BORN FIFTY YEARS TOO EARLY BUT THINKING THEN AS IF IT WERE TODAY!
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© August 27, 2012
The Library of Congress put out a reading list of “Books that shaped America,” some 88 in all, published between 1751 and 2002. A book reviewer noted the absence of the works of James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allen Poe, Raymond Chandler, Flannery O’Connor, Norman Mailer and John Updike. I could add several others.
Lists never please us nor are they meant to. They are designed to get our attention. Books are a joy, but experience shapes our lives. That is why I have charted my experience in reflective tomes. With maturity, I have moved from subjective certainty to objective doubt. Science has followed a similar trajectory, going from neat and tidy theses to messy and chaotic theories: e.g., quantum mechanics and string theory.
Werner Heisenberg’s “Uncertainty Principle” comes to mind. He notes the limits of precision in science. If the subatomic world is uncertain, imagine how uncertain the world of psychology. Heisenberg’s principle states that the more precisely something is determined the less precisely the momentum that follows. This is only too true in our nonsensical world where we are constantly surprised.
Packaging can make this world appear less messy less uncertain. Daniel H. Pink in “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us” (2009), and Dan Ariely in “The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home” (2010) are in the reassuring business. For the effort, they are best selling authors.
They present counterintuitive ideas that clash with the twentieth century but are expected to resonate in the twenty-first. They do with me. Having gone against the grain as a matter of routine, they authenticate my contrary nature. But instead of finding this reassuring, I sense being born fifty years too early.
DRIVE: THE SURPRISING TRUTH ABOUT WHAT MOTIVATES US
Poet Kahlil Gibran wrote a long time ago that work was “love made visible.” Work has always been so. Gibran, for those not familiar, is the author of that famous quote of President Kennedy, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” He addressed his Lebanese people with that statement decades before it was uttered in Kennedy’s inaugural. Originality seldom is in the mix in this age of celebrity. “Drive” suffers from this precedence.
Pink uses motivation 2.0 to describe the twentieth century, where the stick and carrot game (i.e., punish and reward) prodded people to work. He calls this “extrinsic motivation,” or external stimulation.
Early in the twentieth century, Frederick Winslow Taylor, the efficiency expert, and the father of industrial engineering, thought most workers were “so stupid and so phlegmatic that they nearly resembled an ox than any other type.” This stereotype became a subliminal mantra of management.
Pink paints with a quick brush other pathfinders: Abraham Maslow and his “Hierarchy of Needs,” vying for self-actualization, Douglas McGregor’s “Theory X and Theory Y “ of management or worker centered management, and Frederick Herzberg’s “hygiene factors” (job security, good working conditions, pay, good supervision) versus “motivators” (work itself).
Not included: Robert Blake and Jane Mouton’s “Managerial Grid,” William Ouchi’s “Theory Z” of cooperative corporate culture, Rensis Likert’s “Four System Management,” or Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard’s “Situational Management.” Neither Robert Greenleaf’s “Servant Leadership” nor Eliyahu Goldratt “Goal System” for ongoing improvement was mentioned.
Many tried to move management off its pusillanimous perch, but without much relevance or success. Daniel Yankelovich captures this in “New Rules” (1981). He claims pathfinders turned the working world upside down, creating a self-centered, self-indulgent working population obsessed with self-fulfillment with little interest in contribution. For me, such workers are “suspended in terminal adolescence with the mindset of an obedient twelve-year-old” (see missive, “The End of Our Way of Life as We Know It,” August 5, 2006).
A study I conducted at Honeywell Clearwater (Florida) in 1984 of African American professionals (engineers and other professionals) centered on what motivated them. I found Herzberg's "hygiene factors” were dominant.
“Well, what did you expect?" was the reaction of management.
Not satisfied, I next did a stratified random sample of the 3,000 other professionals – all white. Hygiene factors again dominated.
It was from that experiment that I developed my workplace cultures: Comfort (management dependent), Complacency (organizational counterdependent) and Contribution (interdependent). It was published in several journals, and then in “Work Without Managers” (1991).
Pink mentions W. Edwards Deming, the inventor of statistical quality control and Quality Control Circles, but does not mention J. M. Juran, whose strategy for chronic problem solving ultimately contributed to Deming’s success.
Peter Drucker comes in for praise, the quintessential observer. He designed Managing by Objectives (MBOs), Standards of Performance, and Performance Appraisal systems, systems that left a lot to be desired in my experience.
Pink’s self-appraisal is on target. Bottom up assessment is more reliable if counterintuitive to top down assessment practices. As an executive and organizational development consultant, I have found the most reliable data comes out of the trenches.
Pink reduces complex ideas to simple schemes. The twentieth century is seen as dominated by “algorithms,” or sets of instruction meant for everyone to follow, while the twenty-first century is viewed as “heuristic,” or a solution driven culture. Motivation is described as “intrinsic” or self-directed behavior.
Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s ideas are profiled, and properly so, as his “flow psychology” and optimal experience, treating work as play is fundamentally solid.
Readers familiar with my works will find Pink corroborating much in these efforts. The difference? My works are largely empirical, whereas his are based largely on the works of economic Nobel Laureates and research studies.
Pink wrote a splendid book on the subject of creativity (“A Whole New Mind,” 2005) that I found more substantial than this work.
“Drive” introduces Type I as opposed to Type X personalities. Type I refers to “intrinsic drive,” or finding satisfaction and happiness in the activity itself, as opposed to Type X or “extrinsic drive” centered on external stimulation.
He claims corporate bonuses are not motivators, are counterintuitive and counterproductive. He references the research of behavioral economist Dan Ariely, who will be covered shortly.
“Empowerment” policies are also given short shrift, as have I. This was apparent in my keynote speech at a Department of Defense Contract Administrators Conference hosted by Honeywell Clearwater in 1984.
My topic? “Participative Management: An Adversary Point of View.”
I found the whole empowerment campaign a charade, and documented my findings. For the effort, I nearly got fired (see missive: The 25th Anniversary of Dr. Fisher’s career changing speech, March 12, 2009).
Pink’s motivation typology is intriguing: Autonomy (self-direction), Mastery (practice, practice, practice) and Purpose (the objective seen in the context of autonomy and mastery). I would add passion. He then gives the reader a toolkit with a “flow test,” or a practical guide to turn “Drive” into a daily practice.
THE UPSIDE OF IRRATIONALITY: THE UNEXPECTED BENEFITS OF DEFYING LOGIC
My first job out of university was with Standard Brands in its R&D laboratories. Shortly thereafter, I was called to active duty in the navy. Once out of the navy, I embarked on what I planned to be a brief career as a chemical sales engineer with Nalco Chemical Company. I needed to earn additional funds to add to my fellowship at an eastern university in pursuit of a Ph.D. in theoretical chemistry. Hard wired in science, it never occurred to me I couldn’t sell.
With no training in sales, the youngest member of a seasoned selling force, I discovered an instinct for sales, which literally left veterans in the dust.
I didn’t use sales literature, didn’t intimidate prospects, didn’t profile my company to customers as the greatest thing since slice bread; nor did I malign competitors. I simply listened, asked questions, and assessed needs, then formed a joint problem solving partnership with the customer.
It worked like magic. There was no need for penalty of delay, assumptive or finesse closes. I was a problem-solving chemist, putting the emphasis on the front end with expected outcomes. The workplace was my laboratory. Products we didn’t sell, such as sophisticated feeding equipment, were recommended to improve the reliability of results. It was systems selling, but was considered irrational by my associates as it failed to follow conventional protocol. Because of that success, and a growing family, theoretical chemistry was abandoned.
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Author Dan Ariely, too, has had a circuitous route to his present status. He was a physics and mathematics major, transferred to philosophy and psychology, dropped philosophy and became a cognitive psychologist, then gravitated to behavioral economics, never having studied economics formally.
Much of his work, although methodologically scientific, appears counterintuitive. For example, he has verified that incentives diminish rather than enhance performance. Bonuses are counterproductive. Work itself is the key to productivity. Work is where the greatest satisfaction is found.
Moreover, the mantra “no pain no gain” has proven also to be a myth. Ariely has gone through much pain in his life. As a teenager, he suffered burns over 70 percent of his body in a near fatal accident, and has had to have scores of operations over the years, and is never out of pain.
Pain has taught him to listen to his body, and to act accordingly. He sees athletes, entertainers, politicians and other alpha type personalities burning the candle at both ends, ignoring pain’s signals, chasing some reward or achievement. Ultimately, they lose in the end by masking the pain with drugs or simply ignoring it.
No surprise, he has trouble with B.F. Skinner’s conditional response behaviorism. Skinner sees people as empty vessels responsive to stimulus-response techniques consistent with non-thinking instinctive animals. Ariely’s research refutes this. Behavior is largely guided by self-image, an internal mechanism.
WORK AND HARD WIRING
When work is predicated primarily on gain, and not on the satisfaction of work itself, there is an inclination to cheat, to loaf, and to exploit the system. Rote work (e.g., assembly line) blunts curiosity, creativity and sound performance. He writes:
Adam Smith’s emphasis on the efficiency in the division of labor was more relevant during his time, when the labor in question was based mostly on simple production, and is less relevant in today’s knowledge economy.
He sees the division of labor as one of the new dangers of knowledge-based technology. Companies run the risk of taking away employees’ sense of the big picture, purpose, and sense of completion. Highly divisible labor might be efficient if people were machines, he argues, but they are not. Pride of ownership runs deep in our hard wiring, as does our creativity.
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Over the past several decades, companies have unwittingly launched multiple schemes that have invariably blunted the motivation of employees. They have done this with what I call “corpocracy,” or the American disease (see Work Without Managers, 1991, p14).
Work is the central part of our lives. It is natural for people to want to find meaning in work. Ariely writes:
If companies really want their workers to produce, they should try to impart a sense of meaning, not just through vision statements but also by allowing employees to feel a sense of completion and ensuring that a job well done is acknowledged. At the end of the day, such factors can exact a huge influence on satisfaction and productivity.
We are goal oriented. It is our nature, our hard wiring. There is no satisfaction in a problem half solved. When our efforts are unfruitful, affection for what we do plummets.
NOT INVENTED HERE
A “not-invented here” bias can wreck a relationship or ruin a company operation. It is why we are slow to learn from others, or borrow their ideas. We like any solution as long as we see it as ours.
Ariely tells the story of Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla. Tesla had a better idea with alternating (A/C) current to Edison’s direct (D/C) current, but he would never admit it, and suffered greatly for it, much of which is not popularly known (see Margaret Cheney’s “Tesla: Man Out of Time,” 1981, pp 38-50).
The irrational bias is prominent when we fail to see the value of the work of others compared to our own. Amateurs, or those without credentials, are given short shrift.
This was the case with Michael Faraday, the great researcher in electromagnetism and electrochemistry, a man whose mathematical acumen did not extend much beyond simple algebra. Yet, he changed the science of physics and chemistry forever. We could say the same thing about Steven Jobs who, like Faraday, did not let a lack of formal technical training handicap him.
Ariely points out that an obsession with acronyms is a form of elitism, where secret codes prevent outsiders from entering sacrosanct inner circles. Secrecy, as a form of “not invented here,” stymies cooperation and consensus building as well as creativity.
Intelligent well-meaning people, unaware of this bias, may mistakenly believe jealousy is the source of resentment. Nothing could be further from the truth.
ECONOMICS AND THE INSTINCT FOR REVENGE
It is irrational Sunday every day in this year of presidential politics.
Fox and CNN 24/7 cable news programs are like watching the same movie every hour of every day for two months. Whether you’re Republican or Democrat or Independent, the same faces, the same arguments, the same nonsense is repeated so consistently that you can mouth the words before they are spoken, much like a familiar movie. Meanwhile, newspapers have to reach the absurd to get your attention.
The Tampa Bay Times, a newspaper with a liberal tradition, likes to think itself rational, fair minded, balanced and measured in its commentary. The other day columnist Daniel Ruth called Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan the “Atticus Grinch of Congress,” while Maureen Dowd suggested he displays the beautiful calm of the hysterical person. Not to be outdone, Nobel Laureate in Economics Paul Krugman simply declared Paul Ryan is an unserious man, who plays a serious person on TV.
This quadrennial madness is open season on the irrational for both parties.
Democrats paint themselves the party that seeks justice for the little guy, while Republicans paint themselves as the only grown ups in the room. Democrats feel Republicans are betraying the rank and file, while Republicans feel the Democrats are betraying the country driving it to ruin with social welfare. Truth be told, you couldn’t find the width of a hair follicle’s difference between the two parties. They are out to lunch and out of touch.
Despite all the bellicose, all the rhetoric of revenge, Ariely writes: The threat of vengeance can have a certain efficacy. It is good metaphor for behavioral economics. He suggests that although the instinct may not be rational it is not senseless and may prove useful:
People are more trusting and more reciprocating than rational economics would have us believe. Revenge and trust are opposite sides of the same coin.
To put this another way, despite the collapse in 2008 of the real estate market, the shenanigans of Wall Street, bankers and the insurance industry, despite being upset with the social contract, Americans are talking, discussing, decrying excess, yes, accusing and abusing, but working out their angst in public. This is the behavior of a democracy, which is essentially a trusting society. Ariely continues:
Trusting societies have tremendous benefits over nontrusting societies, and we are designed to instinctively try to maintain a high level of trust in our society.
Outrage would suggest that President Barak Obama with unemployment still at 8.3 percent, and the stimulus package of questionable efficacy, soon to be voted out of office. That would be rational. The upside of the irrational suggests otherwise, that is, his successful return to office.
Outrage will not be apparent in the November presidential election, but public fatigue.
People are tired of experts, tired of being told what to think and how to decide about everything. They are tired of hearing one side is the side of angels and the other side is the side of devils, when both sides appear to have horns. People feel exploited, lied to, taken for granted, and assumed to be ignorant. They will vote with their feet and their pocketbooks, avoiding the poll places and the marketplace. Stay tuned.
WHEREVER YOU GO, THERE YOU ARE
For the last sixty years, we have been on what Ariely calls the “hedonistic treadmill.” It is the drive of "compare and compete" in an effort to keep up with the Jones. After WWII, happiness was defined in material and hedonistic terms of having and doing.
Hugh Hefner gave Freud’s “pleasure principle” his special interpretation with Playboy magazine, acting as the baby boomers’ cultural philosopher. His devotees became the merry monarchs of the madhouse where self-indulgence became the new religion.
This has worn thin as over indulgence always does. Instead of the rational now mounting the high ground, an attempt to bridge ubiquitous lethargy has been provided by the pornography industry. Religion will not kill this industry. Boredom will. Ariely has proven this in his studies.
It is all a matter of self-image, which is the driver of motivation. After decades of self-indulgence, we have reached the point of realizing wherever we go, there we are.
To a greater or lesser degree, Ariely sees the pursuit of happiness a disappointment.
That pursuit has driven many people to the edge. They become shopoholics, drug addicts, alpha type personalities in work and leisure, or they eat, drink, smoke and party too much. On the other hand, driven by these same demons, they become fanatical about diet, health and exercise. In the end, excess produces diminishing returns and leaves little room for the enjoyment of life.
Then there are people who choose the safe life. They are safe hirers on the job, behave predictably, and are considered steady and reliable. They don’t take risks or embrace challenges. They are the other side of a joyless economy.
Real pleasure and meaning comes from taking calculated risks, reinventing ourselves again and again as we move through our twenties to thirties to fifties and beyond. We are the same person but wrapped in a whole new set of possibilities. We choose to be alive instead of simply existing.
Unfortunately, our minds and bodies are programmed to fit within what society dictates as our parameters. Many take these implied limitations seriously. They allow others to define their place and space and happiness. If you doubt this, consider how good looks define our place in the social hierarchy, and limit our mating possibilities. Ariely claims we reify these limits even more by scorning what we cannot be and cannot have.
He knows of what he speaks. Having been burned on 70 percent of his body, essentially altering his good looks, this drew attention to his facial, neck, hands and arms scars.
This left him with three possibilities: altering people’s perception of him, considering ranking his attributes, or sulking and drifting off into sour grapes.
His professional success, marrying a beautiful woman and having two children with her, and earning world-class professional distinction are evidence of successful adaptation. This involved risks, dealing with his self-image, and reinventing himself. He writes: At the end of the day, people are the marketing terminology equivalent of experience goods.
EMPATHY AND EMOTIONS
People identify with victims. Take a family being thrown into the street while the television cameras are running. Tens sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars pour into the television station’s coffers for that family.
Same scenario only now it is not a single family but thousands of families clinging to life with the television cameras rolling, as in the case with Hurricane Katrina. Television viewers’ watch with alarm but general apathy is the response.
Ariely sees many forces at work here: lack of information, racism, and the sheer size of the tragedy. Mother Teresa marked the distinction: If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at one, I will.
Scientists call this, “the identifiable victim effect.” Katrina at first failed to register this, less because of the racism that Ariely mentions, but more because the information concerning those stranded was not individualized.
The American Cancer Society does a great job of individualizing this dreaded disease with successful information campaigns. Statistical victims represented by objective numbers and demographics fail to provide such identity.
Rationalists launched an objective campaign for Katrina with objective needs: 100,000 people have not had a hot meal in three weeks, are sleeping on hardwood floors of gyms, have no privacy, and must deal with the sweltering summer heat with no relief.
Result: the rational campaign stifled empathy. Why? People’s emotions were not awakened.
Television journalists provided this emotional identity with individual interviews. The money poured in. Katrina was funded more generously by far than the Asian Tsunami, or epidemics in tuberculosis, malaria and AIDS none of which established a sustained emotional appeal. Ariely writes:
It is very sad the only effective way to get people to respond to suffering is through an emotional appeal rather than through an objective reading of massive need. The upside is that when our emotions are awakened, we can be tremendously caring. Once we attach our individual face to the suffering, we’re much more willing to help, and we go far beyond what economists would expect from rational, selfish, maximizing agents.
SELF-HERDING
Perhaps because of where I am, or rather where my mind is, I found this most intriguing. Emotions, Ariely writes, influence us by turning decisions into DECISIONS, that is, we become locked in patterns. He calls this “self-herding.” It comes from remembering the specific actions we have taken in the past and mindlessly repeating them anew.
We tend to look on past actions as a guide for what we should do next, and thus follow the same basic behavioral pattern. This is indicative of our self-image, character and cognitive biases. It is why others, who pay attention to these patterns, can manipulate us with such finesse. I call this "our cage" (see missive: “Who Put You in the Cage?” February 23, 2005).
Self-herding was one reason I was successful as a chemical sales engineer.
My clientele was primarily engineers in positions from R&D to operations, from top management to purchasing. They took pride in the rationale of their deductive reasoning (i.e., inferences made from already formed premises) without realizing this. It left them vulnerable to their emotional side (see Confident Selling for the 90s, 1992).
SOLUTION? TAKE OUR IRRATIONALITY SERIOUSLY
My intention here is not to pick on engineers. It happens that my experience in life professionally has been primarily with the engineering community from several different organizational vantage points.
We are all fond of seeing ourselves as objective, rational and logical. When we decide to invest our money, buy a home, choose a school for our children, pick a doctor or medical procedure, we assume our choices are wise. Even when a pattern develops which, clearly, indicates this is not the case, we motor on believing we made the right choice but circumstances intervened. We are good at rationalization. This means we are good at projecting the blame, the downside of irrationality.
We think we have common sense when there is no such thing. Ariely has taken pains to point this out. Giving bonuses to workers does not improve performance, while cuddling employees to satisfy their angst is counterproductive.
In the 1960s Bethlehem Steel and Alcoa gave senior workers 13-week paid furloughs to energize greater company appreciation with the expectation of greater productivity. They got the reverse (see Six Silent Killers, 1998, pp 89-90).
The same is true in giving money to students for good grades. Much of what we think is so, isn’t, but this is counterintuitive thinking.
System researcher Russell Ackoff used this to explain how behavioral systems work:
If every system is behaving as well as it can, the whole system will not behave as well as it can. Machine Age thinking would see it would, but the contrary is true. If you have a system that is working as well as it can, none of its parts will be (ibid, pp 226-227).
This blows holes in MBOs, performance appraisal reward systems (which they are), HR signature cosmetic programs of “empowerment” (nothing actually changes), acronyms as elitist tools, the American disease of corpocracy, the not invented here company bias, business as usual practices after repeated corporate scandals, and the “drop-in-the-bucket” effect (where attention is on a specific need, but not on a major issue). The national debt comes to mind.
FINAL THOUGHT
Dan Ariely’s book as with Daniel Pink’s book “Drive,” echoes sentiments common to my experience. The same is true, I believe, of many others.
Here’s hoping Pink and Ariely do make a dent in our cultural apathy. Perhaps others will be encouraged by their efforts. I take some comfort in being born fifty years too early but thinking then as if it were today.
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