Archive for the ‘Employee Confidence’ Category
Decent Work: Pandemic Impact on Employee Expectations
July 12, 2021
Presentation to the High-Level Political forum at the United Nations
Achieving Decent Work for Resilient and Sustainable Recovery from COVID-19
Much has been speculated about how the pandemic will shape employee expectations about the workplace. And, I’ll be the first to admit I don’t have a crystal ball, but based on history and our humanity some predictions can be made regarding what is likely to occur.
What we see, collected from employee surveys and interviews, is that many of the current patterns in the data are similar to the patterns that we saw after 9/11 and during the Great Recession which began in 2007. But when we look at patterns of data from employees, we have to be careful not to paint with too broad of a brush. While there is a statistical distribution with every trait, truth-be-told there are more similarities than differences when it comes to the specifics of what workers want from the world of work. Before I get into those similarities and differences and patterns in the data and how best to respond to them, there is a fundamental tenant, that I would like to put forth.
The underlying human psychology which drives the fundamentals of what workers want from the workplace has not changed during this pandemic. It did not change after 9/11. It did not change after the Great Recession, and it is very unlikely to change any time soon. What does and can change is how those fundamentals are fulfilled. Let me cover a few of those fundamentals to illustrate:
First is sense of equity, that for the effort I put in I am given a fair return. That return is measured in terms of compensation and benefits. The benefits can be varied and each person will put different weight on the value of those benefits such as job prestige, organizational mission, development opportunities, resume building, insurance, flexibility, vacation time, retirement plans, time to retirement and job security. Many people for instance will take a job with lower compensation if they can retire after 20 years with health insurance and a pension. Others will take a job and work under less satisfying conditions if the organization is viewed as serving a higher purpose. What combination people value in terms of compensation and benefits is varied and can and does change over time, sometimes driven by life stage or by impacts of significant events, such as technological advances, economic crises, attacks by foreign actors or pandemics. So, after a pandemic people still desire equitable treatment, but the factors that create that equitableness can and will change, not necessarily for all, but at least for some.
The second fundamental is being treated with respect and dignity. I defy you to find a worker anywhere in the world, of any generation, from any culture that doesn’t want to be treated with respect and dignity, pathology aside. This does not change over time and is a constant. Respect and dignity are so often used in conjunction with one another that they have become joined at the hip as a unified concept not only in the world of employees at work but also in our day-to-day conceptual thinking as well.
Dignity is often defined as a “person’s freedom to write their own life story”. That requires freedom from oppression, and has within that notion both rights and obligations. One right is of control over oneself and one’s body and an obligation would be to take responsibility for your behaviors and actions.
Maintaining dignity in the world of work, using that definition, is a balancing act. If dignity is about the right to choose, as one enters an employment situation one is giving up at least some dignity, in that you are working not necessarily to your own ends, on your own initiatives, but on organizationally defined goals and often on an organizationally defined schedule.
The third factor is organizational effectiveness, which also includes effectiveness of leadership. One of the factors causing people to quit an organization is if they experience frustrations day-to-day in getting their work done. While there are always exceptions, by-and-large people want to work, they want to contribute and they want to do a good job. One piece of evidence for this is that people who are overworked have higher levels of job satisfaction than people who are not given enough to do, which generates feelings of being less valued. Organizational effectiveness has both an internal component, how well is the place being run, and an external component, do we offer products and services that are attractive and of high quality.
And the fourth fundamental factor is that each employee wants to have a sense of personal future, a career path, and each is chasing their own personal rainbow. Here is the thing though; no one has ever seen someone else’s rainbow. A rainbow is created when a beam of light passes through water droplets, is diffracted and shines on the color receptors in your eye. When two people look at a rainbow, even if they are standing side-by-side they are seeing different rainbows, different light beams, passing through different water droplets reflecting uniquely off of the color receptors in their eyes. Their respective rainbows may appear very similar but as each of us perceives a rainbow we are perceiving a unique image, an image that no one else perceives.
Organizations are constantly looking for their own rainbows or perhaps more accurately the mythical pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. They create all sorts of messaging to motivate employees to see the same rainbow that the leader at the top of the organization sees. But just as each person needs to see rainbows their own unique way, each employee needs to internalize organizational goals in their own fashion. Employees can get on-board with the organizational “vision” but just as each of us has a unique vision of our personal rainbows, each of us will have a unique vision of why we work to achieve the organization’s goals, no matter how similar we think we might be.
During this pandemic it will come as no surprise if I say that stress levels have increased. And while stress levels have been steadily increasing over the last decades, during the pandemic it would not be unusual to see responses in the mid-80’s to mid-90’s. In other words, the vast majority of the workforce is very stressed. No Surprise, women with either pre-school age or school-age children are the most stressed. They are often juggling work, remote schooling, lack of child care options, cancelled after-school activities, running a household and perhaps an aging parent or two. While many organizations are concerned about the stress levels employees are experiencing, and trying various strategies, such as closing on a Friday, or mandatory vacation time, as we make changes (e.g., back to the office), the changes themselves can be stress inducing, even if done with the best of intentions. An organization will not be able to eliminate stress, but it can help employees cope with it.
One of the causes of stress is lack of information. The lack of information, along with increased levels of fear, driven by the unknown of a novel disease increases anxiety. Take anxiety and throw in media reports of panic buying and you get runs on toilet paper, milk, eggs, etc. The desire for information is clearly indicated in the data as an insatiable desire as it reduces the uncertainty and stress people are feeling. Ominously, in the absence of accurate information, people make up their own stories or are open to lies and false information. Employees want to hear the truth and they want to hear it from the top of the house. You cannot over communicate to your employees at this point and they will be grateful for it.
In times of uncertainty ratings of leadership, in terms of trust and competence, improve significantly. In uncertain and fear inducing situations, effective, decisive leadership, which points to a solution path is desired. And employees are willing to give leadership the benefit of the doubt, at least until proven otherwise. This is a pattern we have seen over and over. What happens though is that organizations rarely if ever can hold onto the gains in ratings of leadership as the crisis subsides. In uncertainty leadership is often more visible, communicates more giving reassurances where possible. As that visibility and high level of communications dissipates so do the enhanced scores. As a leader be as visible as possible to your folks. Do not simply retreat into the war room to plan out options and contingencies. Talk to them. Listen to them.
Oftentimes in situations of uncertainty chaos in the workplace increases. There is a school of thought out there that chaos is a good thing, that it increases innovation and drives higher levels of performance. But be assured it does no such thing. Chaos by definition makes less information available to staff. Chaos is not an organizing principle or a way to achieve a higher level of creativity or performance, it is simply chaos, and leads to greater uncertainty. This is not a good time to reorganize or to move people around without very good reasons. Reducing chaos, by increasing information flow should be the goal. Be as clear as possible about what the organization is doing to cope with the situation and provide as much information as possible regarding the impact on each organizational member.
Give people as much agency as possible. This is a path to increasing dignity. Get people involved in solving problems, give them as much control over their own paths as possible. After 9/11 for instance, those employees who were actively involved in restoring one company’s operation located at ground zero, saw dramatic increases in satisfaction, pride, and engagement compared to another group not involved at the same company.
Work towards restoring or increasing employee confidence. And remember, it is likely that every single one of your employees in one fashion or another has struggled. Confidence can be impacted by:
- Reinvigorate the organization’s competitiveness
Ensure that your services/products are current and competitive. Communicate to your staff what you are doing to enhance competitiveness.
- Provide current reassurance
Assure that organizational members can thrive in the current environment. What do they need to be effective and what special circumstances are they dealing with?
- Take a long-term view of staff member development and opportunity
The value proposition to employees is to provide skills and experience that equips them a meaningful career, not for a specific job.
Remember how people react to COVID is not uniform and will vary based upon individual differences and will also be dependent on personal circumstances. What we also know about people is that when they are appropriately supported and feel safe there is a tremendous amount of resilience and people can bounce back from adversity.
Thank you.
Tips for Boosting Employee Confidence During COVID-19
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Leadership: Lessons from the Superbowl
Leading is easy when you win, but we’re tested when things are tough.
By Guest Blogger: Victoria Hendrickson, Ph.D.
Three weeks ago, Cam Newton led his team to victory. He was dynamic both on and off the field, fist bumping and cheering on his teammates. Afterwards, he spoke positively about his team, shared credit, and was excited for what he expected to accomplish in the Super Bowl.
But last night, when things weren’t going well, he was quiet. He stood alone, looking at the ground, staring off into space, and not interacting with his teammates. After their loss, he avoided questions, didn’t say what he would have done differently, and he couldn’t find anything positive to say. While he was quick to share credit in good times, he couldn’t keep the team’s morale up and lead when times were tough.
So what can we learn from this?
• Think about your team. How many young, ambitious technical superstars have been promoted into leadership roles?
• Occasional failure is inevitable. What separates the top companies is an ability to learn from failure, re-focus their approach, and continue on with the same passion and energy. This requires a leader who can identify the failure, name it, and keep their team together in re-focusing with a new approach.
• The ambitious, technical experts with little experience are accustomed to success – they have a lot of it. But they aren’t used to failure, and they don’t know how to lead a team through it.
If Cam Newton had led differently yesterday, would it have made a difference? Clearly, there’s no way to tell. But in business, we often have the opportunity to change our leadership style to achieve better performance. We want to hear your stories: What’s one game-changing leadership move you’ve ever made?
Link to People and Strategy Journal article, “Why Employee Engagement is not Strategic”.
Scott Brooks and I recently published this article which we thought you would enjoy. Jeff
Sense of Direction
[tweetmeme source=”jeffreysaltzman”] “You are going to have to help me with this people thing.” That was what the ex-McKinsey consultant turned CEO of a major Fortune company told me years ago. He was the nicest guy. He explained to me how he could handle all of the financials to run his company but this whole people thing, what motivated them, what concerned them, he just couldn’t get his arms around that. He was baffled. What to him seemed like simple business decisions, trim here, reorganize there, in order to fine tune his company’s financial performance resulted in all sorts of emotional morale issues. “Why didn’t people see the obvious?” He thought that there should be no emotions involved in financial business decisions, that if he did what was best for the company, to ensure its survival, that people should not mind (or at least not get emotional about) being moved around like pieces on a chess board, even if it meant losing their jobs. While this company had solid financial performance, it also had a fairly high degree of turnover, with some employees after a pretty short period of time feeling burned out and not being able to continue with the firm. Yet this company also had a high degree of employee commitment and employee loyalty. How was that possible?
I participated in a graduation recently. A group of MBA student’s to whom I taught a leadership class were graduating with their degrees in hand. It was extremely emotional in a positive way for the students, their families and friends that were present. The students were smiling from ear to ear and the parents were beaming. As each student came across the stage, amid the flashing of cameras, I rose shook their hands and congratulated them on their achievement. As each student passed me, I wondered “what direction will their lives now take?”
Sense of Direction. Having a clear sense of direction, a sense of mission regarding what the organization (an organization can be anything from a poker club to a nation state) is going to accomplish, and how people can personally and meaningfully contribute to that goal will affect one’s overall sense of well-being and happiness. It helps to increase a sense of purposefulness which in turn can greatly impact people’s sense of commitment and loyalty to the organization. Most people struggle with this, looking for a sense of direction and purposefulness for at least a portion of their lives, others struggle with this for most of their lives. For the newly-minted MBA’s, they are at an inflection point, where they will be examining the decisions they have made so far and will be reflecting on a host of choices they now have which will affect their own sense of direction and sense of purpose.
For an organization, clarity on this subject allows members to self-select, for if I don’t agree with the goals of the organization (stated or otherwise), or what the organization perceives as my role in helping it to achieve those goals, it is pretty clear, that if I can, I should leave. Over time, with a clear sense of direction (stated or otherwise), what an organization can achieve is a fairly tightly knit core of people who are extremely dedicated, ferociously loyal to helping the organization achieve its goals. And yes, there is a risk that too tightly knit of a group will put goal achievement and gain for this core above all else including societal or customer well-being, potentially bending or breaking various articulated operating standards, societal rules, regulations or laws. An inner core can arise, and as C.S. Lewis pointed out a long time ago, people will do almost anything to become part of the inner circle. As with everything there needs to be a sense of balance, swinging too far in any direction is generally not good for people, the organization or society at large.
Knowing where an organization is going, what it stands for and the values it will employ while getting there can be critical to actually getting there. Each person having a sense of direction and knowing how they can contribute to that direction is a fundamental building block for organizational performance and morale.
One aspect of sense of direction having a positive impact is movement, or the direction of the sense of direction. People tend to get frustrated with stagnation and get unhappy pretty quickly about what is perceived as a backward slide, even if that slide is relatively small and from a very high place or performance level. People notice and feel positive or negatively about the direction things are headed, oftentimes more than the absolute level of the measure suggests that they should.
For instance, as we have measured Employee Confidence over the years, what we see are increases and decreases in Employee Confidence on a national level that are related to the direction of a nation’s economy and not the absolute level of economic performance. Employee Confidence goes up if conditions (e.g. unemployment levels, GDP growth) are seen as improving and it declines if conditions are perceived as dropping, regardless of the absolute levels of those conditions. Employee Confidence can be very high in rapidly developing economies as people feel that conditions are improving and that their economy is on the rise, even if the absolute economic standards are pretty low. Likewise, Employee Confidence can be low in highly develop economies with high standards of living if economic performance is seen as in decline.
As humans, we tend to perceive events and make judgments on a relative basis and not on an absolute basis. What tends to becomes normal is relative to what we routinely experience. But every once in a while we are able change the standard dramatically when a critical mass of organizational members compares what they are experiencing to other extra-organizational standards.
Let me illustrate relative decision-making in a simple fashion. Say you needed a pair of shoes and had your eye on a pair that normally costs $300. You are prepared to spend $300 on those shoes. You open the Sunday paper and see that a store 40 minutes away across town has those same exact shoes that you have been thinking of purchasing for half-off or $150. Would you be motivated to drive across town to buy your shoes at half-price? Many people are inclined to do that. Now say you needed to purchase a new car. You are looking at a car that costs $27,900 at a new car dealer near your house. You are prepared to spend $27,900 on that new car by financing it with the bank and paying it off over 5 years. You open the Sunday paper and see that same exact car for $27,750 at a new car dealer 40 minutes away on the other side of town. Would you drive across town to buy that car? Many would say no. Yet in these two examples in each case the buyer would save $150 on the purchase price. You could use that $150 to purchase the same exact things, regardless of where the savings came from, 2-tickets to a Broadway show (partially obstructed view), or a hot dog at Yankee Stadium. Yet there is a tendency for people to be more willing to save $150 when it represents a larger portion of the purchase price, rather than when it represents a smaller percentage. We make relative and not absolute judgments on how worthwhile the savings are.
The same holds true at the organizational level. If organizational performance is seen as improving relative to where it currently is, employees tend to be more upbeat regardless of the absolute starting level of that performance and if it is perceived as in decline, employee spirits will also be in decline (even if you are still the best in your industry). So how could the CEO I mentioned lead a company that achieved high levels of employee commitment and loyalty, even as people were burning out? The answer is that it was an exciting place to be, they were cutting edge, an industry leader with rapidly rising levels of performance, beating the competition and with a clearly articulated vision of where the company was going.
© 2012 by Jeffrey M. Saltzman. All rights reserved.
Visit OV: http://www.orgvitality.com
What Direction Are You Moving In?
There is a tendency on the part of people to feel strongly about movement. Ever since we headed out of Africa to explore what lay over the horizon, we have been a species on the move. And in fairly short order after that original exodus, especially given the knowledge base and level of technology available, humans had made it to virtually every corner of this planet. We move, we explore, we seek. Even when we don’t know what we are seeking we seek, with an “I’ll know it when I see it” kind of rationale. That grass certainly looks greener over there doesn’t it? Traveling for work and the ability to explore foreign places is often viewed as a glamorous perk and is used as a hiring inducement by many organizations. We always have been and still are a species on the move, exploring not only our own planet but given our nature of itchy feet, constantly pushing the limits to explore realms that exist beyond those that are currently known. The urge to move, the desire for change, to travel, to explore is so strong among many of us that you have to wonder if it is somehow hardwired into our psyche, establishing itself out of a survival benefit.
Movement. Change. Renewal. These are enduring themes that get our attention. In my own work the theme and significance of change on the psychology of the worker and hence the organization is also evident. As I collected Employee Confidence data beginning in June of 2008, I found that the most confident employees on the planet were not from countries with the highest levels of economic prosperity, nor were the lowest levels found in countries with little prosperity. The most confident employees were to be found in countries that had the most positive movement in GDP growth, not the highest absolute level of GDP but those with the largest positive shift in GDP. Likewise countries with stagnant or falling levels of prosperity, signified by falling levels of GDP, were where the least confident employees were to be found. Similarly levels of employee confidence were more strongly related not to absolute unemployment levels on a state level, as a casual observer may expect, but were much more related to the changing level of unemployment. For instance, if the unemployment level in a state where to drop from one quarter to the next, the level of employee confidence turned higher, even if the absolute level of unemployment was still high, as things were seen as improving.
We often seem to base our assessments of various kinds of situations and organizations not based on absolutes, but on how the situation and the organizations are changing. Is it moving in the positive direction, getting better, is it stagnant or is the situation and organization in decline? People are drawn to organizations that seem to be in ascendency, and rapidly abandon even relatively highly performing organizations that are seen to be in decline. This appears to be true not only for employees of organizations but for its customers as well.
“Americans traditionally are much more interested in the direction the economy’s going than in the absolute level,” said Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster. “The absolute level can be not so good, unemployment can be relatively high, and incumbents can still get re-elected as long as things are moving in the right direction.” (NY Times 08/08/11).
My work seems to imply that the tendency described in the Times article is not limited to Americans but is a phenomena based on us being human, and the way humans respond to and assess situations and hence applies globally.
From an organizational perspective this finding underscores the need for organizations to constantly improve, to raise the bar of performance, both in terms of the products and services they will offer and how its employees view the organization. Simply maximizing your current performance, having the best product or service out there, or being an attractive employer is just not good enough, but rather a longer-term evolutionary path of constant improvement, building future organizational potential is required for long-term organizational health. The theme of Maximizing Current Performance while at the same time Building Future Potential is at the heart of OrgVitality’s organizational performance model and encompasses a body of research in the field of organizational development called ambidexterity.
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© 2011 by Jeffrey M. Saltzman. All rights reserved.
Visit www.orgvitality.com
Searching for Eudaimonia
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Have human ethical standards been fundamentally the same over the millennia?
“What would Zeus do?” Given the ethical abuses that we constantly read about in the news and now about the news, I have been thinking quite a bit about ethics and whether changing ethical standards have an impact on our societies and organizations. As you consider the relative constancy of ethical standards over time there are only two possibilities. One is that human ethical standards are constant and the behaviors that we witness which implies differing ethics over time are really an expression of changing standards, driven by societal levels of economic well-being, sophistication or technology as humans search for what the ancient Greeks felt was a major driver of human behavior, called eudaimonia or happiness. Or second, the possibility those fundamental ethical standards do indeed shift over time.
I would argue that at any moment of time, were you to objectively measure the level of ethical behavior shown by every individual person on the planet, that you would find a normal distribution of ethical behavior, with some behaving with the highest level of ethics (by my standards of course), others would be considered on the edge and still others would be behaving in quite an unethical manner. Further, I would argue that the distribution would be broad enough that you would find more variation in ethical behavior among people within any period of time than you would find across time periods. Those people who operate significantly below the mean or the norm, we call abnormal or criminal and attempt to stop their behavior. Now if we have a normal distribution that means that ½ of the human population is below the mean, so obviously we don’t lock away ½ of the human race, but what we do is to determine heuristically where to draw the cut score. At some point, maybe one standard deviation below the mean or perhaps two, we say that the behavior is sufficiently abnormal to be considered criminal and lock those people away or send them for treatment.
Historically, the Romans had the Coliseum in Rome and 200 other similar venues elsewhere, whose contests resulted in the deaths of millions of animals and the slaughter of uncounted numbers of people. Most of us today would find the killing of people for sport abhorrent, most but not all. But today we do have sporting events held in venues similar to a coliseum aimed at like outcomes, producing a winner and loser and entertaining the masses (or more cynically, providing an outlet for aggression not aimed at the powers that be). On the face of it they seem quite different, for instance after a baseball game rarely do you see the losing team impaled on stakes or fed to the lions. But underneath it all, are the two events playing to fundamentally the same principles in the human psyche, the need for competition, for a winner and loser to emerge, and the need to root for one’s “champion”? Is the popularity of some TV shows really due to nothing more than their nature as virtual Roman Coliseums, allowing us to peer into how people perform under stressful circumstance? Are some news shows that allow us to track crime investigations or court trials similar to the struggle for survival that the Romans so enjoyed viewing? (The normal distribution argument would imply that some Romans enjoyed the blood sport while others tolerated it and others still were perhaps appalled by it. Similarly today some are glued to their sets watching championship wrestling or reality TV shows, while others are not.)
There are layers upon layers to think through as this point is considered. Certainly ethical theories and the corresponding theories of justice have changed and have evolved over time, but the question I am posing is more fundamental. “Have humans changed?” Has our fundamental psychology changed over the last few thousand years causing our ethical standards to shift? Or are we still the same humans, psychologically, that strode the earth during Golden age of Greece, the epochs of the Pharaohs, the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, the age of Confucius or of the Buddha, or when the 10 Commandments first appeared?
I have to admit to some pre-determined bias, for when I look at the so-called “generational” differences that are supposed to exist among worker attitudes, regardless of what you read in the lay press, I can find no evidence in the data to support the notion that what the various generations want out of the world of work is different on a fundamental level. The differences that do exist are primarily driven by differing economic opportunity, life stage and technology rather than differences in human psychology. For instance you would be very hard pressed to find a worker who did not want to be treated with respect and dignity, have a sense of accomplishment or a sense of fairness of treatment and equity of any generation in any area of the world. And the workers today around the world who accept working conditions that you and I would find unacceptable do so out of economic necessity and for no other reason.
You may consider some ancient practices barbaric, but they were no worse than what people perpetrated on their fellows a mere 70 years ago during WWII. And today things are little better, with an estimated 12.5 million humans living in slavery with 2.5 million of those being bought and sold like cattle (Dahan 2011). Yet we could also point to progress that has been made in the USA over the last few decades with the abandonment of laws that created second class citizen status for many of our fellow humans, and the passage of laws giving equal rights to others.
Yet positively, sports like baseball can also have a helpful effect in bringing together people who can find common cause in their efforts, including those that go beyond the sport itself. In tsunami ravaged sections of Japan, baseball is providing an aura of normalcy at some schools allowing people to see beyond the day-to-day devastation they are dealing with (New York Times 7/10/11). So I want to be careful and not paint with too broad a brush in my statements about various activities.
Here is a statement for which I have no evidence, since I did not measure the attitude nor have I been able to find any organization or person who did, but never-the-less I would argue is accurate: “Slaves were never in favor of slavery”. Those who got the short end of the stick due to the unethical behavior of others were never pleased with their lot and why should they be? Humans have had an uncanny knack, an ability to take advantage of other humans for as long as we have been walking this planet. At the same time others give unselfishly of themselves to benefit the broader society of which they are part.
I recently got back from a trip to Costa Rica (go if you ever have an opportunity), and during the trip we stayed for a few days in a town of about 1500 people called Tortuguero. We went to this location which is accessible only by boat or plane, to see the Green Sea Turtle lay its eggs, during the start of the annual mating season. You need to have a permit to go onto the beach where the turtles aggregate and a registered guide needs to take you to make sure no damage is done to the turtles or their nests. Our guide happened to be a fellow named Fernando, who went by Don. It was truly an honor to spend a few days with him and to learn from him about the wild life and plants in the area. Don and I had several conversations over the course of a few days about how the town of Tortuguero is structured socially and politically. Tortuguero’s original residents were escaped slaves from Caribbean islands and from a slaving ship that had sunk. They chose to make a life, however hard, rather than return to slavery, they were searching for eudaimonia. Remember, “Slaves were never in favor of slavery”.
Interestingly, Tortuguero has no local government. There is a provincial police station manned by federal police, but there is no mayor, no elected officials, no one in authority to get things done. Over the last few years though cement walkways have begun to replace dirt paths in town, a major recycling facility has been built, in line with the theme of Tortuguero being an eco-vacation location and importantly creating jobs for residents, potable running water has been supplied to each house and other improvements have been made.
How do these things get done? Don indicated that a group of about 7 citizens who simply want to make things better get together regularly and figure out how to accomplish them. I asked if they were elected, but he said they were volunteers. My feeling is that they were volunteers that the other residents of the town greatly respected and willingly followed their lead in decision making, making life better for all. These volunteers in my opinion are operating with a great deal of ethical integrity attempting to improve life for all 1500 residents of the town (they are also likely acting with self-interest). And if anyone is listening, according to Don, what the town really needs next is a bank. A bank would give the residents a place to safely put their money, it would provide small businesses a place to borrow for startup costs, and it would make the town feel more substantial. Don indicated that a bank would give residents more confidence in the future of the town, with all of the corresponding benefits and is sorely needed.
No matter how much we may wish it, ethical issues and challenges, among business leaders, politicians, and others are not going to go away any time soon. Humans are not about to achieve some kind of breakthrough in our evolutionary pathway that will fundamentally change our behavior. But there are a large number of people, and I want to positively think, an increasingly larger number of people who are willing to do the right thing, not giving into the fears of our baser emotions in order to make life better for all as we each find our own personal form of eudaimonia.
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Dahan, Y., Lerner, H., Milman-Sivan, F., 2011, Global Justice, Labor Standards and Responsibility, Theoretical Inquiries in Law, Vol. 12, 117-142.
Hursthouse, R, “Virtue Ethics”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2010 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2010/entries/ethics-virtue/.
© 2011 by Jeffrey M. Saltzman. All rights reserved.
Visit www.orgvitality.com
Nonexistent Differences
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There is an old story from Eastern Europe about a ruler who gathers his advisors around him. A discussion ensued about a dramatic rise in madness among those in the population who consumed grain from the recent harvest. In the manner of many politicians or those with vested interests, the advisors told the ruler that they must put aside enough grain from pervious harvest so that they could preserve their own sanity while those around them went mad. The ruler objected, and using logic possible only among those with the inbred genes of hereditary rulers, stated that since they could not put aside enough grain for everyone, that they too must eat the fungus infected grain, for if everyone else was mad, acting similarly, those others will think us mad if we are different. We must be as mad as everyone else, acting like everyone else, believing in what they believe in order to be considered normal and blend in, to consolidate and not lose our positions of power.
Normal. It is very relative and time specific. Tattoos were once what happened to drunken sailors, piercings were limited to the earlobes of women, listening to rock and roll was going to send you to hell, voyeurism was a mental illness and not promoted on prime-time TV, books were printed on paper and much earlier reading those newfangled books called novels was viewed as immersing oneself in dangerous fantasy worlds, and each and every younger generation has been an enigma to the previous. The only thing certain about what is normal is that it is a moving target and subject to change over time. Trying to hold back the floodgates of change is and should be an exercise in futility. Ideologues, those who support a specific ideology frozen in some past moment, yearning to go back to the way things were are not only tilting at windmills, but are often at the root of much violent, disruptive and nonproductive behavior. However, what one person views as a positive shift in the value set that describes normal, another will view as negative. What is certain is that humanity is not a monolithic entity in our values and beliefs, and whatever “system” is put into place that governs us must be one that allows for those differences to enhance the mosaic of what constitutes humanity.
Are organizations any different? Do myths of what is normal exist within companies? There is a technique I like to use when analyzing an organization’s data. For want of a better name we call it a 9-box. The 9-box takes two questions from an organizational assessment and lays out the all possible responses to each, one along the x-axis and one along the y forming a 3×3 matrix. The 9 cells that are then created contain those responses from people who responded one of 9 different ways to the 2 questions. They could have been favorable on both questions, in which case they would be in the upper left box, they could have been negative on both questions, in which case they would be in the lower right hand box. All the other possible combinations are filled in (Favorable:Neutral, Neutral:Neutral, Negative:Neutral, etc.). Once the matrix has been completed we examine the outcome measure of interest for each cell. How, for instance, do the Favorable:Favorable people fare on turnover or measures of quality, customer satisfaction etc. We contrast that positive cell against the other cells within the matrix. And then it gets interesting.
We examine the demographic characteristic of the employees within the Positive:Positive cell and compare it against those in the other cells. In every single case where I have done this analysis organizational beliefs are exploded and shown to be myths. For instance it may be thought that the most positive employees within the organization would be the managers and the least positive would be the production workers. But when you examine the demographic breakdowns you typically find very similar percentages of employee types in each of the cells. It is not simply that employees are of different types that accounts for perceptual differences and performance differences within organizations, rather it is how each employee as an individual views their treatment, and that is independent of position and most of the common demographics tracked within organizations.
You see there is a bit of a conundrum at work. While we are free to have different beliefs and values we are all still human and each of us have most of the same hopes and desires as any of our fellow humans. We may all have different fingerprints, but we all have fingerprints. Those issues that arise within organizations that create the new normal, the current conditions in which everyone must function, affect all within the organization and whether they view their own situation in a positive or negative light is driven by a myriad of factors that impinge on them in their organizational existence. Some of those factors are driven by the competence, tone and actions created at the top of the organization, others are more career and personally oriented, others depend on perceptions of how the organization is positioned competitively. In sum, the perceptions of both the organization’s future and one’s personal future matter in determining the attitude and performance of employees of all types.
One thing is certain. You can’t get maximal performance out of all of the employees of an organization by hanging onto myths and false beliefs that emphasize non-existent differences while at the same time ignoring those issues that actually matter.
© 2010 by Jeffrey M. Saltzman. All rights reserved.
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