Archive for Rewards

What blocks our fulfilling success?

December 27, 2008 / / No comments

Earlier in this blog we talked about the hamster “wheel of fear,” that self-perpetuating spiral of fear and reaction that tends to lead us precisely where we don’t want to go.  We’ve been discussing some concepts and tools to help us live and work more consciously, proactively, and creatively, towards the goals we really want — our visions.

However, it is very common for people to feel blocked or stuck with repect to achieving their goals. It’s not that they don’t want them, it’s just that they don’t quite seem to ever move forward or achieve them. As the field of coaching has arisen to help people achieve their goals (whether it is to win a baseball game or lead a successful change initiative), it has developed some tools for helping people achieve them.

There are four basic reasons that people become blocked with respect to achieving goals (or in the process-oriented language that I prefer, “in living towards their goals and enjoying the moment — which is really all that we have”):

1. They aren’t motivated enough. They don’t really want the goal or are out of touch with the reasons they want it.  Perhaps the goal is a “should” for them.  For example, “I should exercise more.”  Or, they may want the goal but not be tuned into their motivation, their reasons and compelling emotions around the outcome.

2. They don’t know how to move forward. On a related note, they may lack the structures (situational cues) to support the actions they need to take.

3.  Circumstances are such that the goals could never be achieved.  Although this explanation is very common, it is very rarely true.  Rather, like the lab rats that, having repeatedly received a shock when they approached their food, later avoided it, even after the shocks were removed, many of our barriers are the result of our own, faulty beliefs (See #4).

4. They have conflicting beliefs and commitments — often below the level of conscious awarneness — that generate resistance and sabotage their progress. (See my upcoming post: “Why rational people do seemingly irrational things…”)

How do we determine the reason we are stuck? Sometimes it’s clear to us that we are missing needed information, for example, or we may be able to rule out some possibilities. For example, “there are no clear barriers, and I know what to do, I just can’t get started…” 

A nice tool for dealing with a lack of clarity on how to move forward is the “plan for a plan” — what do I need to know and how can I get the information. (Sometimes, when we are being truly creative, the project might entail multiple cycles of learning and doing — sometimes called the spiral model).

In contrast, “shoulds” and conflicting beliefs and commitments often have their roots in the subconscious. For me, one of the most juicy and interesting parts of coaching is surfacing these beliefs and holding them up to the light of day, as it is a very liberating process …

Category: All Posts, Change, Coaching, Leadership, Psychology, Rewards /

Success is a verb

December 18, 2008 / / No comments

In Western culture, we tend to be inclined to believe in and aim towards static and desireable future. In myths and fairy tailes, our heroes’ and heroines’ journies end in a static, experientially eternal state of bliss or pain. This is also a theme of monotheistic religions, which have shaped our worldview over the past several thousand years: life is often viewed as a journey to an eternity which is often painted as either homogenously wonderful or awful.

Such stories often shape our deepest and oldest beliefs and expectations of life. For example, I’ve known never-married women and men who believe that, if they find and marry the right person, that their lives will be happy and fulfilled ever after. Similarly, many Americans dream of a good retirement in which we will be passed all of the travails of our lives, and live our golden years in health, safety and fulfillment. Heaven is a place where we can lean back, wipe our brow, and finally exclaim, “We made it!”

As a result, we may be tempted to live for and in the future — for “someday.”

Intellectually, however, we know that it is never “someday”; it is always today. When we reach the top of the mountain, there is a new vista, and from that vista we set new goals. Life, in other words, is an ongoing process.  Myths and fairy tales are only able to maintain the illusion of future permanence by drawing a curtain at the end of the tale. If they continued to follow the characters through the remainder of their lives, we would find that life is characterized by change. When a biological organism stops changing, we can be sure that it is dead. Similarly, in the bigger picture, our cosmos also continues to change and evolve.

Along the same lines, we might observe that life isn’t composed of two parts, non-eternity and eternity: Logically, infinity plus 100 years (a nice, long human lifespan) still equals infinity. Therefore, to the degree that we acknowledge eternity, we might notice that eternity doesn’t start “later”; rather, here we are ….

It is human nature (and no doubt the nature of life in general) to move towards greater fulfillment. Studies have shown that the happiest people are those who feel they are making progress towards a goal. Imagining and living in the present, towards a desireable future is a necessary and fulfilling part of life.

However, our old, deep rooted belief in “ever after” can lead us, instead, to live “for the future,” effectively postponing our lives and preventing us from living fully in the present.

One manifestation of living for the future is an over-reliance on “left-brain” intellectual busyness and/or will power. Aside from draining the joy and vitality from life, this posture makes us less effective in the present. For example, we may become less aware of opportunities in the here and now, and also less creative.

Therefore, I submit that it would be a lot more fruitful if we began to think of success as a verb. Certainly there are goals to achieve, but if we think of success as a process, we open up more possibilities for effectiveness, creativity and enjoyment in the now. And, if as leaders, we can create environments in which success is a verb, we will increase intrinsic motivation (which we know is far superior than extrinsic motivation) for  ourselves and others.

Our cultural belief in “ever after” is an example of a subterranean belief — a belief that tends to exist and operate below that level of our conscious awareness. These beliefs can either support us in living towards our desireable future or they may block us. Because, as a coach, I’m interested in helping people achieve their fulfilling success, we will talk in much greater depth in this blog about these subterranian beliefs and how they shape our present (including how they can keep us on our “wheel of fear”).

For today, we might ask consider the question, what is our idea of success? Is it a static place defined by certain accomplishments or acquisitions, at which we hope to someday arrive (only to notice that that line and place keeps moving)? Or is it an attitude of living fully in the present, while continually moving in the direction of our heart’s desire?

Reflection

* Imagine success as a destination in the future. What emotions does that concept bring up for you? How present do you feel in your body? How present are you to your immediate surroundings and possibilities?

* Now imagine success as an orientation, a way of being in the present towards fulfilling goals. How would you live differently? How would your quality of life differ?

Category: All Posts, Change, Coaching, Creativity, Culture, Leadership, Partnership, Philosophy, Rewards, Vision / Tags: , ,

To your fulfilling success

December 14, 2008 / / No comments

One of my mentor-coaches, Lou D’Alo www.powerupcoaching.com signs his emails with the phrase, “To your fulfilling success.” I really appreciate this phrase, because it expresses a Partnership approach to success that encompasses both our qualititative experience — happiness and fulfillment  — and our quantitiative results. It feels richer and more complete.

An activity or state of being is especially fulfilling when we are living according to our inspired purpose, which encompasses our special gifts — those activities that give us joy. 

Whereas the term success has come to mean a kind of material and social status, a kind of cultural goal, or “should,” the expression “your fulfilling success” involves thriving in your own particular way — living the life and making the contribution that only you can make. When this becomes our way of life, and when we support others in living their own fulfilling success, we are living in Partnership.

In this blog, we will be continuing to explore concepts and ideas that support your fulfilling success.

Questions for Exploration
* What does the term “success” feel like to you?  How do you envision it?
* How does the term “fulfilling success” feel like to you?  What does it look like for you?
* What are the differences between the two for you?
* What possibilities or concerns arise for you as you contemplate the difference?

Category: All Posts, Coaching, Culture, Diversity, Partnership, Rewards, Values, Vision /

The Power of Situation – The Stanford Prison Experiment

August 19, 2008 / / No comments

The Stanford Prison Experiment was conducted by Professor Philip G. Zimbardo in 1971 at Stanford University to explore the question of the power of situation to shape the moral behavior of participants. The role play involved simulating a prison in the basement of one of the buildings at Stanford. The study recruited male college students in good mental health and no history of violence as volunteers and randomly assigned them roles as guards and prisoners. The simulation was made as realistic as possible: “prisoners” were arrested by actual police officers, the guards were given uniforms and the prisoners were made to wear prison attire. The professor assumed the role of prison superintendent.

The situation quickly deteriorated: When the prisoners rebelled on the morning of the second day, the guards asserted their dominance through increasingly sadistic punishments that prefigured the abuses later seen in Abu Garib. By the fifth day of the experiment, five of the students needed to be released due to extreme stress; the others collapsed into numbed and docile obedience.

Professor Zimbardo observes that his own perception also seems to have been distorted. It was only when a colleague, Assistant Professor Christina Maslach visited the “prison” and pointed out to him the awfulness of his actions in allowing the experiment to continue, that Zimbardo was fully able to appreciate its human cost. He had to pull the plug on the experiment after only six days.

As Zimbardo writes, “We had created a dominating behavioral context whose power insidously frayed the seemingly impervious values of compassion, fair play, and belief in a just world” (3).

This experiment demonstrates the enormous power of situation. We might notice that this situation included well-defined roles, characterized by a semi-permanent absolute power differential, established by a clear authority figure and reinforced with identifying uniforms. We can also notice how the setting itself also reflected and supported the roles and rules, and thus behavior.

Finally, we might notice how the setting, roles and uniforms helped to shape the perspectives that led to the behavior of both the guards and prisoners. 

So, at this point, we might observe that while it is true that perceptions shape roles, rules and settings, and it is also true that settings, roles and rules shape perception.  Together, they function as a self-reinforcing system or we can use the word paradigm. Because paradigms are “self-sealing” to borrow the term from Steve March’s blog, they seem obvious, commonsensical and “God-given.”

Our takeaway here is to notice another point of power that we have to shift off our wheel of fear and onto the wheel of freedom — to create a shift in paradigm — and that is to shift the settings, roles, and rules that shape behavior. 

Zimbardo, Philip G. “Revisiting the Stanford Prison Experiment: A Lesson in the Power of Situation.” The Chronicle Review, 53, no. 30, p. B6. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i30/30b00601.htm

Category: All Posts, Culture, Design, Ethics, Leadership, Organization, Partnership, Rewards, Values /

How perspective draws out or diminishes human potential

July 8, 2008 / / 2 comments

One famous experiment that really illustrates how perspective can draw out or diminish human potential is the experiment first conducted in the 1960s by American teacher Jane Elliott, who went on to become an anti-racism activist.  In this exercise, she praised brown-eyed children as “hardworking” and “intelligent,” and dismissed blue-eyed children as being innately less hardworking and intelligent. In light of that premise, she institutionalized a set of privileges for the “superior” and “more deserving” brown-eyed children, such as extra food at lunch, restricted access to a new jungle gym, and extra time at recess.  In contrast, brown-eyed children were not allowed to drink from the same water fountains and were made to wear a paper armband.

At first, the children resisted the new order. However, after Ms. Elliott provided the pseudo-scientific explanation that the greater intelligence and better work ethic of the brown-children was related to their higher levels of melanin, the children came to accept this view, with dramatic results. The “superior” brown-eyed children became arrogant and bossy and treated blue-eyed students with disrespect.

Even more dramatic was the effect on the self concept and performance of each group: The brown-eyed children began to perform better academically, even doing well in areas that had been difficult for them in the past. In contrast, the blue-eyed children performed more poorly, even in areas where they had previously done very well. They also became more timid and submissive.  

When Elliot reversed roles the following week, she received similar results, in reverse, although the discrimination was noticeably less acute: those who had experienced the pain of being deemed “inferior” seemed less inclined to inflict that experience on others. Eventually, of course, she concluded the experiment and the students experienced a rather emotional reconciliation…

It’s not difficult to see how a similar dynamic can be found with the whole range of “isms” (racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia, etc.).

This is not to say that we all have identical interests and aptitudes; but a key take away might be the extent to which perception, expectations and the structures we create actually invoke or suppress human potential.  This is also illustrated by the example in which a “low-performing” student was accidentally noted as being “gifted” in the transfer to a new grade. The new teacher, believing child was gifted, gave him/her attention, encouragement, challenge; the child excelled academically.

As leaders, the “halo” effect is a reality for us, isn’t it? And, in contrast, some people seem to do worse and worse.  How much is the person and how much is due to our own leadership style (or the culture or organizational environment)? 

Some questions that might be interesting to explore around this topic are:

* What is your perpective/perception regarding others in your organization (especially those over whom you have some power and influence)?

* Is anyone going “up” or “down”? What are the dynamics surrounding that?

* What beliefs do you have/does your organization have regarding superiority and inferiority of different people?

* How are these beliefs reflected in your organization structure?

In upcoming posts, we’ll explore some successful applications of this principle, going into greater depth on the dynamics. We’ll also explore how organizational structures and roles shape our personalities and experience, with an eye towards the practical implications for leaders and organizations…

Category: All Posts, Change, Communication, Culture, Design, Diversity, Education, Ethics, Leadership, Organization, Rewards /

Unwritten rules determine behavior

April 27, 2008 / / No comments

Executive coach Robert Hargrove (1995) asks, “Why do so few chief executives succeed at making their vision statements come alive, even when people agree with them intellectually and emotionally? Why are so many managers and employees frustrated, skeptical, and even cynical aobut their own ability to make something happen?” (107)

Hargrove interviewed Dr. Peter Scott-Morgan, an Arthur D. Little consultant, who offers a very straightforward explanation: everything people do makes sense if you understand the unwritten rules of the organization.  For example, in 1990, a team at Ford Motor Company took a new “learning” approach to building the next generation Lincoln Continental. Despite bringing the new product to market substantially faster and reducing defects in the new car by 20% and thereby saving $65 million dollars, the manager of the project was “passed over for promotion and given early retirement.” Why? Because his organization broke the unwritten rule at Ford of talking openly about problems, which was thought to reflect poorly on his organization. The project was a practical success and a political failure. (108)

Other examples are the CEO who talks about the importance of collaboration and team work, yet rewards members of his or her team based on the size of their organizations or bases their bonuses primarily on the accomplishment of individual objectives.  People in the organization sense the conflict, assess what, at the end of the day, is actually rewarded, and take action based on realities on the ground (109-110).  

Scott-Morgan suggests several strategies for discovering and leading change in light of these unwritten rules:

1. First, discover the rules: Talk with people about the disconnects between formal policy and unwitten rules, the logic behind the unwritten rules, and about business goals and how they do or don’t connect to what they do.

2. Uncover the operative reward system, which substantially shape these rules. This reward system can be understood in terms of: a) Motivators: what is important to this person or group; b) Enablers: who can give it to them or help them get it; and c) Triggers: under what conditions will the enabler “grant a reward or impose a penalty.”

It’s interesting to note that the operative reward system strongly overlaps with but is not necessarily identical to the formal reward system.

3. Consider how the unwritten rules shape the actual functioning of the organization.

4. “Change the rules or go with the flow”: If you are in charge, you have some power to reshape the unwritten rules to get the outcome you want. Otherwise, your options are to find a sponsor who can help bring the disconnect to people who have the power to change it or find a way to use these insights to develop a pragmatic plan to obtain the outcome you want  (111-116).

 I would add that if the CEO or other leader is observant, s/he may have these insights at an implicit level. Asking the questions: “What do I want to have happen (and what does that look like)?” and “What do I actually reward and punish?” can potentially yield some useful insights. 

And, because our assumptions and expectations shape our organizations, including how we actually reward and punish people, it might be very helpful to ask, “What do I really value, and why?”  

References

Hargrove, R. (1995) Masterful coaching: Extraordinary results by impacting people and the way they think and work together. San Francisco: Pfeiffer.

Scott-Morgan, P. (1994). The unwritten rules of the game. New York: McGraw Hill.

Category: All Posts, Culture, Leadership, Organization, Rewards, Values, Vision /

Lesson in Leadership Communications

April 21, 2008 / / No comments

My colleagues seated in the rows behind us seemed to be much slower on the uptake than I had given them credit for. Could it be that we leaders in the front row were, in fact, smarter?

To begin at the beginning, my colleagues and I were attending a workshop that I had organized for a high technology company in Northern California. Early in the training, the facilitator organized a training game. She divided us into three teams (or mini-organizations) of about 9 people each. To simulate the communication dynamics of most organizations, each group was seated in three rows, with more senior leaders in the front and less senior participants in the back.

The task would be given to each team in writing. Whichever team completed the task first would win. The rules of the game were:

  1. All communication needed to be in writing.
  2. Each row acted as a team, and had to agree on what to write.
  3. Each row could only initiate communications with the row behind it (senior to less senior)
  4. The less senior row could only respond to the specific instruction or question.
  5. All communications needed to be written on the same sheet of paper; that is, each row had to receive a response before it initiated the next communication.

We each received a piece of paper with our instructions. We in the front row compared our notes. The paper said that the task was for everyone to pass the paper with their instructions on it forward. The communication setup was a little awkward but the task was stone-simple. We were confident we’d have it done in less than a minute!

We “leaders” scribbled our request on a piece of paper and passed it back: “Ok – let’s just do it!”

Instead of receiving the flood of papers forward as we expected, there was a long silence, and then some writing, then more silence. What is taking them so long? we wondered. It was a little frustrating to misfire on such a simple task.

Finally, we received our paper back, with question marks on it! The other two rows apparently didn’t understand the instructions. OK, how could we make it any plainer…. We wrote: “Just go ahead and pass them forward now.”

The result was, unfortunately, the same. We “front-rowers” were frustrated, baffled and a bit disgusted that our colleagues lacked our clarity and competitive spirit. Yet, in being critical of our colleagues, I notice that there is something of a sense of self-affirmation…

Ours was not the only group to struggle with this exercise, which was both discouraging and reassuring…

After several minutes of watching us flail, the trainer changed the rules and allowed us to all communicate directly. What we soon discovered was that only the people in the front row had been given the objective; the other two rows were simply instructed to do what the row in front of them told them to do.

At that moment, I understood that we in the first row were, in fact, the ones who had been incompetent in that situation. Have you ever made the mistake of driving the wrong way down a one way street? Others appeared wrong to us, because we ourselves were in the wrong. And, we were entrenched in our error, because we all saw the world the same way — differently than the rest of our “organization” saw it — and the “rules” made it very difficult to get the feedback we needed. As a result, our organizations executed poorly and we were convinced that the problem lay outside ourselves.

What a great learning experience, on many levels! Here are some insights I personally took away from that experience:

  1. As leaders, we need to be careful to ensure that we have clearly communicated the world as we see it, including facts, the models that guide our thinking, and our objectives. It’s folly to assume that we are all on the same page.
  2. When upward feedback loops are limited, we can easily become disconnected from the realities faced by organizational members.
  3. This limitation can also shield us from knowledge of our real strengths and failings.
  4. When organizational performance is subpar or when organizational members are performing poorly, the first place to look to solve the problem must be at ourselves. What are we doing (or not doing) that is creating this result?
Category: All Posts, Communication, Leadership, Rewards, Teams /

Why do people not create or innovate?

April 11, 2008 / / No comments

The key quesiton isn’t “what fosters creativity?”  But it is why in God’s name isn’t everyone creative? Where was the human potential lost? How was it crippled? I think therefore a good question might be not why do people create? but why do people not create or innovate? We have got to abandon that sense of amazement in the face of creativity, as if it were a miracle if anybody created anything. — Abraham Maslow

Maslow observes that creativity and innovation are natural endowments — we only need to watch young children and remember our own childhoods to know that this is so.  So, why do we, as adults, commonly think of creativity and innovation as qualities that primarily describe the relatively small group of professional creatives? And, why do organizations struggle with the question of how to become more innovative?

Almost 40 years ago, futurist Alvin Toffler observed that our education system was designed to develop citizens who could take up their positions in the industrializing world, as cogs in the great machine (Future Shock, 1970).  Beyond the content of the coursework itself,  schools teach children how to show up on time, follow directions, work within an incentive system that emphasizes external rewards and punishments and to conform to a social program.  Creativity and innovation are generally channeled into art (where classes in art are still offered).  “Play” is considered childish.  Speaking personally, it wasn’t until graduate school that I felt encouraged to think for myself and to create new ideas and knowledge …

Then, as Alfonoso Montuori describes, our organizations are still dominated by bureaucratic forms of leadership and organization designed for the industrial age, which values conformance, compliance, industry, and relies primarily on external reward systems.  Although, as leaders, we intellectually know that our organizations need to become substantially more innovative to survive and thrive, at an emotional level, most of us in this culture, have come to value control and compliance even more…

Maslow’s good news is to remind us that we are all naturally creative. Just as we learned how to suppress and narrowly channel our creativity, we can also begin to unlock our creative potential by removing  those learned barriers (both institutional and internal). 

In order to do this, we will need to circle around to a discussion of the concept of control or power-over, which seems to be creativity’s chief antagonist…

Category: All Posts, Creativity, Culture, Education, Innovation, Leadership, Organization, Rewards /

Culture as Strategy

December 16, 2007 / / No comments

Usually, when we think about strategy, we don’t think about culture. Culture is a given – it’s just there.  In this post, I propose that culture is always an implicit aspect of strategy and that, by recognizing it as such, we can better position ourselves to achieve extra-ordinary results.

Theory

It can sometimes be helpful to review the assumptions we take for granted. In that spirit: culture is defined in various ways, but for our purposes, let’s tease it apart to reveal three dimensions:

1. First, it’s a complex of inter-related beliefs and assumptions, which give rise to values. These beliefs, assumptions and values are often expressed in stories, or metaphors.

2. These beliefs and assumptions give rise to patterns of behavior.

3. These patterns of behaviors give rise to institutions, such as organization structure, processes and reward systems.

For example, the retailer, Nordstrom believing that customer satisfaction is essential to its business success, famously oriented its associates to deliver exceptional customer service. Stories of truly exceptional customer service circulated both throughout the company and the community. And, you can bet that Nordstrom’s processes and reward system ensured that that behavior would continue to occur.

Cultures tend to be self sustaining, which is one of the reasons we take them for granted. They are like the air that we breathe, and they often seem impervious to change.  One of the reasons for this is that just as our beliefs shape our behavior and our institutions, our institutions also shape our behavior and our experience of what “works” (and therefore, to some extent, our beliefs and assumptions).  For this reason, changing culture is notoriously hard. 

Yet, as the Nordstrom example illustrates, an organizations culture makes a big difference in what it can achieve and how easily it can achieve it, in the same way that who-we-are as individuals shapes our possibilities and the energy we must invest to achieve our goals. 

Is it possible to change organization culture?  Well, given that an organization is comprised of people, its collective history, and its structures, processes, and reward systems, we might ask whether it is possible to change these elements. Certainly, we can change organizational structure, and reward systems. We can reframe and evolve our collective story….  But, can people change?  Is it possible to change ourselves?

I suggest that we can learn a lot about how to evolve our culture by learning how to evolve that bit of culture that we all carry with us: our beliefs, assumptions, and our habitual patterns of behavior.  This kind of change is at the heart of transformative leadership, a key focus of this blog!

Practice

1. What is your organizational culture?  What methodologies do you use to know?

2. How well does your culture support your objectives and explicit strategies for achieving them?  Are there gaps? How might you begin to close those gaps?

3. What has been your experience with successful change, at a personal level? What enabled you to be successful in making the change?

Category: All Posts, Culture, Leadership, Organization, Rewards /
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