At the end of the previous post, I mentioned the fact that we need to add the concept of “feedback” into the model. The tricky thing about all this feedback is that we are masters at seeing only what we

Positive Feedback

believe. So if we believe we “know what is so,” or “how the world really works,” or “what the truth really is,” we will see those things in the data we review. In other words, we are great at denying reality if it conflicts with our view of reality.

If we look at the results of our actions, that is we look at the data from our measurements, and if that data appears to be what we expected, then we will conclude that our beliefs and values are correct and that the “real world” responded to our actions as planned. But here’s the rub. We often do not see the data for what it is. We see what we believe, so we are often blinded to the fact that the data is suggesting that we did not see the world as it really is, but as we wish it to be.

Rest assured that (a) you aren’t the only one who falls prey to this all too human trait or that (b) highly educated people are not susceptible to this same human trait. All our science based studies show that you are definitely not alone and that even highly educated scientists who rigorously follow the scientific method fall prey to the way our brains discern and filter patterns.

Negative Feedback

What happens when the information we receive back from our actions does not meet the expected results? Unfortunately, the more common response is to assume an anomaly – a “one off” result. We automatically assume that our process, our thinking, our beliefs and our values must be sound, so nature threw us a curve on this one! Yet we now know that our brains are pattern recognizing and meaning making machines. We make up meaning and we see patterns that do not exist or have no significance in the “real world.” We often do not see things that are so, but see things as we wish them to be.

This tendency creates real difficulties in all aspects of our lives including in business. But great leaders will more readily see that the data is suggesting that their view is wrong or incomplete in some fashion. They are willing to admit that they do not know what they do not know. Gian Carlo Menotti said, “A man only becomes wise when he begins to calculate the approximate depth of his ignorance.” Yet we do not easily see or admit to the fact that there has to be far more that we don’t know than we do know about the universe and how it works.

The successful leader helps her team to see that the data points in a certain direction regardless of what the conventional wisdom claims is so. Hypotheses are tested in depth to be sure of their veracity. The effective leader agrees that “what gets measured gets done,” and is willing to make sure that not only is the measurement the correct measurement for the process but that the resulting data is actually seen clearly – not filtered through preconceived world views.

Thus a critical component of the proposed FOP model is not only that the leader do the hard work of getting right down to the very basic Fundamental Organizing Principles, but that s/he also make sure that they recognize that they have filters and try to find ways to mitigate the effects of how the human brain works. At present, I see no way to remove the filters other than to remove the human. Perhaps that is why when we leave some things to the computers, the outcome is better and improvements are made. But at least if we are aware that we only have part of the whole truth, that we are each like one of the blind men exploring the elephant (I’m sure you’ve heard the fable of the Blind Men and The Elephant by now). It is the human condition that because of how our brains evolved, we are all blind men and women when it comes to the whole story about what is actually so. Great leaders “get” that and so they seek to truly understand. Then they steadfastly pursue the goals UNLESS accurate data dictates otherwise. When a change in strategy is dictated by reality, the great leader is the one who admits to the necessity of change, rallies the team and enrolls them in the new direction. She (you) can only do this if you recognize the limitations of that computer between your ears and are willing to compensate for the buggy program!

The name I’ve given to the deep underlying knowledge that drives our lives is “Fundamental Organizing Principles.” These principles are so basic and so fundamental to who we are that we will not change them

Fundamental Organizing Principles

unless we expend great effort and/or experience some life changing event (such as near death event). It is from these “FOPs” that we then develop our values, beliefs and actions which give us the results in our lives.

Some will do this hard work and others will espouse beliefs that are “imported” from others rather than figure things out for themselves. It’s difficult to draw on the vision and ethical decision making system required to respond quickly and consistently if one has not taken the time to really understand what is fundamentally driving their being.

An example of a very fundamental principles is difficult to provide since they are typically very personal. Usually, what we observe when we watch other people is an example of their values and their beliefs. If, for example, one has an FOP that the universe is indifferent and knowable, then they may exhibit a “value” for higher education so that they may have the tools for further understanding the universe in which they find themselves. From that value for education, they may develop a belief that education should be open and free to all, should be encouraged by all private and public institutions. From that belief they will make decisions to take actions, hopefully, that are in concert with the values and beliefs they hold. Those actions will generate results that will either reinforce the held beliefs or point out that perhaps the actions and beliefs have to be adjusted to live the values driving them.

Here’s a bit of a rub – we tend to see what we believe (not the other way around). Recent studies of the brain shed light on the way we see and “remember” things, and it isn’t pretty! (Here is a great summary of what we know so far: Brain Rules by Dr. John Medina – 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School). In short, we mix some of what was “seen,” “smelled,” “touched” and “heard” with strong filtering and then augment it with past experience and store that integrated “memory” away. This process is why so called “eye witnesses” are so notoriously unreliable. Yet, each of us believes that what we remember is true to reality. It most assuredly is not. So, when we have a belief it is very difficult for us to see “opposition” in the data – because we tend to see what we believe.

While the above discussion is focused on an “individual,” the process is largely transferable to our organizations. Especially for the entrepreneur, leadership includes consciously shaping the corporate culture and that generally means inculcating the values that “live out” the founders fundamental organizing principles. For the leader in a large, established company, the job of shaping the corporate culture is more complex than it is for the entrepreneur and requires great skill at managing change (a major topic in itself and subject of myriad books).

In the next post, I will discuss how the results we achieve must be constantly tested, verified and “fed-back” in order to ensure continuous improvement in our organizations. For now, I am interested in pressing the point that to be an effective leader the individual must understand the deep underlying fundamental organizing principles s/he uses to run her/his life. They are not all positive. At some point, early in your childhood, you may have encountered a situation causing you to draw the conclusion that you “aren’t good enough,” or that you “can’t do that,” whatever “that” is or that you “have” to have a college education to succeed, etc. You bring all those things to the table as a executive leader in your company, and you will unconsciously be limiting possibilities not only yourself but your organization. So the question is – What are you doing to discover your deeply held Fundamental Organizing Principles? How are you consciously shaping the values and beliefs that comprise the culture you are building and shaping in your organization (culture being “the way things get done around here)?

It goes without saying that politicians are “way down there.” But still, our larger business institutions seem to have lost their way or at least they have all been painted with a very large “no confidence” brush. There has been so much bad news, so many bad decisions and such a lack of transparency with some concerns that the whole “big business group” is now held in low esteem.

There are exceptions of course. There are some large companies that for now, the public trusts; they are willing to speak well of them. All of this reminds me of the recent Jim Collins book How the Mighty Fall in which Mr. Collins points out that the very first stage of impending doom is hubris. Along with that ill founded belief that “we can do no wrong,” comes the inevitable culture of it’s all about us. Personally, I don’t think that the size of the company is what we need condemn, it’s the lack of holding everyone accountable to provide the best quality of product and/or service.

So what can we take from all this? Maybe we need to continue to believe in the original “noble purpose or goal” of the company when it was founded. I’m sure it wasn’t just about money. Perhaps we need to keep everyone on target for delivering on the original promise of our company and not let the finances become the reason for existence. I remember hearing someone, it escapes me who at the moment, state that “You can have a great CFO and a phenomenal Corporate Attorney and you will never run out of cash and you will never get sued. But you will go out of business.” While business is a risk and you do have to stretch, you don’t have to bend, break, go around or short cut on ethics, common sense and sticking to your original noble goal.

Even the Supreme Court, conservative by a 5 to 4 margin, knew that they could only “tinker with” Sarbanes-Oxley. They unanimously agreed that the law is constitutional and in a 5 to 4 decision only tweaked the way the Public Accounting Oversight Board is appointed. The message is clear, left to their own devices the large companies will tend to go astray. My opinion is that is because they pay more attention to the stock price than they do to sticking to building a business. They worry about the Wall Street bankers and exchanges instead of the real stakeholders in the company – customers, employees, suppliers and other creditors. When you cater to Wall Street, you are not running your business.

For the small business folks I deal with, the pain caused by all of this is felt mostly in their ability to predict the future and go about their business. Since the consumer and big businesses aren’t spending and the banks aren’t lending, the private companies trying to hold on during this economic reset are challenged at best. Still, they are better off being private and not having to deal with Wall Street. So if only the bankers would get the ship righted and on an even keel, we could begin to hire in the small business sector like we have before.

The rules of the game have changed forever. There are no business folks, large or small, that I have not heard say that their business model is either significantly or completely changed. That’s the good news. We now have plenty of opportunity to get back on track paying attention to our businesses and getting back to the fundamentals of providing outstanding products and services. Collins has pointed out in How the Mighty Fall that we do not need to worry ourselves too much about those companies who have gotten big and arrogant. History shows they will fall. We only have to make sure we don’t let them fall “on us.”

So, as usual, the questions! What are you doing to take advantage of this economic reset to rebuild your business culture to be one inspired by your original “noble purpose?” Are you training, building staff, creating teamwork and generally improving your processes? Are you finding new ways to market? Are you making sure that even as you are successful you maintain a healthy paranoia?

But, like it or not, we are forced to play by the new rules – and they are not all benign. Ask Shirley Sherrod how she likes Andrew Brietbart’s brand of transparency. There’s a Brietbart out there waiting to Sherrod you. Are you watching? Even if it isn’t an ideologue who is two bricks short of a load with an agenda trying to do you in, it can be painful to have your shortcomings pointed out for you instead of by you. BP, not that it isn’t in enough trouble already, has had to deal with a whole bunch of stuff shoved into the light of day by enterprising bloggers. The difficulty is, many (most?) of us who blog (myself included) aren’t journalist nor do we attempt to be. We have opinions and have found a way to express them in writing without having to deal with publishers and printers. That’s great news and it’s dangerous. Who is vetting the information being put out in the blog-o-sphere?

When it comes to your company (or you as an individual) you should be monitoring the internet for mentions of you, your company, your industry and even your competitors. Make sure what you are doing, saying and writing will not damage your credibility when it is published – when, not if it is published. Assume everything – including confidential e-mails and memorandum - will be published. Assume customers/clients who are unhappy are blogging about you, posting YouTube videos and Twittering their thumbs off – because they are and just haven’t gotten to you yet.

“It’s unfair,” you say, “They don’t understand the pressure we’re under. They don’t understand we’re trying to do the right thing.” Maybe, or maybe they get what it is that they want better than you and so you aren’t delivering the goods. They may be wildly unreasonable. But they’re still blogging. So we can whine about the new rules of the game or we can figure out how to use them to play better and to win. Can you get that your better competitors are doing just that?

So take a look at all the business news lately. I know there are good stories out there, but they aren’t

High road? Low road? Expedient road? Profit only road?

being printed. Instead, what’s on the page, in print and floating in the cloud are stories of corporate misdeeds and missteps. Dell apparently knew about bad product and shipped it anyway. BP apparently ignored a whole series of warning signs about the Gulf oil well. Breitbart knew full well he was distorting the news to make his own twisted point and the only positive thing that might come out of this is that Shirley Sherrod will now be known for the good work she has been doing and the world will know not to pay any attention to Breitbart. It doesn’t always work out this way, and it might not work out well for you.

So the bottom line lesson for me in all this is to make sure that we, as business leaders, build and shape cultures in our organizations that are open, transparent and do what’s right for all concerned, not just one group or one person. Even the small private business started by an entrepreneur has an obligation to take proper care of the customers, creditors, employees, suppliers and other stakeholders who help make the company successful. In fact, it seems to me that we have a better chance to do the right thing, to run a forward thinking company and to stay true to the values and Noble Goals we had when we started the company if we stay private. Being a public entity seems to be one sure way to stray from our values.

So what are you doing to monitor the cloud these days? Have you done all you can do to make your company transparent to the stakeholders? Have you built a culture where everyone knows the organizing principles and values of the company? Do they know how to make “the right” decision according to those values and principles? Do your employees know how to cut expenses and not corners?

My prime target is AT&T and without going into a long tirade, I’ll just say that I’ve not personallyexperienced more deplorable customer service at the hands of a company. I’m adding another one now though, Intuit. After deciding that the “gentle warning” on their website that the latest software was best for Windows 7, I paid my money and downloaded the QB 2010 software. That’s when it all began.

Yes, but you keep dropping my calls! Why is that my problem?

First, the software wouldn’t install. The error message claimed that it couldn’t create a directory in the public folders on my CFO’s machine. I figured this was my problem and so it was. After I straightened out the permissions (a bit frustrating with lots of “rebooting”), the software installed. And then I decided that it was smart to register the product since the splash screen warning, in bold red, stated that I only had 30 days to register the product or it wouldn’t function. That tweaked me a bit since I’d just paid about $175 for this upgrade. But, it isn’t unusual for the larger software guys to want you to “activate/authenticate” the software to be sure it’s a legitimate copy. So I swallowed hard and clicked on “Register Now.”

But I've already given you that information. It is in my profile you just looked up.

Once on the registration page, I began a slow boil. There were way too many questions. And they have nothing to do with validating my copy of the software. Many, maybe most of the fields were required. It was obvious they are gathering information to market to me. How many employees do I have, what’s my mailing address, phone number, etc. By the time I got done I was pretty pissed off. And then the sledgehammer in the nose. “Your almost done. Call the 800 number if you’re in the US . . . . I went ballistic.

I could not believe my eyes. First, after paying for the software, then after filling in a ridiculous registration form requiring information that can’t possibly be needed for validation of legitimate software, these clueless people are forcing me to make a phone call to get an activation number. The poor woman on the other end of the phone when I calmed down enough to call didn’t have any difficulty determining that she had an irate customer on the line.

I apologized to her for being angry and recognized that I knew this wasn’t her fault. I told her that the best thing for both of us was for her to simply give me the activation number so I could finish the installation and turn the machine back over to my CFO. She was pleasant and then started going through all the same information I just had put into that obnoxious registration form! Name, company name, address, phone number, how many employees, why did you upgrade, etc. I couldn’t contain myself. It took another 15 minutes but she finally gave me a six digit number to register my product.

What are these people thinking? Are they thinking? I don’t have any trouble with folks trying to do a good job marketing. Send out a survey. Don’t hold me hostage to registering my software. To make matters even worse, the software itself is a marketing tool. I’m blasted with obnoxious messages to buy products and services and have to hunt around to change settings to minimize this crap. They are gathering a lot of information, more or less forcing it out of the customer. That information is a liability. I can’t wait for them to be raked over the coals for mishandling this information. I’ll join the class action suit on this one (I usually trash them).

Here’s the bottom line. I am now investigating using another software package. It’s too bad. QB is used by lots of people and it’s convenient for my CPA. But I will not put up with being abused by an arrogant company without a clue as to how to treat a customer. If they want to validate the install, just send an e-mail to the registered user with the key. Don’t make me call someone and go through the same information all over again. So as soon as I can install other software, that’s what will happen. They’ve lost a customer.

As I was thinking about this, I realized that the story was the same with all the folks who describe their favorite company to “hate.” It’s all being treated poorly as a customer. How customers are treated is a direct function of how the leadership at the top of the corporation/organization set the culture. So the lesson here is to take a hard look at how we are treating customers – either “on purpose” or because we aren’t paying attention. How is your company doing? Are you listening to the needs your customers express and doing everything reasonable to be responsible to their needs? Are you taking customer satisfaction surveys? Even though you’ve had to cut back due to this poor economy, are you still focused on providing awesome customer experience?

What I think is that many of us in business are not really in touch with the people. The average person is seeing their “hard earned” wealth and ability to earn a living greatly diminished while the investment bankers are doing just fine. They see bankers not lending while their small business is starving for cash. They see that they can’t find jobs while labor unions strike at Boeing. Big government, big business and selfish unions are not on their list of favorite people these days and neither are people who make it too obvious that they are among the “elite.” Not surprising that a recent poll by Jan Norman over at the Orange County Register lists Politicians and Salespeople as the least trusted professionals.

Here’s what’s different now. First, if the politicians are reading things right, you have one strike against you in the court of public opinion if you have a business that’s doing well and you indulge in conspicuous consumption – I don’t think it matters if you are private, public, for-profit, not-for-profit, large or small, you had best show humility and gratefulness. Blaming others for making things a bit tougher isn’t going to help, and if you try and justify your position (I employ many people, if I do well, they do well. How will I pay their benefits? etc.), you will be seen as a whiner.

The second thing is that today you WILL be transparent whether you like it or not. Many if not most employees and customers are well connected through the internet. Remember the video that went viral about United breaking a customer’s guitar? It cost them big time. It won’t matter to me if you’re large or small, I now have a way to “pay you back” if you are rude, indifferent or give me poor service.

I caught a bit of the news recently and the witnessed spectacle of the executives of BP, Transocean and Halliburton all pointing fingers at each other. No one wanted to take responsibility, because of the legal implications I suppose. But the public will not bother with that, they’ll just see some very wealthy individuals ducking responsibility for a very bad environmental accident. Just like Enron, WorldCom, Wall Street Bankers, individual traders and Krogers, these guys don’t want to own up to the fact that they blew it. What’s worse is, they won’t be able to hide what they did wrong. We no longer control the media, and neither does the traditional big media.

So what does all this mean? To me what it means is that there’s a pretty good chance that the politicians are reading the electorate correctly and are trying to gain points for the upcoming election cycle. If that’s true, business people will not help themselves by also pointing the finger at others. Instead, we should be making sure we are not being casual about customer service, quality of product and service, delivering what we claim, cleaning up our advertising, making sure we are really adding value – all the basic stuff. If you are doing that, then good for you and keep it up, maybe even raise the bar now. If you aren’t really doing things the right way, you might want to think about what it will feel like when (not if) your customers/employees find out.

It doesn’t matter if we are right. It doesn’t matter if the present administration is making things harder for us or not. It doesn’t matter if customers are being “unreasonable.” It only matters that we continue to survive, thrive and continue to do good work. For that we need to own that right now at least big business, and perhaps all business, has fallen out of favor due to the greed, lack of ethics, lack of leadership and being totally tone deaf when it comes to what the electorate is seeing and feeling. Those same negative characteristics are being ascribed to the politicians themselves. Those same negative characteristics may be what makes them right about siding with the electorate “against” business. It doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel fair. But it is the way it is. So the question for businesses of all sizes may well be, “Do you want to be right or effective?”

And what the heck am I doing blogging on vacation? Well actually, it’s part of my answer to the question previously posed. For me, part of the creativity I’ve purposely pursued in my life is to commit to continuous learning and writing, which includes frequent blog posts. More importantly, my recent reading of Daniel Pink’s new book Drive, has started me thinking about how we can build environments in our businesses that encourage our employees and ourselves to keep that child-like curiosity and creativity.

I don’t have the answers, but I know this: we start brainwashing our children early through our well intentioned but flawed education process. Instead of keeping that innate curiosity, creativity and free thinking, we do all we can to confine their brilliant minds into a box that we believe is the correct view of the world. I think some of that would happen anyway, as children learn more about the world through their own experiences, but we seem to accelerate that process with our concept of what we think has to be taught about the “real world.” I’m reminded of the story about that problematic school child “Johnny,” always a problem for the teachers. He never pays attention (or so they think anyway), and is in constant need of discipline. Like the day he was staring out the window instead of listening to the teacher. “What are you doing?” asked the teacher. “Oh, just thinking,” replied Johnny. “You KNOW you’re NOT SUPPOSED TO THINK in school!” was the thoughtless reply from the exasperated teacher. And that’s how we’ve also tried to organize our businesses – don’t think, just follow the policies and procedures. We’ll do the thinking for you. How is that working for you? Especially here in the U.S. when we believe we will be the intellectual capital provider of the world, instead of the world’s manufacturer of “things.”

Like I said, I don’t have all the answers. I know we need to start with changing our education process. And we also need to change our work environments. Our jobs as leaders has to be that we do our best to influence how our education system, starting at a very young age, encourages creativity, free thinking (no more brainwashing please), foundation only rules and regulations and always, always questioning our answers and assumptions. While we’re doing that, we also need to change our workplaces to encourage the same things. The lessons are clear, even in manufacturing we’re finding that we have to allow creativity of our workers. We need to give them clear expected outcomes and let them figure out how to achieve them.

Seems like an insurmountable task – because we adults are so locked into our view of the world. How can we lead others to be free thinkers and creative when we have such a fixed view of the way things are? Part of the answer for me is continuous education, always questioning my own views, answers and assumptions. It’s not easy, and I frequently fail. But I insist on trying. What are your thoughts? How will you build the right environment for the 21st century?

Leading companies have figured out that there are places where the old motivation techniques might still be “okay.” If, for example, a particular task is routine, then perhaps a “one-time” reward, bonus or other perk might gain some momentum and get everyone working toward a goal. According to Daniel Pink, in his latest book, Drive, there are three things we can do to mitigate the negative “intrinsic de-motivators” surrounding bonuses or rewards for achieving a task. They are:

• Offer a rational why the task is necessary
  

  Giving workers autonomy to do their job.

• Acknowledge that the task is boring
• Allow people to complete the task in their own way

Yet even some tasks that can be deadly boring might actually improve if we give workers the autonomy to solve the challenge or do the work in their own way. A recent NPR podcast discussed the changes that came about in how the NUMMI  workforce viewed themselves and how management viewed the workers once they studied manufacturing techniques of the Japanese auto manufacturers. This joint venture between Toyota and General Motors has since been abandoned, mainly, in my view, because workers and management could not keep from negotiating overly generous contracts with the workforce.

Despite its eventual failure, the NUMMI plant demonstrated exactly what we need to learn, embrace and implement: Workers are more productive when they have more autonomy to do their best work.

Learning the Toyota way

By 1982, GM had had enough and put the Fremont factory out of its misery, Two years later, GM and Toyota reopened the factory with — incredibly — most of the same workforce.

The United Auto Workers’ Bruce Lee helped oversee the transformation of the plant from one of the worst under General Motors to one of the best in America.

But first, they sent some of them to Japan to learn the Toyota way.The key to the Toyota Production System was a principle so basic, it sounds like an empty management slogan: Teamwork.

At Toyota, people were divided into teams of just four or five and they switched jobs every few hours to relieve the monotony. A team leader would step in to help when anything went wrong.

At the old GM plant in Fremont, Calif., the system had been totally different and there was one cardinal rule that everyone knew: the assembly line could never stop.

“You just didn’t see the line stop,” Rick Madrid said. “I saw a guy fall in the pit and they didn’t stop the line.”

Lee, the supervisor who oversaw the plant summed it up this way: “You saw a problem, you stopped that line: you were fired.”

Defects Along The Line

As a result, vehicles at the plant had lots of defects. Haggerty saw all kinds of mistakes go right down the line.

“So we had Monte Carlos with Regal front ends and vice versa,” he recalled. There were cars with engines put in backwards, cars without steering wheels or brakes. Workers fixed them later in a yard outside — sometimes doing more damage to the vehicles.

At the NUMMI plant you can see Toyota’s solution to this — a thin nylon rope that hangs on hooks along the assembly line. It’s called the andon cord and when pulled, it will stop the line.

‘One Bolt Changed My Attitude’

The first pull summons a team leader. Workers try to correct the problem on the line. If it takes too long to fix, the line stops. The andon cord also plays a surprisingly cheerful little song that workers can chose. For longtime GM workers who switched to the NUMMI system, all this was a revelation.

When Madrid trained in Japan, he saw workers stop the line to fix a bolt.

“That impressed me,” he said. “I said, ‘Gee that makes sense.’ Fix it now so you don’t have to go through all this stuff. That’s when it dawned on me. We can do it. One bolt. One bolt changed my attitude.” (NPR report)

The simple solution of trusting the workers with the ability to stop the line to make sure quality product was in fact produced was something beyond our US management’s view. They did not believe that people could be trusted, instead, their belief was that if the workers could slow the line down, they would. But the workers themselves wouldn’t let coworkers slow things down unnecessarily. The plant won accolades for quality during its run.

So the question is, what are you doing to begin moving your business model to the Results Only Work Environment (ROWE)? Are you giving your workers more autonomy? Are you still trying the old, largely ineffective, methods of “carrot and stick” bonus programs?

So what if one of your best, brightest and most creative employee came to you and made this frank statement? How would you respond? I mean, after your shock, after your blood pressure recovered, after your first response of defensiveness, denial and “who the hell are you?” feelings, what would you think and how would you respond?

I can’t speak for you, of course, but I can tell you what I’ve experienced and what I’ve been reading that all the science has been telling us and that we’ve been ignoring. The “command and control,” hierarchical,

Frustration

military style organizations we have been setting up and trying to manage do not work for the “knowledge worker” organizations. Think about this. We’ve all learned about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Yet we don’t do much about changing the way we try and motivate employees. Management has made very few significant changes in the last 100 years. But our economy is “light years” away from where we were before. In this country, while manufacturing is not nearly as devastated as some would have us believe, it is certainly true that the so-called knowledge worker has risen to prominence. What have we done to make significant changes to our way of managing knowledge workers?

A few companies – you can name the big ones, Google, Best Buy and Cisco for example – have made significant inroads into finding new ways to manage the knowledge worker. And there are a bunch of small businesses, many in Silicon Valley, that are experimenting with telecommuting, flexible hours and ROWE (Results Only Work Environment). Their workers have pretty much full autonomy, along with the requisite accountability. And the companies have heeded the warning of the college professors at Harvard Business School, Northwest University’s Kellogg School of Management, the University of Arizona’s Eller College of Management and University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School when they suggested a warning be applied when management creates goals:

Goals may cause systematic problems due to narrow focus, unethical behavior, increased risk taking, decreased cooperation and decreased intrinsic motivation. Use care when applying goals in your organization.

So these companies are very careful about how they reward goals. They make sure that salaries are appropriate, benefits fare and competitive and that the employee has an environment that lets them be creative, appreciated and self-motivated. So back to that employee with enough self-confidence to speak truth as she sees it to power:

“Don’t get me wrong, my sister on the production line or my brother doing clerical data entry may still find it useful to earn a little bonus for achieving piece work goals. But we’ve gone way too far in this carrot and stick thing. For the most part, knowledge workers cannot be externally motivated without negative consequences for the organization. We can be inspired to achieve. And that takes creativity, authenticity and consistency to build the right environment conducive to creative work. Look for my sister and brother to say more in the next post.”

Framing a piece of art, when one is a professional, takes skill, understanding and a knowledge of the painting’s message, the viewer and the context in which the painting will be seen. It turns out the same is true when leaders are communicating within an organization. Properly framed, the vision, mission and culture of the organization provide a effective communication to the stakeholders. Any initiative to make changes within the organization must likewise be properly framed in order to communicate the reasons and goals of the initiative. Effective leaders understand framing as the most efficient way to help others “eff the ineffable” as well as embrace the tangible reasons for the change. Politicians frame and the opponents reframe arguments (some would say spin) for their own world view and in order to win their constituents’ support. That is why you hear some politicians refer to “liberating Iraq,” while you hear others speak of “invading Iraq.” Depending on your view of the meaning behind the “Americans in Iraq” painting, one frame will appear more perfect than the other.

And so it is with communicating within our organizations. We, as leaders, can learn the art of framing change initiatives, vision, mission and culture in order to maximize the number of employees who are on board and support the goals of the organization. If we do not properly frame our initiatives, the employees will use their own frame of reference which may or may not lead them to the same interpretations we would desire. Excellent leaders know that proper framing manages the meaning of what we are saying and doing. And perhaps as importantly, preempts some of the arguments from the naysayers – and there are ALWAYS naysayers.

Here are some resources for those who wish to study this topic, understand words, metaphors and framing. An excellent book from Steven Pinker titled The Stuff of Thought; language as a window into human nature. In this book, Pinker discusses how we use language, how it shapes our view of the world, and how it affects the way we think and extend metaphors. Another excellent book is The Art of Framing by Gail Fairhurst and Robert Starr. What I believe is most important about learning how we and others frame our world views is that it awakens us to the possibilities of another view, helps us to understand how others are framing an issue and how we may be susceptible to and manipulated by the way advertisements, surveys and political arguments are framed. It is truly an inspired and enlightened leader who can suspend her own framework for viewing the world in order to learn from another’s view of the same world. Whether or not she changes her mind about the usefulness or veracity of her own view, she will have demonstrated true compassion and openness to others around her. Understanding how others view the world allows a leader to gently reframe the issues to help others see new possibilities.