The Real Reasons 'Why'
Managers have made great progress over the past 200 years but, according to behavioral scientists today’s average employee is only producing 35% to 50% of their on-the-job potential. In questionnaires they also admit to wasting as much as 3 hours a day. If we can increase worker motivation without additional costs, the economy should go off the chart. We explain here why. Historic Background: Scientists generally describe humans as being rational thinking; cooperative, productive social animals that carry in each body cell similar self-governing genetic codes commonly referred to as “human nature.” Over a period of 20-25 million years, chance mutations and natural selection developed a primitive brain in mammals. Leaders of animal packs and clans diligently protected their wards and supported survival needs. Two hundred thousand years ago, a mutation sparked a thinking brain in a particular female. This ability gave heirs advantages over their animal cousins. About 10,000 years ago hunter-gathers began to farm and domesticate animals. Nearby villages grew into cities. Artisans and others sold or traded their products and services much as they do today. In crowded environments sickness and famines created social disorder. Tyrants (i.e., sovereigns, conquers and dictators) took advantage of the chaos, replaced traditional leaders and using slavery, serfdom and ideological anarchy, they abolish freedoms. None of these schemes lasted long because the freedoms to think and to grow by ones own hand is a basic non-negotiable gene driven need. According to scientists, genes are the building blocks of the brain. They manage our bodies without our conscious input and guide the way we think and behave. Social intermingling and the free exchange of innovative ideas sped up mankind’s progress. Genes developed over millions of years and when compared in geological time, today’s management style is less than a second old. US workers fought poverty over the past 200 years. They struck for benefits that leaders of yore would have considered to be their rightful due. Abraham Maslow stated that “as humans meet 'basic needs', they seek to satisfy successively higher needs and that healthy workers, who are free to think, grow and use information stored in the mind, work harder and smarter. Today’s employees are frustrated in their efforts to reach higher level needs (belonging, esteem and self-actualization). In this environment, profits remain nominal. The deportment of today’s workers indicates that their hostility is the result of unsatisfied genetic needs. Thinking is an essential human freedom. Encouraging employees to think about how to create profits for those who pay their salaries may not seem fashionable, but this act unquestionably excites workers into action and costs nothing to implement. The closer organizations follow nature’s urgings, the greater the opportunity for success. Managers must learn ‘why’ workers react the way they do, and more important, ‘why’ they continue to disregard human needs that apply to the workplace. Neglecting the ‘why’ part has cost industry trillions over the years. Summary: When I started managing I used the axiom “Treat others as I would be treated.” I was fortunate enough to work around the world for 25 years and I found that employees responded similarly to my management style even though culture, religions and language differed and they lived thousands of miles apart. I understood how to increase productivity, but not why they responded so enthusiastically. In researching the issue I found that my experiences closely matched scientific theorems. It usually took four months and once they accepted that I worked for them, they began to work for the company instead of against it. In effect, I managed their mental input (i.e., recommendations, thoughts and innovative ideas) and this excited physical output. Personality problems disappeared, cooperation increased, the spirit bloomed, self-respect intensified and they become productive at all levels. In this scenario, when outputs double profits triple. It’s like having twice the number of employees without the additional cost of insurance, benefits, space, supervision and tools.
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Posted in Commentary by Bob Carpenter
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November 16, 2006
'Lovaglia' revisited
'Lovaglia’s Law' sounds intriquing. It may even hold in most instances, but does it not seem to suggest that acceptance of evidence is always appropriate to critical decision making, and that a certain opprobrium attaches to those who ”resist” its application in such situations? In fairness, perhaps this is not the intention of the Law. But observation would seem to indicate that ‘evidence’ may, in fact, be consciously – and appropriately – marginalized in some group decision making. The real issue here may finally turn on the legitimacy of any universal model, in face of the right of exceptional groups to preserve their own modus operandi.
In the world of organizations, some groups of a strongly religious type can, for example, with their emphasis on members’ receptivity to higher Authority, be committed to the rule of private psychological intuitions as both end and means. Groups that intend subjective psychological states as earthly goals while remaining continually ‘open to the spirit’ can preserve a receptivity to potentially 'unverifiable' means and ends throughout their corporate life. They may offer no a priori principle, or even desire, to exclude private spiritual or mystical judgments from strategic considerations. Within the worldview of such a group, private feelings require no external criteria by which they are assessed; they are appropriated or rejected, based on members’ spiritual judgments. These mental states may be regarded by outsiders as problematic in respect to rational analysis, but treasured as meaningful, even essential by the group which, after all, can lay claim to divine guidance through such manifestations. By the canons of the group, will ‘evidence’ be decisive or even meaningful here?
Perhaps. But private insights and intuitions can play a powerful and accepted role — and if they coalesce into a major decision, or are mandated by a Founder, they can dominate an organization’s destiny. In pragmatic terms, a group can even make shipwreck by remaining true to its inner voice and mission, despite ‘evidence’. Met any Shakers lately? By the internal standards of such a world, evidence, in any normal sense of the word, may be rightly marginalized. In fact, in a curious twist, followers may actually propose their religious intuitions as ‘evidence’ of a superior order, the beat of a higher Drummer.
In such scenarios, applicability of Lovaglia’s Law becomes tenuous. Perhaps our Law simply needs nuance, taking the exceptions into account. And in today’s America, there may be more exceptions than we realize.
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Posted in Beliefs and assumptions by Paul Reist
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