimes it doesn’t work. Sometimes the cat runs and hides. Sometimes the relationship gets destroyed and people flee the team or the company. But the only way to achieve high quality relationships, and do high quality work as a team, is to take the risk of being scratched.

Unity of Crisis

Marvel Comic’s Avengers are a pretty impressive bunch. Thor, Captain America, Ironman, and the Hulk make a fearsome combination: Captain America is practically indestructible, Thor flies around throwing lightning, Ironman, aka Tony Stark, is like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs rolled into one, and the Hulk is, well, the Hulk. When it comes to fighting off alien invasions, these guys have power to spare. That’s a good thing, because impressive as they are individually, as a team they aren’t so hot. Their inability to coordinate well would have been a total disaster if they hadn’t had such tremendous power and a friendly script writer in the basement to back them up. In fact, after watching them in action, it’s easy to understand why Samuel L. Jackson’s character, Nick Fury, is bald.

But wait! Sure, the Avengers have their issues, but they do pull together and beat off the invasion. They may have been at each other’s throats earlier in the movie, but aren’t they a team by the end? What’s the problem?

Fundamentally, the problem is that the Avengers are not really ever a team; rather, they are a group of people, more or less, who are able to agree that working together is less awful than the alternative. That, as the poet said, is not exactly a ringing endorsement! Even without Loki’s mind games, they were already barely civil to one another. He merely accentuated what was already happening, pushing them into open conflict.

The Avengers, of course, are fiction. Sadly, this unity of crisis is not. A common problem in business settings are teams whose members barely interact until the pressure of the oncoming deadline forces them to work together at least enough to get something out the door. At one company, this non-interaction took the form of endless debates and decisions that were revisited every week or two. At another company, the team ended up dominated by a couple of loud members, while the rest simply tried not to be noticed. In neither situation was there productive debate, problem solving, or effective decision making; unlike the Avengers, the motions they went through were not particularly dramatic or exciting. On the bright side, again unlike in the movie, no flying aircraft carriers were harmed.

When I’m speaking on organizational development, it’s at about this point that someone interrupts to tell me that they are communicating: they are sending email. Don’t get me wrong; email is a wonderful tool. However, it’s not some sort of magic cure-all. When I actually sit down with groups to look at their communications patterns, we quickly find out that while emails may be sent to everyone in the group, they are really only for the benefit of the team lead. Quite often, the email chain quickly becomes an echo chamber or an electronic trail useful only to prove a point or hurt a competitor when reviews come around.

The challenge every team faces is helping its members learn to communicate. It seems so simple: after all, everyone is speaking the same language. As we see in the Avengers, though, that is not entirely true. While the words all may sound the same, each person is bringing their own perspectives, assumptions, and beliefs to the table. Moreover, each person is bringing their own assumptions about what the goals are and the best way to accomplish them. Also, not unlike the Avengers, there is often a certain amount of friction between different team members. While most business teams do not explode into physical violence, the verbal equivalent does occur. Unlike the Avengers, when that happens many teams simply fall apart. Although the Avengers avoid that fate, it was close. While that experience may be exciting in a movie, I find that most business leaders would rather skip the drama.

So what can be done to create real unity, instead of a unity of crisis? To begin with, it takes time. Sorry, but just like baking a cake, if you simply turn up the temperature of the oven, all you get is a mess. Teams are the same: if you rush, you still spend the same amount of time but with less to show for it.

Assuming that you use your time well, it is particularly important for the team lead to set the tone: invite questions and discussions, but also be willing to end debate and move on. At first, team members will be happy to have the leader end the debate; eventually, though, they’ll start to push back. That’s good news: your team is coming together and starting to really engage. Now you can start really dissecting the goals of the team, and really figure out the best ways of doing things. Start letting the team members make more of the decisions, although you may have to ratify whatever they come up with for the decision to be accepted. Encourage questions and debate, but do your best to keep your own opinions to yourself: the process of learning to argue well isn’t easy and if the team members realize you have a preference, the tendency is for the team to coalesce around that preference. Alternately, the team may simply resist your choice just because it’s coming from you. Better to not go there.

A unity of crisis can be very useful for a one off event, such as saving the world from an alien invasion. But for more mundane, ongoing, projects, real unity is a far better outcome.

Stephen Balzac is an expert on leadership and organizational development. A consultant, author, and professional speaker, he is president of 7 Steps Ahead, an organizational development firm focused on helping businesses get unstuck. Steve is the author of “The McGraw-Hill 36-Hour Course in Organizational Development,” and “Organizational Psychology for Managers.” He is also a contributing author to volume one of “Ethics and Game Design: Teaching Values Through Play.” For more information, or to sign up for Steve’s monthly newsletter, visit www.7stepsahead.com. You can also contact Steve at 978-298-5189 or steve@7stepsahead.com.

The Efficient Light Bulb: A Productivity Fable

This is an excerpt from my new book, Organizational Psychology for Managers.

Once upon a time, there was a light bulb. This light bulb was quite a remarkable light bulb: it was praised far and wide for its incredible efficiency. This light bulb gave off no waste heat. This light bulb did not contribute to global warming. It had no carbon footprint.  It did not rely on fossil fuels. Truly, it was an amazing light bulb and visitors came every day to see this remarkable light bulb.

One day, though, a traveler coming to see the light bulb in action was delayed by an unfortunate flood that closed several roads. He did not arrive until well after night had fallen. Much to his surprise, he found the light bulb sitting in a pitch dark room.

“Why aren’t you giving light?” asked the traveler.

“Give light!” replied the light bulb in shocked tones. “You must be joking. If I did that, I would use fossil fuels. I would have a carbon footprint. I would give off waste heat. I would no longer be efficient.”

“But isn’t the purpose of a light bulb to give light?” asked the traveler.

“I’ve always been told to be efficient,” replied the light bulb with a shrug. If you have never seen a light bulb shrug, it is truly a wonder to behold. The traveler would have been amazed, except, of course, that the room was too dark for him to see the miraculous event.

Once upon a time, there was a software company named “Soak, Inc.” Soak’s product relied upon a very complex database server. One day, the VP of Engineering stormed into the office and declared, “The server is too slow. We need to speed it up.”

From that day forth, every effort was focused on improving the speed of the server. Other issues were deemed insignificant beside the one, critical, goal of performance. Engineers who dared to raise other issues were publically humiliated for wasting the company’s time. Bugs that did not relate to performance issues were deemed “optional.” People who spent time reviewing the optional bugs and trying to fix them were warned that their insubordination would cost them their jobs if it did not cease immediately.

Eventually, Soak developed an amazingly efficient server. It was fast. It was robust. It was ready to demonstrate to potential clients.

The demo started out remarkably well. The server did not crash, causing some to believe that this couldn’t actually be a demonstration of a software product. Indeed, the server performed flawlessly. All would have gone well indeed for Soak had not someone noticed that the data being delivered by the server didn’t make sense. Yes, what the server had gained in performance it had lost in accuracy. In other words, it was incredibly good at very rapidly delivering useless or incorrect information.

When the engineers were questioned about this unfortunate oversight, they shrugged and replied, “We were told to be efficient.”

While it is not nearly as amazing to see an engineer shrug as it is to see a light bulb shrug, the effects are much the same.

At Soak, a goal was set, a metric for success was defined, and that metric became the sole determinant of progress. Goals are extremely powerful tools: the best thing about them is that you accomplish them. Unfortunately, sometimes the worst thing about goals is that you accomplish them. At Soak, they accomplished their goals. A dead light bulb is extremely efficient, but not useful. Similar observations can be made about the server.

Before leaping into setting a goal, especially a goal to solve a problem, it helps to understand the actual problem and to understand what the actual symptoms are. Rather than create useful goals, they fixated on a symptom. That did not, however, actually change anything.

At Soak , the VP stated that they were trying to solve the problems his company was facing as rapidly and effectively as possible. They were setting goals. They were Taking Action! Taking action is certainly helpful, but it is even more helpful to be taking the correct action. Since it’s not always possible to determine just what the correct action is, it becomes even more critical to listen to the feedback and questions from the people who are charged with actually executing the action. The engineers knew that something was wrong, but no one was willing to listen to them. As we will discuss shortly, a key aspect of successful goal setting is understanding the feedback you’re getting.

I realize that many of you reading this are probably chuckling to yourselves and thinking that this scenario could never happen at your companies. The folks at Soak said the same before, during, and even after it happened to them. The light bulb had no comment.

Productivity seems like such a simple thing. Somehow, though, it never is. As we have already discussed, cognitive shortcuts such as the Halo Effect can influence how productive we perceive someone to be. Ultimately, the only real way to measure productivity is through understanding goals and knowing how to construct goals so that they will actually get you what you want. Otherwise, you may just end up with a dead light bulb.

After it was released, Organizational Psychology for Managers sold out in two days at Amazon.com. Order your copy now.

Understanding Hierarchy

This is an excerpt from my upcoming book, Organizational Psychology for Managers.

While I was writing this, I was asked the question, “How important is hierarchy on a team? I’ve been told it’s a problem. I’m responsible for 160 people, and I don’t know what I’d do without a hierarchy.”

Hierarchy is a tool. Whether it works for you or against you depends on how well you understand your tool and the situation in which you are using it. For my friend who has to manage 160 people, some sort of hierarchy is essential: without it, he’d swiftly be overwhelmed.

Hierarchy is a way of organizing and structuring a system. In a typical martial arts school, the hierarchy of belts provides each student a quick visual assessment of who knows what. This can make it easier for students to ask questions or know whom to imitate: learning is enhanced when we can imitate someone we see as similar to us. That person who is one belt ahead is easier to see as “like me” than the person who is many years and belts advanced. The hierarchy also provides visual feedback of the student’s progress, a key component of maintaining motivation.

One of the key roles of the military ranking system is providing a method of coordinating precision operations. It does this by, amongst other things, providing clear rules for whom to listen to and under what circumstances and managing transitions of power should a leader be abruptly removed or cut off from the team. Like the belt system in martial arts, it also provides visual feedback of progress.

In a large organization, hierarchy provides a structured way to know where you are in your career, an easy way to identify nominal skill levels, and a means of coordinating different business activities.

However, when hierarchies become inflexible or bureaucratic, they can easily turn into obstacles. Small companies that attempt to impose rigid, large company hierarchies are asking for trouble: they don’t need the overhead and lack of flexibility that hierarchies can create. A small business’s biggest strength is that it can shift course quickly. A large company, on the other hand, is slower to change but has more resources. It is silly and counterproductive for a small business to impose large company hierarchy and thereby give up its flexibility when it doesn’t have the resources to take advantage of that hierarchy.

Even in larger organizations, the structure needs to be flexible enough to permit good information flow up and down the hierarchy. Too rigid an adherence to hierarchy will reduce productivity and motivation and stifle innovation.

Hierarchy needs to be built out carefully, in accordance with the narrative, goals, and needs of the organization. Make sure you clearly identify what each level of the hierarchy means and how people move up. Periodically review your hierarchical structure and make sure it is still serving you, and not the other way around.

What Are You Avoiding?

The amazing thing about train wrecks is that they are obvious in hindsight. However, while they are happening, everyone involved is gripped by some horrid fascination that, if not forcibly interrupted, leads to the inevitable conclusion.

By the end of this particular train wreck, a member of the senior management team had resigned and the CEO had lost the trust of many of his formerly extremely loyal employees.

The newly hired VP of Sales was given responsibility for supervising a particular product manager, someone who had been with the company for years. They did not hit it off and the relationship went downhill from there.

The PM was charged by the CEO with getting a particular release of the software out the door. The VP of Sales wanted the project manager to be working on something else. The CEO kept promising to straighten things out with the VP of Sales, but never quite got around to it.

The VP of Sales became ever more frustrated with the constant “insubordination” of the PM; the PM, meanwhile, was increasingly frustrated with getting one set of instructions from the VP and one from the CEO.

The VP of Sales eventually went to the CEO and told him that he was planning to fire an employee. The CEO shrugged and didn’t think much about it. “It’s your department,” was his only response.

The VP told the project manager to leave, that she was suspended without pay pending completion of the paperwork to fire her.

At this point, the CEO noticed that the PM wasn’t in the office, found out what was going on, and “unfired” her. While she was happy to be unfired, she was also furious that he’d let it get to that point. The VP of Sales, meanwhile, was just a tad miffed. He felt he’d received carte blanche and ended up feeling much like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football as Lucy jerks it away.

The CEO’s attitude was that, “these things just happen.” He was, of course, wrong.

Teams are not a group of people operating in their own silos, independent of one another. Rather, they are an interacting system and sometimes parts of that system don’t work quite the way they should. When something goes wrong, it’s important understand the system and how different players contributed to the problem.

The Project Manager was nobly perhaps, but foolishly, focused on the assignment she’d received from the CEO. Her attempts to explain to the VP of Sales just why she wasn’t focusing on his objectives were either insufficient or simply missing. She may have assumed that the CEO would explain things to him, but didn’t force the issue when it became obvious that he hadn’t.

The VP of Sales walked into the company and made a number of assumptions about how work was done and how authority was implemented. Rather than take the time to find out how people worked in the company, how rigid or flexible the lines of control were, and what other projects might be going on, he assumed that an employee put into his department could be assigned to his projects. He didn’t listen to the PM and he never made the effort to go to the CEO and found out what was going on. He assumed the CEO was paying attention to issues in his department that were, quite simply, not where the CEO’s mind was. Even when he went to the CEO to explain that he wanted to fire someone, he didn’t bother to explain the situation.

The CEO, for his part, also contributed in a major way to the final, unsatisfying outcome. He knew he was giving an employee instructions that might contradict what her manager was telling her. He also knew the project manager was extremely frustrated with her new manager. He didn’t act on that knowledge. He was busy, and explaining things to the VP of Sales was not a high priority for him. Even once the situation had reached its climax and the project manager had been fired, the CEO didn’t really address the problem. He simply pulled the rug out from under the VP of Sales and did not consider how that might make the VP look to his other subordinates.

At every stage of the game, the CEO, the PM, and the VP of Sales each had opportunities to address issues that each of them wanted to avoid: the CEO didn’t really want to deal with the disappointment of the PM at having her project cancelled, nor did he want to upset his new VP of Sales. The PM did not want her project cancelled and really wasn’t all that interested in the project the VP of Sales wanted her to take on. The VP of Sales had his own views about power and authority and didn’t really want to find out that the company did things differently than he believed they should be done. He was angry, blamed the PM, and wanted to punish her.

Right up to the end, stopping to address the unpleasant issues and recognizing how each person was contributing to the impending train wreck could have changed the results. Instead, each person operated in a vacuum, and managed to achieve one of the worst of all possible results.

What difficult situations or awkward conversations are people in your office avoiding?

The Seven Habits of Pointy-Haired Bosses

Scott Adams, of Dilbert fame, routinely features tales of bumbling managers. The popularity of Dilbert, and the degree to which it resonates with people, are a testament to his accuracy; indeed, Dilbert’s pointy-haired boss has become an iconic figure. Dilbert aside, however, I have observed that very few leaders intentionally act like the pointy-haired boss depicted in the comic strip. Rather, they engage in pointy-haired behaviors without realizing the effect they are having on the organization as whole. Let’s explore some examples of such behaviors and their unintended consequences.

1. Pointy-haired bosses break their own rules and figure either no one will notice or no one will mind because they are in charge. In one company, the CEO called everyone together to talk about the importance of really working hard and putting personal needs to one side in order to ship a product. At the end of the talk, he announced he was leaving for a two week vacation in Hawaii and wished everyone good luck. This did not go over well. One vice-president, who had apparently not been warned, almost choked on his coffee. When the CEO came back, two people had quit and the rest were up in arms.

2. The pointy-haired boss believes that he is separate from the group he leads. In fact, leaders are also group members, with a very important and well-defined role. Through their actions, leaders set the norms for their group. For example, the manager of a team at a large software company imposed a $.25 penalty for being late to meetings. When he was subsequently late himself, the team gleefully demanded he pay up. After a brief stunned moment, he tossed a quarter into the pot. No one complained about the fine after that. What the leader does is directly mirrored in the organization. When leaders find that employees are not living up to the standards of the organization, they often need to look in a mirror and see what example they are setting.

3. Pointy-haired bosses fail to recognize the culture they are creating. To be fair, it’s hard to see your own culture from the inside, and despite what many managers and CEOs believe, culture is formed not from what you say but from what you do. As MIT’s Ed Schein observes, “Culture is the residue of success: success in dealing with external challenges and success in internal advancement.” What behaviors are successful in the organization? What behaviors are rewarded? The very behaviors that people tell me they want to change are frequently the ones they are encouraging.”

4. Pointy-haired bosses lack an understanding of group/team dynamics. They like to say that their organization is “different,” and the research on group dynamics doesn’t apply. That’s like the people in early 2000 who said about the stock market that “This time, it’s different.” If you’re dealing with people, patterns repeat. It pays to recognize the patterns and understand how they are manifesting in your specific situation.

5. Pointy-haired bosses are often unable or unwilling to create a clear, compelling vision for their organization that gets everyone involved and excited. The best way to attract and retain top talent is to make people care about what the company is doing. That’s best done through painting a vivid picture of the outcome and creating clear goals.

6. Pointy-haired bosses motivate through short-term rewards and/or intimidation. They assume they know what their employees want, rather than taking the time to ask or to observe how people are responding. Short-term rewards and intimidation generate short-term spikes in performance, but build neither loyalty nor the desire to go the extra mile. Unfortunately, far too many people are willing to sacrifice the longer-term performance of their team for a short-term gain. In one company, the head of engineering “motivated” employees by inviting them to join him for happy hour in a bar on Friday nights. Had he asked, he would have realized that what the team wanted on Friday nights was to go home and have dinner with their families. Instead of motivating the team, he made them feel imposed upon.

Finally,

7. Pointy-haired bosses do not believe in asking for or accepting help. It’s not about asking for help, it’s about investing time and money to enable the company to accomplish its goals. The boss’s time is a resource; skilled leaders invest their time and the time and money of their business where that will produce the best return. Sometimes the best return is obtained by investing in an employee, sometimes by investing in a contractor.

Very few leaders deliberately engage in these Pointy-haired boss behaviors. Rather, their behaviors are the result of their own corporate success story. Therefore, for all that even one or two Pointy-haired boss behaviors can derail an organization, behaviors acknowledged to be counter-productive are very difficult to eradicate. Nevertheless, the ability of a manager or CEO to recognize these failings and invest in changing themselves is the true test of great leadership.

Less Than a Duck

Some years ago, I had the rather dubious pleasure of watching an organization implode. Arguments, recriminations, people leaving, the works. What had happened? Well, it seems that salary information for a certain employee, let’s call him Fred, got out. Now Fred was a decent enough employee but, at least in the opinion of the rest of the department, he didn’t deserve to be paid significantly more than the rest of them. Unfortunately, he was being paid significantly more, for no clear reasons. There was Fred and then there was everyone else. The general feeling by everyone else was that Fred’s work simply didn’t deserve the greater pay despite his having the word “Senior” as part of his title.

This perception of unfairness caused no end of problems. Management’s response didn’t help. While they did make some attempt to deal with the facts of the situation, they failed to address the real problem: a great many employees no longer felt that the system was fair. That lack of fairness, in turn, undermined trust and things went down hill from there.

Now, the fact is, all organizations need to have metrics for determining raises, deciding whom to promote or punish, resolve conflicts, give awards, and on. Sometimes the methodology is crystal clear, sometimes not so much. Either approach can work, provided that the process appears to be fair. At IBM under Tom Watson Jr., while the guy with the PhD might get a higher starting salary than the guy without one, if they did the same quality of work then after a couple of years they’d be getting paid approximately the same amount. Whether or not this is literally true, certainly IBMers at the time believed it to be true. The process was perceived to be fair.

Fairness, of course, is itself a funny thing. What is fair? Well, most Americans consider a trial to be fair provided evidence is presented and the accused has the right to face her accusers. Justice that appears arbitrary or capricious will generally evoke reactions ranging from discomfort to outrage. Of course, sometimes an outcome that doesn’t match our perceptions of justice will also trigger such reactions, as in the OJ Simpson trial. Most often, though, we expect the process to be fair even if it occasionally fails to deliver the results we want: if the process by which raises are given is perceived to be fair, then we know that over time our pay will be commensurate with our work, even if we didn’t get a raise this particular time around.

In the classic comedy, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, there is a scene early in the movie where a woman is accused of being a witch. Now, as everyone knows, you determine if someone is really a witch by throwing them in the water: if they drown, they’re innocent and if they float they’re guilty. Sir Bedevere then launches into a bit of brilliant logic in which he determines that since witches float and ducks float, if the woman weighs less than a duck, she must be a witch. When they put her on the scales with a duck, she does, indeed, weigh less than the duck (possibly due to an appropriately placed thumb). This may not be a particularly fair system of justice, but at least the Python version was funny.

Of course, Holy Grail is a movie. It’s not reality. Fortunately, we don’t have to look very hard to find a real life example of a process that many people perceive to be unfair: the recent USADA claim that Lance Armstrong doped and the recommendation that he be stripped of his seven Tour de France titles.

Now, before I go any further, I should make it clear that I’m not a competitive cyclist, I don’t know Lance Armstrong personally, and I have no inside knowledge of whether or not he doped. My concern here is with the process, not the outcome. My analysis is based purely on the information provided in the newspaper articles I’ve been reading about the case.

The system appears unfair exactly because it violates the maxims of how many people are conditioned to think about justice: for one, there is no physical evidence. Lance Armstrong has never failed a drug test. Although USADA claims to have physical evidence, they also won’t let anyone see it. Since they are a private organization, they aren’t bound by legal rules of evidence; however, the fact that they have the right to withhold the evidence doesn’t mean that the perception of such behavior is favorable.

It’s worth noting that the US government recently concluded a two year investigation into the doping allegations leveled against Armstrong and ended up dropping the case due to lack of evidence. This makes USADA’s claim seem even more baseless. Even the argument that Armstrong made so much money riding his bike that he could afford to fool the government is hard to swallow: professional baseball players make just a tiny bit more than professional cyclists and the government was able to find plenty of evidence in those cases.

One of the conversations that, sadly, happens all too frequently in many businesses goes something like this:

Manager: I hear you haven’t been a good team player.

Employee: What are you talking about? I’m constantly helping the team. Who said that?

Manager: That’s what people say.

Employee: Which people?

Manager: I can’t tell you.

Employee: What was the situation?

Manager: It’s not important. What matters is that they say you aren’t a good team player.

This is particularly frustrating for the employee who may have no clue what the claims are about and certainly cannot address the specific issues. In fact, in the situations I’ve dealt with, the most common reason for the complaint is a misunderstanding that could have been easily resolved if the two people had spoken. Less common, but hardly unheard of, is someone making a complaint in order to bring down a high flyer or to advance a personal agenda. At one Massachusetts company, employees figured out that if there was even a hint of disagreement with another employee, file a complaint with management. The first complainer always won.

Going back to the USADA example, one of the points I’ve seen mentioned over and over is that much of their case is based on hearsay evidence from riders whom USADA threatened to ban if they didn’t testify against Armstrong. Exactly who those riders are, however, is unclear since USADA won’t release the names. While they may have perfectly valid reasons for having secret witnesses, the behavior is one that is easily perceived to violate cultural norms of fairness.

In a situation such as a professional sport, the perception of fairness in administering drug claims may not be all that important. It’s not impossible to make a reasonable argument that what matters is getting the cheaters, just as some people might argue that a trial is unnecessary when we know someone is guilty. Of course, this begs the question of what happens when you make a mistake (as an aside, while I’ve met many people who seriously support the maxim of guilty when accused, those who have subsequently been the target of an accusation always seem to feel they should be the exception to that rule). In a business, mistakes of this nature can lead to expensive litigation or to difficulties retaining and hiring top people. When there is a perception that your career can be derailed by a disgruntled coworker passed over for promotion or by a petty bureaucrat whose highest accomplishment is destroying others to advance his own career, it’s hard to be loyal to that organization or to trust your coworkers. Lack of loyalty decreases performance and job satisfaction, which leads to reduced revenue for the business, higher turnover, and a more expensive recruiting process. The perception of organizational justice has far reaching implications for the success of the business.

Stephen Balzac is an expert on leadership and organizational development. A consultant, author, and professional speaker, he is president of 7 Steps Ahead, an organizational development firm focused on helping businesses get unstuck. Steve is the author of “The 36-Hour Course in Organizational Development,” published by McGraw-Hill, and a contributing author to volume one of “Ethics and Game Design: Teaching Values Through Play.” Steve’s latest book, “Organizational Psychology for Managers,” is due out from Springer in 2013. For more information, or to sign up for Steve’s monthly newsletter, visit www.7stepsahead.com. You can also contact Steve at 978-298-5189 or steve@7stepsahead.com.

Following Prince Charming

“Don’t worry, I’ve got a solution to that.”

I was sitting across a table from Joe. We had just finished dinner and he was trying to convince me to join his new company. I had some doubts about the feasibility of what he was proposing.

“I really know this area,” he continued. “And I’ve already worked out several possible solutions. It won’t bottleneck the project.”

You couldn’t fault his confidence. He was calm, focused, and intent. He spoke with a definite air of authority. He knew how to start companies and he knew he knew it. A lack of self-esteem was not one of his problems.

Over the next two years, some odd events took place.

Although we had regular code reviews, somehow Joe’s code was never looked at. It’s not that he refused or said, “I’m the CEO, no one looks at my code.” Rather, he confidently reminded us of his expertise, and was always very willing to help others, or at least have the code review time be focused on more junior engineers.

Joe finally decided that writing code was taking away from his ability to do other CEO-like things. When we eventually got a look at his code, it was rather like a software house of horrors. He did things to software that should never be done. We now knew why we were seeing those weird bugs and mysterious problems.

As we came closer and closer to our ship date, we realized that one of the earliest problems had never been solved. Joe was working on that. He was always so calm, so confident, he projected such authority, that we never doubted that he’d deliver.

He didn’t.

Why hadn’t we pushed sooner for a solution? In hindsight, it seems like the obvious thing to have done. Yet, it never happened. Joe didn’t share information, especially information that he thought was valuable to him. He simply didn’t share so smoothly and with such charm that no one ever noticed.

The company folded. Joe, however, did extremely well for himself.

Joe looked like a leader. He acted the way leaders are supposed to act: calm, confident, authoritative. He was not, however, a particularly good leader. But he was very good at keeping anyone from realizing that until it was much too late.

Lest you think that this is a phenomenon reserved to small tech startups, let us consider a certain giant pharmaceutical company. In 2001, Pfizer’s board appointed Hank McKinnell CEO. McKinnell was widely perceived to be strong, confident, and charming, if sometimes abrasive. Rather than the last being seen as a negative, it was seen as strength: He was someone who could get things done. McKinnell had no lack of self-esteem. Karen Katen, the other candidate for CEO, was seen as quiet, but effective. However, she lacked, at least in the board’s estimation, the necessary authority and toughness to get things done.

Five years later, McKinnell’s confident, strong, charming, occasionally abrasive, style of leadership led Pfizer into serious financial trouble. The board forced McKinnell into retirement. However, don’t be too quick to offer Hank a hanky. He did quite well for himself. He did so well for himself, in fact, that Pfizer was hit with several shareholder lawsuits over the size of McKinnell’s compensation package.

A New Jersey woman once learned that her next door neighbor had been arrested as a spy. She famously commented that, “She couldn’t be a spy. Just look what she did with the hydrangeas.”

The pretty colors of the hydrangeas are a superb way of distracting people if you’re a spy. The moral equivalent of those colors can be a great distraction when you’re not exactly the best leader around. If you can look enough like a leader, you can often win the rewards that go with leadership and dodge the consequences of failure. Sometimes, you can dodge the consequences all the way to the top. The company, however, doesn’t get to dodge the consequences of that poor leadership: just ask Pfizer. Following Prince Charming can be extremely expensive for the organization.

So how do you tell the difference between a real leader and Prince Charming? It’s not enough to just look at results. Joe and Hank had a history of results. It’s just that when it really counted, their companies suffered while they profited. So, you really have to ask yourself some important questions:

Are Prince Charming’s methods sustainable? What is the burnout or turnover rate in his team, division, or department? The higher they are, the more likely you’re dealing with Charming.

What happens to his team, department, or division after he’s promoted or moves somewhere else? Does productivity increase? If it does, you should be asking why it wasn’t higher when Charming was in charge.

How does information move through Charming’s department? Is there a great deal of open discussion, a sharing of information, perspectives, and knowledge? Does the leader seek out input and invite people to challenge his ideas? If so, you have a real leader. If not, Prince Charming is in charge and odds are he’s so full of himself that he’s not going to listen to anything he doesn’t want to hear. Quite simply, a good leader facilitates discussion by asking questions and periodically summarizing the discussion. Prince Charming is too full of himself to do that. He’s only interested in what he has to say.

When you follow a real leader, the entire company benefits. When you follow Prince Charming only one person lives happily ever after. What steps do you have in place to make sure you have the real leaders in your company?

Help Star Performers Ramp up the Whole Team

Originally published in Corp! Magazine.

Do basketball players have hot hands? A hot hand in basketball is when a player is shooting better than normal. A star player with a hot hand is, therefore, going to be shooting incredibly well. Many players claim that it happens, and many statisticians point out that it doesn’t. The argument against basically says that when you look at the frequency that a missed shot follows a successful shot, you find that the whole “hot hand” thing is just an illusion. It may feel like something is happening, but the results don’t match.

The statisticians, however, are missing a key point: a basketball player is not on the court by himself. In other words, he’s not playing in isolation. When a player is shooting extremely well, the other team is going to put more effort into guarding him. Of course, if that’s correct, the extra effort expended guarding that star player should leave less available to guard other players on the team. In other words, the increased performance of a star should have the effect of increasing the performance of the entire team.

Once someone actually thought to ask that question and look at star performance in that context, the answer turned out to be that hot hands exist and that true star performers don’t just perform well on their own –they increase the performance of everyone on the team.

Star performers in a business setting are the same, or at least they can be. The trick is to set up your team so that star performers increase everyone’s productivity rather than just their own.

To begin with, what are your incentives? If you’re only rewarding team members for their individual performance, you’ve got a problem. You’ve told your star performer to make herself look as good as possible, even at the cost of other team members: Imagine a basketball team where each player was only concerned about his own personal record and not about whether the team won or lost. The fact is, such a team wouldn’t be all that successful. I’ve seen any number of software development teams, for example, structured in just that way, with exactly the expected results.

Part of what enables a star to be a star is the strength of the team. While it can be comforting to argue that focusing on individual incentives will weed out the weaker performers and leave you with the star players, that’s a bit like arguing that your basketball team only needs Michael Jordan. He’s a fantastic player, but even he can’t be everywhere on the court. Jordan is so good in part because he has a strong team supporting him. Conversely, the team is so good in part because of Jordan.

This brings us to the next point: how do people communicate on the team? This can be tricky: everyone sends emails around, but that doesn’t mean they are communicating. It’s important to look at the patterns of conversation and communication in the group: quite often, one person is the center of the wheel; even when a team member is ostensibly addressing the group, he’s really talking to that one person, and no one responds until that one person weighs in.

Related to communication is the question of how well your teams argue and makes decisions. A team which never argues is also incapable of making good decisions. Sure, they may get lucky once in a while: a blind basketball player might also sink the occasional basket. Effective decision making requires being able to debate issues, ask pointed questions, disagree strongly, and eventually come to a consensus that everyone can work with. Teams that can’t do that tend to not benefit from star power.

What is the boss’s attitude toward giving and receiving help? At one company, the manager who took over a particularly high performing team had the attitude that, “you do your job, and let the other guys take care of themselves.” Although the star performers continued to do relatively better than everyone else, overall productivity dropped off rapidly after that manager took over the team. People stopped helping each other. Conversely, in a different department, the manager who came in with the “we’re all in this together” attitude saw his team performance skyrocket. Although the best performers on his team were not as individually strong as the best performers on the first team, on the second team the stars really brought everyone else up, and everyone else really supported the stars. In basketball, five people working together will beat five people working apart.

Hot hands exist, in basketball and in virtually all other areas of team performance. It’s only a question of whether or not your team is set up to take advantage of them when they occur.