A Murder of Crows

A murder of crows. Sounds like that start of a mystery novel. The word murder in this case is used to describe a group of crows. Just like you would use the term a herd of cattle, or a pack of dogs. These descriptive terms are called collective nouns and arise out of a hunting tradition to describe the game being hunted. Many of these words are whimsical in nature and are designed to help define the nature of the groups. Take a pride of lions. If you ever looked at a picture of a group of lions sitting around or hunting together you can see how perfectly the term pride describes them.

Just for fun, I thought I would take a stab at defining some groups of employees within organizations or perhaps opening up a bit of a contest to see if anyone cared to name various alternatives (I am willing to send the winner a pack (dogs) of books I have written).

A group of college professors would be called a school of professors (Currently applied to fish).

A group of highly engaged employees would be called a team or a colony (Horses and bats respectively).

A group of HR professionals would be a gaggle or perhaps a charm (Finches).

A group of sales people would be a hunt or perhaps a rabble or a horde (Gnats).

A group of employees who always sit together in the cafeteria would be called a cackle (Hyenas).

A group of call center professionals would be a troop (Kangaroos among others).

And I can’t take credit for the following since I heard it on NPR today, but a group of Wall Street Bankers would be called a hedge.

And a group of IT professionals would be a cloud (Gnats).

A group of manufacturing line workers would be a yoke (Oxen).

A group of people who quit a company would not be alums but rather a parliament (Owls).

Very efficient people in a group would have to be called a covey (Quail).

Anyone care to jump in? Or perhaps a pandemonium (Parrots) of you would care to work together as a team?

 

© 2014 by Jeffrey M. Saltzman. All rights reserved.

Visit OV: www.orgvitality.com

Fact(ish)

“ish” seems to be gaining in popularity. At least it appears that way to me when I occasionally hear my high schooler chatting with her friends. Cool, groovy, far-out, rad, are out and “ish” seems to be in, along with “literally”. Not that ish is new.  “ish” has, in the distant past of parental youth, meant “approximately”. “When would you like dinner?” “Seven-ish”, has been around for a long time. But “ish” is now being attached to all sorts of words to mean “sort of” or is even being used as a standalone word. “Did you get your homework done?” “Yes-ish”.  “How did today go at school?” “ish.” If I respond with “Do you literally mean ish?” I am the recipient of the rolling eyeball “you are so out of touch” look. “ish”, one is left wondering exactly what that means, though the basic gist is certainly there.

In science and organizational decision-making we try to be as “un-ish” as we possibly can be. We want to manage, make decisions, prove our point, develop our facts by relying on incontrovertible proof, on evidence that the course of action we select or the points we are trying to prove simply cannot be denied. Except that is not how humans often draw conclusions. In one study that a friend of mine did he tracked, among HR professionals, the proportion of their “best outcome” decisions vs. their “worst outcome” decisions and each contained a “leap-of-faith”. Meaning that even after all the facts were assembled, all the evidence in, a leap-of-faith was required to make a decision. Mostly because it is impossible to have complete knowledge, so in the absence of omniscience, a leap-of-faith is needed to get the job done, or you would forever be analyzing and never taking action.

In research, one study builds on another. A follow-up study may contradict the original, but over a period of time, slowly the preponderance of evidence builds, pointing the way to the best course of action, or uncovering a “truth” by which the world operates. This process can take time. Remember for decades cigarette makers denied that smoking cigarettes caused any health issues and they commissioned their own studies to prove that point. This last week CVS, a major drug store chain, announced that it would stop selling cigarettes and the only analysis to be found was whether the approximately 2 billion dollars in lost business would be made-up by a positive shift in CVS’s reputation. No one, at least in the news reports I saw, refuted the science anymore that cigarettes are bad for your health.

Making sense of the world though is quite different from understanding the world, and when people’s understanding is incomplete or based on a shaky foundation, their interpretations of what is going on can go astray. The Greeks for instance knew and it made perfect sense to them that when there was thunder and lightning that it was caused by Zeus, the king of their gods. Knowing what we now know, it may be difficult to understand how the ancient Greeks really felt about that. But it was not some cute little story that they used at bed time for the children, while the adults winked at each other. This is what they truly believed, that when it thundered Zeus was speaking. To them this interpretation of the world made sense, for it explained events as they experienced them, even though from our perspective they did not understand the way the world really worked. Today we talk about these Greek beliefs as mythology. One can’t help but wonder which of today’s beliefs will be thought of as mythology a thousand or so years from now.

Each human develops their own mythology of the way the world works and on April 22^nd I am going to be conducting a complimentary webinar on “People at Work – Myths vs. Realities”. Feel free to register and join me for what is hopefully going to be an interesting-ish conversation.

Also on February 18^th, Scott Brooks and I will be conducting a complimentary webinar on “Why Employee Engagement is not Strategic” and we both would love to see you there.

Every Wednesday?

There is an old joke that goes something like this: A union leader is addressing the crowd at a union meeting. From the podium he begins talking, “We have agreed on a new deal with management. We will no longer work five days a week.” The crowd roars in approval. “We will finish work at 3:00 pm, not 4:00 pm.” The crowd roars again. “We will start work at 9:00 am, not 7:00 am.” Once again the crowd roars. “We shall have a 150% pay raise”. The noise level was deafening. “We will work only on Wednesdays.” There was then a silence that immediately engulfed the room. You could hear a pin drop. Then from the back of the crowd a voice asks, “Every Wednesday?”

In spite of jokes like this that make the rounds, the evidence is overwhelmingly clear. The vast majority of workers want to do a good job at work.

They want to work hard. They want to create products or services of which they can be proud. They want to work for a company that from their perspective has its act together and they want to be treated fairly and with respect. But then doesn’t everyone? This truism holds regardless of where in the world you happen to be, and whatever generation, gender or ethic group you are interacting with. Organizations tend to make rules to deal with the 5% of the population that does not fit this description, not the 95% who do. As you think about your role think about what you can do to enable the 95% and not control the 5%.

© 2013 by Jeffrey M. Saltzman. All rights reserved.

Visit OV: www.orgvitality.com

Once Again, “Into the Myths”

There is a story of a CEO who in the middle of a company meeting keeled over. He was rushed to the hospital, but despite their best efforts they were unable to revive him. Many employees turned out for the funeral, and as speeches describing the CEO’s management style were given before heading off to the cemetery, the employees were all appropriately sad. As they were wheeling the coffin out of the funeral home, it accidently bumped very hard into the door frame, giving it quite a jar. All of a sudden there was moaning coming from the coffin. The coffin was opened and low and behold the CEO had revived! He recovered and continued running the company, staying true to his style, despite what was clearly a life altering event. After 5 more years he once again keeled over. The employees again dutifully showed up at the same funeral home and listened once again to speeches regarding this CEO’s management style. As the service concluded, and the coffin was being maneuvered towards that fateful doorway of the funeral home, all the gathered employees called out in unison, “careful this time!”

Everyone has various traits which could be described as strengths or shortcomings. Some of them are known to us and some are hidden, despite, perhaps, being quite obvious to others. And some of these traits have their origins in how we have evolved as a species and how our psychology developed. Our tendency to see intelligent intent where there may be none is one such trait. And our ability to form up into groups, to better accomplish tasks which we would have difficulty accomplishing alone, and to see short-comings or differences in “others”, who are not part of our “select” group, is another such trait.

Some of these human traits, such as the tendency to see differences across generations of workers, have manifested themselves into modern management practices, partly due to much publicity and pop psychology. The differences that are often pointed to as generational differences, in actuality tend to be driven by “life stage” differences, confounded by the issue of economic opportunity, an environmental variable, being considered a “fundamental” difference. Bottom line, the belief that there exist generational differences in what workers want out of the work environment is a myth that holds no water.

From an economic perspective, western society is wealthier today, in general, than it has ever been and that wealth translates into differing opportunity. People may behave differently not because their fundamental underlying psychology has changed, but because of economic opportunity differences.

People for instance are less concerned about job security when there are plenty of jobs available and are more concerned about it in times of recession. People are also more concerned about job security when they have a mortgage and kids – a life stage and not a generational difference. Only because economic cycles can take years to work through do these tendencies appear to be related to generational differences, but that is a veneer. Economic opportunity can come and go fairly rapidly and people of all different generations will quickly adapt to those differences, modifying what is important for them at that moment in time and life cycle stage.

Take safety as another example. While there is a normal distribution for the amount of risk people are willing to assume, many people who work in unsafe conditions do so not because they are unconcerned about their personal safety, but because those risky tasks are the only opportunities that are available to them. I remember quite well the “sewage swimmers” of Jakarta. These are people who swim through the open sewer system to perform maintenance and to keep the “waters” flowing, removing blockages. Now, others may rationalize that these sewer swimmers don’t mind their task, but I can guarantee you that they are no different than you or I, and undertake these very risky activities because they, 1. may not completely understand the risks they take, and 2. need to provide for their families. Underneath it all, so to speak, they are the same as we all are.

The same hold true for a willingness to work in sweat-shop like conditions with long hours for little pay and other working conditions that would be less acceptable to “westerners”. You can often hear about how people in a certain country are more tolerant of corruption or other unsavory business practices. The evidence suggests that they may expect more corruption or unsavory practices, but if given a real choice they would be no more tolerant of it than you or I. Society and organizations become at risk when these less savory practices become the de-facto norm. Changing the norm is the challenge, but it can be done.

People are People^©, we are all more the same than different (I exclude psychopathology) and while we spend an enormous amount of time searching for our differences, another evolutionary trait, we would be better served by understanding our similarities.

© 2013 by Jeffrey M. Saltzman. All rights reserved.

Visit OV: www.orgvitality.com

Pssst…Can I Annoy You for a Second?

You might be surprised to find out that there has been very little research done on what causes people to be annoyed. Fearful, happy, sad, trusting, and surprised you can find, annoyed, not so much. There would seem to be an unending treasure trove of behaviors these days that could be construed as annoying or perhaps worse, as I think as a society we are rapidly experiencing a dramatic rise in annoying behaviors. So there really is no shortage of possibilities for study. Being annoyed at something at work doesn’t rise to the level of “I’ll quit over this”, but does make you feel like shouting “give me a break!”

While it was not scientific at all, I asked some of my colleagues to list off some of the things that organizations and bosses do that annoy them. I began to compile a list and categorize them. Here are just a few of the one’s that popped out for me, some of which I would quit over.

About the Boss:

• Being asked to write up your own performance appraisal.
• Not being able to leave work before the boss does.
• The boss having to be the last one to always get to a meeting.

About your Computer:

• Having to get your 5 year old wheezing computer repaired for the third time.
• Being 3 versions of Office behind the rest of the world.
• Having to lug around a monster old fashioned laptop that weighs a ton so the company can save some money, but the boss gets the latest lightweight technical marvel.

About Losing your Job:

• Having to train your replacement in India before you get laid off.
• Being given tips on how to save money by your firm just before your are:
  • Laid off
  • Told that salaries have been frozen
  • Find out that there will be no 401k match
  • Find out that the health care plan is now 100% employee funded.
  • Being told you been laid off in a horrendous fashion (email notification, mass meetings), or when very vulnerable people are laid off (e.g. someone who is 7 months pregnant, or an older worker).
  • Finding out that management receives large bonuses or raises after the layoff for “making their numbers”.

About Finding Another Job:

• Selection procedures that take into account characteristics that have nothing to do with the job.
  • Such as nepotism
  • Or political affiliation, age, gender, or ethnicity.
  • Hearing talking heads on TV who make pronouncements regarding how to find another job.

About Service:

• Having a tiered approach to a help desk where the first person you talk to can’t actually help you.
• Having automated inquiry/information systems that require you to work through endless levels of menus to either:
• Talk to a person who can’t actually help you or
• Find out that the office is now closed.
• Finding out that the mechanic noticed what just broke on your car during your last visit but you did not mention it or fix it since it was not on the repair order.

Joe Palca has recently written a book called “Annoying: The Science of What Bugs Us”. He states that annoying things have some common characteristics. Among them are the activity has to be unpleasant, but not deadly (like nails on a chalkboard). Second is has to be unpredictable (like someone answering their cell phone and taking loudly at the next table in the restaurant) and third it is of uncertain duration (the cell phone conversation seems to go on and on). In other words an unpredictable, unpleasant event that you are not sure how long it will last.  While that seems to make sense, it does seem to leave out quite a few of what people say annoyed them above.

My personal pet peeve is when I am traveling and am jammed into a seat on a plane and the person in front of me thinks it is perfectly ok to recline their seat. Not only do they crush my PC, but the seat can get so tight that I can’t even get out of it. Given how concerned the airlines are about keeping the aisle cleared for safety reasons how can they possibly allow people to recline a seat that prevents those behind them to get out of their own seat?   …Really Annoying….

Anyway, I don’t want to bug you, but if want to add to the list I would be happy to know what annoys you, at work or otherwise.

Ten Signs That Your Employee Survey Program should be Updated

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1. The trend data is in Roman numerals.
2. The location codes include the Ottoman Empire and Prussia.
3. The last administration of the survey included Cuneiform and Hieroglyphic translations.
4. One survey item asked about how good a job Attila was doing.
5. The organization hierarchy starts with the title Pharaoh.
6. Occupation codes included lamplighter, elevator operator, pinsetter, iceman, milkman, switchboard operator, telegraph operator and lector (look it up).
7. The instructions tell you to mark your answers on the abacus in front of you.
8. The tenure item includes references to common era or before common era.
9. The options on the scale for the gender item includes only one choice.
10. The survey focuses primarily on employee engagement.

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© 2011 by Jeffrey M. Saltzman. All rights reserved.

Visit www.orgvitality.com

 

Happy Arbitrary Day

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“Time… is what keeps everything from happening at once.”

Ray Cummings, 1922 

Last week I had a birthday, sort of.  I can be somewhat cynical about made-up or pretend events and will refer to a variety of holidays such as Grandparent’s Day, Secretary’s Day, and dare I say it, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day as “Hallmark Holidays”, days that were promoted and marketed simply as a way to sell more greeting cards and gifts. For some of these days, presumably the ones that have really resonated with the American psyche, the promotions have worked like a charm. Mother’s Day is one of the biggest days of the year for buying flowers or going to a restaurant for a meal and Father’s Day moves a lot of ties. I have nothing against a company or organization promoting its products by these means, I simply feel that I don’t have to fall under their spell. By way of full disclosure, I have to say that I regularly buy my wife flowers on Mother’s Day, as I prefer sleeping in a bed. And in recognition of my feelings my wife gave me a birthday card this year that said “Happy Arbitrary Day”.

A birthday is supposed to commemorate the passing of one-year from the moment of your birth. A year though is a very arbitrary calculation, as are all of the ways by which we measure the passing of time. A year is defined as the amount of time for the planet to circle the sun and come roughly back to the position it was in…well a year ago. The passage of that time has been measured by various civilizations through the alignment of the sun, the positions of the stars or the phases of the moon to varying degrees of accuracy. But what is so magical about that roughly 365 day period that it needs to be commemorated as a significant milestone? Why are we so hung up about the passage of a year’s worth of time?

Well, if you were a farmer, as many of our ancestors were, the time of year was critical so you would know more precisely when to plant your crops or harvest. If you were a fisherman, you would know when the various species of fish were to be found in the waters. If you were a baseball fan you would know how long it was before spring training began. And once you get over 50, you would know how long it is until your next colonoscopy. You see there are all sorts of  critical dates which need to be tracked.

But, there are a number of events that I don’t feel need to be commemorated as big events and birthdays happen to be one of them. For me it is not how  long you have been on this planet that matters, but what you have done while you are here.

Recently, one of the events marked by the passage of time that has made the news was the statement made by some guy in California that the world was coming to an end. May 21^st he said was it, that was all the time we had. So given that, you might as well send me your money, as you won’t need it much longer. Well, he had enough followers who believed him that he amassed some 70 million dollars. After the 21^st came and went, he was asked if he would now return the money, you know like a money back guarantee. He did not deliver on his end-of-the-world prophesy so people should get their money back. He said no, that the world did not end so why should he give the money back? In my mind that is not really a tough question to answer, but I think he has it wrong. Usually in business, which is what this appears to be, if your product doesn’t work as advertised you give back the money people spent on it. But perhaps he has it wrong from a business perspective. Rather than making the end of the world a once in a lifetime event, perhaps he should promote it to be more like Mother’s Day that comes around every year. You know, the world could end just a little bit each year, maybe for a second or two and then go back to the way it was. That could even out his income stream somewhat.

But I started wondering, if he could raise 70 million by putting out bad news like the end of the world, how much could I raise by putting out some good news, like the world was not going to end? I should be able to raise at least twice that amount. Then of course came the obvious thoughts, what would I do with the 140 million dollars that suddenly fell into my lap? So I worked up my to do list and here are my top 10 things.

1. I would treat myself to a full tank of gas. Maybe even a grade above 87% octane. Premium would be wasteful, but perhaps plus.
2. I would buy 1 share of Berkshire Hathaway.

Then I would catch my breath and really dig in solving:

1. World hunger,
2. The lack of clean water for most of the world’s population,
3. The environmental mess we have created for ourselves,
4. All of these various wars,
5. Slavery and the abuse of women,
6. Cancer,
7. The global economy and resultant joblessness and homelessness,
8.  All other illnesses affecting mankind.

After that with the money I had left over I would throw myself one hell of a Happy Arbitrary Day party. For after all, it would have been a very good year.

© 2011 by Jeffrey M. Saltzman. All rights reserved.

Visit OV: www.orgvitality.com

Zombie Engagement or Motivating the Undead

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It seems like you can’t turn on the TV or look at the movie section in the newspaper these days without seeing some reference to zombies. Zombies used to be the stuff of late night horror or the once a year Halloween movie marathon. But it seems pretty clear that zombies have gone mainstream, appearing not only in horror flicks but in television series and even kid shows.

On the university campus, one professor of political science, Niall Michelsen, has incorporated the topic into his classroom instruction and has co-authored a paper titled “Teaching World Politics with Zombies”. Daniel Drezner has written Theories of International Politics and Zombies. In both cases the authors/professors are exploring how the world might react to an actual invasion of zombies. One theory they explore is whether capitalists would be able to exploit the cheap labor that zombies, the undead might provide. Another explores whether stronger countries would sit and watch while zombies ate their way through the weaker ones or if some central organizing effort to control zombies would emerge.

With the growing popularity of zombies and hence the growing population of zombies in society, it was only a matter of time until inevitable personnel issues surrounding zombies, such as motivating or engaging zombies needed to be addressed along with a whole host of others issues. I thought I would get the research ball moving with some thoughts on the topic.

Some of the immediate issues personnel departments are struggling with concerning the rights of the undead include:

• Do zombies have collective bargaining rights? They seem to be very good at organizing gatherings and may have an edge in negotiations. I mean how many of us really want to sit across the table from a zombie and look them in the eye, even if it is still in its socket?
• If you are a union member in the living state and then become a zombie do you retain your membership? Can you be legislated into a second class status when you are undead? Are you still responsible for dues? If not, as suggested by the professors, organizations might forgo the living and hire the undead as cheap labor or union busters.
• Does last in, first out apply during zombie layoffs?
• Do zombies get severance? An arm or a leg?
• If you turn into a zombie do you lose your citizenship?
• If so, can you then get a green card?
• If your kid turns into a zombie before you do, is your kid an anchor zombie, able to sponsor you for inclusion into zombiehood?
• Can the undead be elected to political office, be appointed as a CEO, or do they simply need to eat their way to the top?
• Given how easy it appears to be to kill or injure a zombie, (all you apparently have to do is bash them with a baseball bat), what are the regulations surrounding health care coverage for zombies? Is being a zombie considered a pre-existing condition?
• And critically, how do you motivate or engage the undead to increase their value as an integral part of the workforce?

There has been much speculation that zombies are somehow different, that they don’t want what you or I want from the work environment or that somehow their relationship with their supervisors are “strained”. Some say that zombies are impatient, unwilling to pay their dues in order to succeed in the organization. Others imply that zombies are not as concerned about job security or being developed for future opportunity, wanting only to unlive in the here and now. Other spurious and suspicious claims have arisen against zombies including that they have strong body odor, that they have socialist, communist or perhaps fascist tendencies, others claim that they are not from “here” and that they are so unlike “us” that they even pray to a different god. Some say that zombies are lazy, willing to move along only at a slow shuffle, or that they are solely concerned about money, presumably because they resist being paid with scraps. Speculation has been rampant that zombies need a strong leader to exist in an orderly fashion and that they are not ready for a democratic oriented society. Meanwhile the reported cases of harassment against zombies have skyrocketed. These are grave issues.

Cutting through all this noise, fear, and paranoia will not be easy for researchers intent on furthering the science behind how to motivate and engage zombies, but with good experimental design much can be achieved and some deeply buried findings may emerge.

Let me suggest a simple framework for carrying out this work. The fundamental underlying notion that I propose is that zombies are people too, being driven by the same desires that any other person has regarding the world or work. I am not talking about what zombies like to do in their off-hours, or what their social norms and eating habits might be, I am talking about what zombies want from their labors and how they expect to be treated in the world-of-work and that by-and-large it is the same thing that anyone of any generation, gender, ethnicity, religion, geographic location or sexual orientation wants, because it is what people want. If we want to spend our time searching for the minutest differences (such as whether you are dead or alive) they can be found, but our similarities greatly outweigh our differences.

When unrest occurs among zombies it is often driven by a deep-seated sense of lack of respectful or dignified treatment (just look at the clothes they are often made to wear) and that the playing field between the living and undead is not even. Beyond this, it is clear that the undead want to go through their existence with a sense of equitable treatment, that given their efforts they are being fairly rewarded and with a sense of achievement, an innate sense of accomplishment arising from their labors.

I often use what I call the MPF^© model during organizational transformations and I am convinced that it would work as well during undead transformations. “M” stands for message, “P” stands for Performance and “F” stands for future.

“M” – first off zombies will want a clear understanding of the purpose of the organization, what does it stand for and importantly how they fit in. What will they be doing in their day-to-day job that will help the organization achieve its goals? If the line from the zombie’s job to the organization’s goals cannot be directly drawn, the organization needs to go back and keep drawing it until the message is crystal clear. Zombies want to know how they fit in and how that fit contributes to what the organization is trying to accomplish.

Second is “P” for performance. Examine the message you have delivered to your zombies and then ask yourself if you enabling them or hindering them in delivering on that message. If the message given out by leadership is that the organization will be customer centric, are your processes and procedures, those things that the zombie must live with supportive of that notion or do they fly in the face of it? Many times zombies are frustrated and act out aggressively, because they are asked to do inhuman or impossible tasks given the resources available to them. They are told one thing and then not given the tools needed to deliver on it. Make sure you are enable performance in-line with your messaging.

Third is “F” or Future. Zombies have their eye (figuratively if not literally) on the future, just like the rest of us. They want to know that if they deliver on the goals they now share with the organization that good things will happen. Things like job security, opportunity for development and to get ahead, the ability to provide for their family etc. The evidence on zombie engagement is absolutely clear, people can work through current hardships and difficulties if they have a sense of a purposeful and meaningful future for themselves – not a smoke and mirrors future of continuing unfulfilled promises, but a real one.

People will get on primitive sailing ships and travel to new unknown lands, they will stand alone, unblinking, in front of a tank, they will challenge despotic rulers who won’t hesitate to cut them down, they will give up and then give up some more, allowing themselves to be treated horrifically and suffering deprivation, all for the sake of creating a better life down the road for themselves, their children, and to create a Future that they can believe in and can see. And with my last breath let me say that you should make sure that the zombies who work for you can see that future and then you need to deliver on it. Come by again sometime soon, I’ll keep an eye out for you.

© 2011 by Jeffrey M. Saltzman. All rights reserved.

Visit OV: www.orgvitality.com

Life’s Event Horizons

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An event horizon, in its traditional definition, is that physical location where a particle of matter having come close enough to a stellar black hole has a totally certain future, it will fall into the black hole and will not emerge again. The event horizon is the point of no return, the point at which the particle cannot escape the enormous gravitational pull of the black hole. A black hole is a former star, now collapsed into a singularity, a single point whose gravitational field is so strong that not even light can escape.

Fairly exotic stuff, but I recently read a description (Science News, 12/18/2010) that brings the notion of event horizons down to earth. Supposed you were a fish, blissfully approaching a waterfall, unaware that if you approach too closely you will be swept over the falls to your doom. As you approach the falls the river is moving faster and faster and you begin to yell out for help as you struggle against the current. Ok, ok, I have never heard a fish yell for help either, but work with me here. As you yell for help, the noise of the water rushing over the edge becomes louder and louder as it picks up speed. At some point, if the speed of the water you are trapped within breaks the sound barrier, your yells will be unable to escape, traveling along but not emerging from the water itself, until the water slows once again. That point, where your yells will not be heard, and where the rushing water has broken the sound barrier, is a terrestrial event horizon. No matter how loudly you scream you will not be heard, as the sound waves from your voice will not be able to travel fast enough to emerge from the water rushing faster than sound.

That description got me thinking. Are there other kinds of event horizons that may exist, perhaps in our daily or organizational lives? I started to build a list:

• The overdone toast event horizon: that precise moment during breakfast preparation when you realize that no matter how much you scrape the toast is going to taste burnt.
• The school homework event horizon: the moment when no matter how many times you tell your child to get started, you know she/he will be up too late finishing their homework.
• The you can have anything you want event horizon: the moment when your child climbs onto your lap and places her/his head on your shoulder before asking for a new bike. You can’t escape, the die is cast. I wonder if that will still work when she/he wants the car keys.
• The speeding car event horizon: the location and instant, when you realize that no matter how quickly or hard you press on the brakes, you will be getting a ticket (likely deserved) from that police car you flew by.
• The throw the stick on more time event horizon: when the dog approaches you, drops its retrieved stick at your feet, and looks at you with imploring eyes – throw the stick one more time. It is inescapable you must throw the stick.
• The organizational culture change event horizon: the precise moment when an organization has a majority of people who feel strongly positive about efforts the organization is making to become (choose one): customer focused, more effective, highly engaging, best place to work, best place for working mothers, highly communicative, accountable, flexible, innovative, risk taking, emotionally intelligent, or results oriented.
• The organizational reality event horizon: The precise moment when an organization realizes that magic bullet solutions belong with other forms of magic – in a children’s fantasy dream world.
• Life’s event horizons: Any moment in your life when you come to the realization that what you have is pretty good, you have no desire to turn the clock back to the way it was, and you are looking forward to what will be.

© 2010 by Jeffrey M. Saltzman. All rights reserved.

Visit OV: www.orgvitality.com

Information…Please!

“From the children’s point of view it was hard to tell a neighbor from a relative. She is like a sister to me was said in all sincerity. Door-to-door living over long periods of time made these people true kin to each other. The only difference between neighbors and relatives was that the neighbors went home to sleep; the relatives could climb into bed with you.” (Sam Levenson, Everything but Money).

The fact that neighbors went home to sleep and relatives could climb into your bed was information that helped a small child differentiate relatives from neighborhood friends in a crowded, confusing world encompassing the tenements of East Harlem in the early 1900s.  Information, we are always searching for more in order to help us make sense of our world, to help us interpret the events by which we are surrounded, to help us make better decisions, but then we are often selective about which pieces we are going to view as credible, accepting some bits while seemingly randomly rejecting others.

There is an old tale coming out of the Middle East that is often spoken of in terms of conflict resolution, but seems to have more to do with information or the lack thereof. It goes something like this. There was a nomad who sensed he was nearing the end of his life, and so called his three sons together. He spoke to them, “I want to tell you how I plan on bequeathing the family’s 17 camels. To my oldest son I give half of my camels. To my middle son, I give a third of my camels and to my youngest son I give one ninth of my camels.” A week later the old nomad passed away and the 3 sons took to fighting over how to split the herd of camels between them. They went to the wise woman of the tribe, who mediated disputes and described the situation. She said to them, “I don’t know how to resolve your dispute, but here, I have one camel, take it and see if it makes you happy.” So now the three sons had 18 camels to divvy up. The oldest took half of the camels, or 9 of them. The middle son took a third of the camels or 6 of them and the youngest took one ninth of the camels or 2 of them. Well, 9 plus 6 plus 2 equals 17. So they had one camel left, which they gave back to the wise woman. It is a fun math exercise and makes you stop and think. What is the missing piece of information that helps you understand the story? The old nomad did not bequeath all of his camels in the first place, only 17/18^th of them (1/2+1/3+1/9 = 9/18+6/18+2/18 = 17/18), which of course was impossible to do if you only had 17 camels to start with.

The conflict resolution part of this comes from an outside observer, the wise woman, being somewhat removed from the situation, being able to see a way forward from the impasse – how to divide up the 17 camels according to the nomads desires. The information part of this comes from the understanding that what was originally specified was not mathematically possible. But what is possible, and what needs to get done anyway is not always in alignment. We often need to think beyond what conventional wisdom says is possible and figure out ways to accomplish goals and mankind, in spite of our inherent flaws, is pretty good at that. And information helps, it can help a lot, but sometimes information, even compelling information is not only rejected but triggers a response of trying to get everyone else to reject the compelling information as well.

Some messages carry more effective information than others. Information that is unexpected or surprising tends to have more impact. Sean Carroll, a noted physicist, writes in From Eternity to Here, “If I tell you that the Sun is going to rise in the East tomorrow morning, I’m not actually conveying much information, because you already expected that was going to happen. But If I tell you the peak temperature tomorrow is going to be exactly 25 degrees Celsius, the message contains more information, because without the message you wouldn’t have known precisely what temperature to expect….Roughly speaking, then the information content of a message goes up as the probability of a given message taking that form goes down.” So out of the world of physics comes the notion that if a piece of information, a message, is unique, unexpected, or novel, it carries with it inherently more content, and more important content than often repeated, or completely expected information and messaging.

David Brooks produces a column summarizing notable social and psychological research, and in his December 7^th column he wrote, “Classic research has suggested that the more people doubt their own beliefs the more, paradoxically, they are inclined to proselytize in favor of them. David Gal and Derek Rucker published a study in Psychological Science, call “When in Doubt, Shout”, in which they presented some research subjects with evidence that undermined their core convictions. The subjects who were forced to confront the counterevidence went on to more forcefully advocate their original beliefs, thus confirming the earlier findings.” (NY Times, 12/07/10). This coping process was originally proposed by Festinger, the father of cognitive dissonance theory, which states that when people’s behavior and thought patterns are incongruent, I advocate one thing verbally, but actually behave not according to those beliefs, that dissonance sets in which must be resolved by changing beliefs or behavior.  So here is a notion that appears to go against the world as physicists know it. In the human mind, or at least among some of us anyway, if strongly held beliefs are challenged to the core, rather than giving up on that belief and saying, “Oh well, I now have better information, it was very meaningful since it was unexpected, going against my core beliefs and now I can make a better more informed decision”, there is a tendency to not only hang on to those core, now challenged beliefs but to actively try to get others to sign on to the belief as well, a belief that the person who is proselytizing about it may no longer fully believe him or herself. By getting others to embrace the shaky belief it shores up one’s own doubts and the dissonance that exists can be resolved.

Think of the implications of this in the business world. For instance, say I was selling lousy, junk mortgages. I am presented with information that says “if you proceed on this path you will put not only your own company at risk by the entire economy.” My reaction could be, rather than stopping my behavior, to try to get others to emulate my risk taking to resolve any dissonance that has set up within myself.

Think of the survey that was just conducted on the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy in the US military. Each time the evidence suggests that the vast majority of those in the military feel that repeal of the legislation would have no effect on battle readiness, there are members of congress who raise additional barriers and continue to try to persuade others, to proselytize others, to their point of view. When faced with clear evidence that threatens their core beliefs, rather than accepting that evidence and changing they simply try to be more convincing to others in order to resolve potentially dissonant feelings. As an aside, I took a look at the survey itself that was used to collect the information on feelings towards Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and my professional judgment is that the survey took a very conservative approach, asking questions in such a way that would lead to the least favorable result possible. Not that the research team was trying to bias the results, on the contrary, it appeared that they were setting the bar very high so that when the data did come in the results would be uncontestable, but contested the results are regardless.

Let’s say you are working in a company where an executive has an idea regarding how the future of the company should unfold. He or she has a lot of skin in the game regarding that idea or concept. That executive is presented with incontrovertible evidence that the idea is a dud. Given what we have just reviewed what might be the executive’s course of action? And more importantly how can organizations of any type overcome the bias that might arise?

Some of the techniques that can be used in these instances to overcome the inherent bias include:

1. Oversight – of the individual by others within the organization who can pass informed judgments on the concept or idea.
2. Checks and balances – on the absoluteness of power. Rather than one person having the authority to send the organization off in a new direction, a board-type approach can be of benefit, especially for big decisions and especially if the board solicits from its members…
3. Independently arrived at judgments – one method to derive better decisions from a group is to have each member of the group develop independently arrived at judgments prior to comparing notes.
4. And, independent assessment of the concept or decision by an outside group without a special interest in the outcome. Using what is perceived as an unbiased outside party, who can pass professional judgment on the concept, can lend additional credence to the conclusions drawn.

Even with these techniques, and even with the best of intentions you will still have some people without the ability to let go of their cherished beliefs and notions even when the facts indicate that those beliefs are clearly in error. The behavior by some will be to dig in their heels and to do their upmost to convince others of the correctness of their unsubstantiated beliefs as they struggle to come to grips with the information that they have received.

© 2010 by Jeffrey M. Saltzman. All rights reserved.

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