The “trait theory” of leadership posits that good leaders are born with certain traits. The theory says that if we can identify those traits, then identify people who have those traits, we can select good leaders. The trait theory of leadership is time-worn and has been thoroughly discredited, but its principles still echo in much of current thinking about what makes good leaders and managers.
This is, perhaps, nowhere more evident than in the notion that good leaders are decisive. Take a moment and do a web search on the phrase “good leaders are decisive.” Then look at the titles of the articles that show up. It’s clear that “decisiveness” is strongly associated with the identification of “great leaders.”
Recent studies in decision-making, though, report that we’re all subject to a variety of decision-making biases that often lead us to bad decisions. The work of Nobel-prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman shows that we all hold a set of biases that impact our effectiveness in gathering information and making decisions. We ignore new information and attend only to facts and figures that support our preconceptions. That’s the confirmation bias. We’ve all heard the term “halo effect”; that’s a decision-making bias that prompts us to draw a conclusion based on the first information we get about a situation. Related to the “halo effect” is the anchoring bias; once we have some initial information, we tend to filter all subsequent information through that early data. Realtors know that prospective buyers rarely buy the first home they look at the moment they see it. But they also know that all subsequent homes that customers visit will be compared to that first home rather than to the original ideal expressed by the buyers.The point is that these and other biases operate within all of us all the time. Here’s the thing, though … we don’t all hold the same biases, and they’re not equally strong within all of us. That’s to say that, when more of us are involved in a decision, our biases can balance each other. They may even complement each other. When I was recently in the market for a new computer, my bias was to look at powerful computers with the latest features without much regard to cost. My wife, who views most technology with a jaundiced eye, holds a bias that the lowest cost computer that meets her basic requirements is the most desirable. Including her in my buying process assured that I didn’t end up with an expensive computer built for gamers and professional web designers when all I need to do is make presentation slides and keep track of my calendar.
Good leaders, then, recognize that they, alone, can’t be good deciders. But they can create cultures in which good decisions get made. Many years ago, I worked for a coal company in Kentucky. One of the company’s mines had been shut down for several months due to lack of sales. The mine was due to reopen within a week or so. A colleague and I convinced the mine superintendent to share management’s startup plans with the miners. After some initial reluctance, the superintendent agreed to a series of meeting with the miners. During those meetings, some of the miners made known their own ideas as to how the startup could be conducted effectively. To his credit, the superintendent incorporated several of the ideas into management’s plan. When the mine re-opened, it got back to its previous levels of production more quickly than had any previous startup in the company’s history. That superintendent saw (with some prodding from me and my colleague) his decision-making was enhanced as he included others in the process. He was creating a culture that made good decisions.
The first step in creating a good decision-making culture is getting rid of the idea that good leadership is, in all cases, synonymous with decisiveness.
The second step is to actively look for opportunities to push decision-making away from leaders and toward those who actually must implement the decisions. When I worked for a Cleveland hotel company some two decades ago, I was told the story of a different hospitality firm that gave the responsibility for selecting and purchasing a new phone system to its secretaries and reservation agents. The hotel I worked for directed its room service waitstaff to develop a new room service menu. In both cases, those decisions would traditionally have been made, for better or worse, by leaders and/or “experts.” In both cases, the decisions made by the employees who were actually charged with implementing them proved to be effective.
The third step, of course, is to support (i.e., provide resources for) the decisions and action plans developed by the teams. The final step is … rinse and repeat. At any given point in time, the organization with a culture of good decision-making has lots of teams that have been charged with making important decisions and carrying them out.
Does this mean that all decision-making needs to be “pushed down” the hierarchy? Indeed not. Strategic decisions are the domain of senior leadership. Strategic decision-making, though, is hindered when leaders think they need to be “decisive” about tactical matters. The executive team that I watched engage in a lengthy and animated discussion of carrier pricing was failing the organization and its stakeholders twice: first, in that it was forgoing an opportunity to create an effective decision making culture; second in that it was not using the time to engage in developing and improving the organization’s overall strategy.
The creation of a good decision-making culture, then, is something of a balancing act. Getting the balance right is a matter of delegating tactical decision-making as far down the hierarchy as is feasible while making sure that senior leadership is keeping is eyes on strategy.
Rick Bohan, principal, Chagrin River Consulting LLC, has more than 25 years of experience in designing and implementing performance improvement initiatives in a variety of industrial and service sectors.
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A few years ago, I was helping a client implement lean methods and concepts. We started the initiative with workplace organization. Progress was good, and the client was interested in ideas that would help sustain the effort. Company leaders came up with the idea of giving a “Golden Broom Award” to the department that kept its area best organized and cleanest during the month. They asked what I thought about the idea.
Lots of organizations have the idea that giving prizes and awards somehow motivates employees. I’m not opposed to handing out prizes, but I don’t think they actually do much to motivate higher performance across the workforce—and, in fact, can backfire badly.
The idea behind awards is that employees should be recognized in some way for exemplary performance. Certainly, one can’t argue with that. But why recognize just one employee or one department each month for good performance? Doesn’t the organization, when it gives prizes to just a few, then do a disservice to all the employees who worked well and did what was asked (and often more) to pursue the organization’s goals?
The “prizes and awards” approach to motivation has several serious flaws. First, they are difficult to design and administer. At my first job at a coal company in eastern Kentucky, managers decided to give a company jacket to any miner who had perfect work attendance during the year. The “company jacket for perfect attendance” program fell apart when a miner at one of the company’s operations didn’t get a jacket, even though the only days he missed all year were bereavement days for a close family member. When he didn’t receive a jacket, all the miners who did laid their awards at the doorway of the superintendent; most had notes attached with graphic suggestions as to what he could do with the jackets. A program that was intended to recognize performance and improve morale had exactly the opposite impact.
Second, too often they become “check the box” chores for management rather than real efforts to recognize good performance. Back when I worked for a national hotel firm, the property in Cleveland gave an “Employee of the Month” award. The hotel managers groaned each month when the need arose to choose another “Employee of the Month.” Generally, the award went to an employee who hadn’t previously received it. Employees learned that they weren’t actually being recognized for exemplary performance; rather, that it was simply “their turn to get it”.
Third, and perhaps most important, there’s little evidence that such awards actually motivate employees to improve their performance.
So, what does work to motivate employees? Several years after the “perfect attendance jacket” fiasco, the same mine shut down for a few months. Just prior to “start-up”, the mine’s superintendent was persuaded to communicate his plans for re-opening the mine and to get input from the miners. The sessions generated a number of suggestions from the workers as to how the mine could be reactivated quickly and safely. Several months later, production data showed that the mine had the quickest return to pre-shutdown production levels in the company’s history.
In spite of the “Employee of the Month” program, the hotel had chronic issues with service to guests and customers. In fact, guest satisfaction ranked near the bottom of all the company’s properties.
In their quest to improve, the company started a total quality management initiative that utilized employee teams to identify and resolve customer service problems. As part of that initiative, guest services departments receive unfiltered guest satisfaction data that, previously, had been only for managers to lay eyes on.
Two years later, the hotel had moved from 40th to 25th overall in the company with respect to guest satisfaction. It had moved to the top of the “Downtown Business Hotels” category.
What did these initiatives have in common? First and foremost, the organizations got employees directly involved in improvement discussions. Second, they provided employees the opportunity to put their improvement ideas into action. Third, they measured results and provided that data to employees.
The lesson is that, while external motivators (e.g., awards and prizes) can sometimes lead to increased employee satisfaction (but only sometimes), internal motivators are more likely to drive real improvements in performance. Such internal motivators include the opportunity to solve problems and provide improvement ideas, then to participate in the implementation of the solutions and improvements. They also include the ability to make decisions and plans in response to performance data. Finally, they include giving responsibility for the effectiveness of ideas and solutions to those who developed them.
Does this mean that companies should get rid of Employee of the Month awards and to refrain from implementing Golden Broom awards? Of course not. As mentioned earlier, administered correctly, such awards can be associated with good morale (at least on the part of those employees who actually receive the prizes). But don’t, for a moment, believe that they’ll drive real performance improvements. That will come when you truly engage employees in creating success for the enterprise.
In my experience, managers don’t like to talk about culture. Oh, they believe it exists (most of them, at any rate) and most of them think it’s important (or at least are willing to give lip service to that notion). It’s just that corporate culture is hard to define and hard to measure. Add to that the fact that the whole idea of “corporate culture” is surrounded by wrong thinking—e.g., that corporate culture is synonymous with employee morale and satisfaction—and you end up with a concept that’s just hard to talk about in any meaningful, effective way.
And if it’s hard to talk about culture, it’s certainly going to be difficult for organization leaders to manage culture in any meaningful way.
In order to talk about culture, then, we need to have a clear, common picture of just what culture is and what it does that’s important for the organization.
To illustrate how we’ll define corporate culture, let’s imagine two organizations. The Rock Bottom Company has, what we’ll call, a “Fix the Blame” culture. With no more information than that admittedly pejorative label, we can imagine some things to be true about the company.
What would we think the communications style to be? Is there an open and free-flowing sharing of information, or is information held close to the vest and used as a weapon in some cases and protection in others? What would we think about the level and style of teamwork and collaboration?
Are individuals and departments working together, sharing thoughts, ideas, information and resources? Do they seem eager to work toward common goals, or are they more likely to be engaged in “turf protection” and unproductive competition?
How would we imagine decisions are made? How do we see problems being addressed and resolved? How are goals and objectives being set? When different ideas, facts, and opinions are being held, how is agreement and consensus managed? What is the approach to learning? Or to innovation? How does Rock Bottom Co. go about motivating and reinforcing high levels of performance, if they do so at all?
It’s not difficult to form a picture of the sort of culture that probably exists at Rock Bottom Company, is it?
On the other hand, the Head and Heart Company has a “Fix the Problem” Culture. Once again, it’s not that hard to get a picture of the sort of climate that might exist regarding communications, decision-making, planning, collaboration and so on.
So, culture exists, and it makes a difference. The important question with respect to the extant culture is always, “Does our culture support the development and sustenance of a sustained strategic advantage? Or does it hinder it? If sustained strategic advantage depends on getting new products to market quickly and often, does our culture hinder or help? If sustained strategic advantage depends on making operating and customer service decisions quickly, does our culture hinder or help? If sustained strategic advantage depends on implementing new technologies quickly and effectively, does our culture hinder or help?”
Sadly, not many organizations have given much thought to these questions.
Of course, not every organization culture can be tidily categorized into one of two types (e.g. Fix the Blame or Fix the Problem). My point is that the concept of culture has, as a core element, consistent behavior across the organization. In other words, everybody in the organization is behaving the same way over time. No one is surprised by the behavior of others in the organization because everyone is responding to the same set of behavioral signals, cues, and reinforcements in the same ways. In the “Fix the Blame/Fix the Problem” narrative above, you were able to make educated guesses at the sorts of consistent behaviors each culture likely contained because we’re all familiar with the sorts of cues and signals that likely exist within each culture. They serve as reminders and “reinforcers” for members of the organization as to appropriate behavior.
Imagine that you have been hired as a new manager for Acme Dynamite Company. Pulling into the parking lot on your first day, you notice that the parking spaces closest to the front door of the building have large signs indicating that each is reserved for a specific senior manager. Those parking spaces represent a small window into the culture of the organization. In any case, your own behavior is likely to be impacted in your first few seconds at your new job; e.g., it’s very likely that you are going to park in a different space, even if it’s at the far end of the lot. It’s also likely that you’ll continue parking somewhere other than those spaces throughout your career at Acme Dynamite. As long as you are with the company, you’ll be presented with similar cues and signals as to how you should behave and how you can expect others to behave.
You may learn that senior managers get to meetings whenever they please while everyone else is expected to be on time. You may learn that performance evaluations are treated as a chore with no particular inherent value to the organization. Or you might learn that your supervisor genuinely follows up on ideas that you present to her. You might learn that managers take performance evaluations seriously, asking for and following up to assure that you create improvement action plans. You might learn that senior managers, two or three levels above you, regularly come by your office and those of your colleagues, for small talk and conversation. In all these cases, you are presented with cues and signals that will impact your behavior.
The behavior of others in the organization, then, make up the most important cues and signals. Imagine that, on your second day of work at Acme Dynamite, you saw one of your co-workers pull into a vice president’s parking space. You ask your colleague about his pulling into a senior exec’s space and he replies, “Yeah, those signs are old and nobody pays attention to them. Most of the managers whose names are on the signs retired years ago and they just never got around to taking the signs down.” A colleague’s behavior provided a new cue that contradicted the first one you saw, and you’ll probably adjust your own behavior accordingly. You learned that strict punctuality was expected at meetings because you saw everyone else get to a meeting on time. You learned that managers value their subordinates’ ideas because your own boss got back to you quickly with a response to an idea that you provided her. And you saw these behaviors over and over again.
Corporate culture then is made up of behaviors that are consistent across the organization. When new members of the organization see these behaviors, they emulate them and so the culture is sustained. In particular, they are consistent behaviors with respect to eight activities that all organizations engage in at one time or another:
Communications
Problem-Solving
Decision-Making and Planning
Motivating for Performance
Collaboration and Teamwork
Teaching and Learning
Managing Agreement
Innovating
Manage these activities and you manage culture. Improve how you and everyone else in your organization carries out these activities, and you improve culture. Change how you and everyone else in your organization carries out these activities, and you change culture. It’s as simple … and as difficult … as that.
I wrote a couple of articles recently that refuted a common misconception among corporate leaders, one that says corporate culture and employee morale are one and the same. Another common argument that those of us in the social sciences hear is, “All that stuff you tell us about employee morale is just common sense.” One of my university students wrote these very words on his or her teacher evaluation form this past semester.
What is it about the social sciences and their application to organizations that make their tenets seem to be no more than common sense? First, I think that many of the prescriptions of the social sciences sound like variations of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” They are seen as intrinsically “good” and, therefore, irrefutable. Second, most of the prescriptions are familiar. We’ve all heard them time and again. When it comes to human social behavior, there’s not much new under the sun.
Take a look at the following statements:
“Include others in decision-making and problem-solving.”
“Communicate honestly and frequently.”
“Listen to ideas.”
They’re all familiar; they all speak to how we’d like to be treated at work. And so, we see them all as being common sense.
But if it’s all “just common sense,” why isn’t it all common practice? We know that common sense isn’t common practice because we know that most efforts to make changes to employee morale in organizations fail, some say as much as 75% of the time. If the principles of how to communicate to and motivate organization members are common sense, why is the most important application of those basic principles so difficult for managers to accomplish?
First, there is a lot of ground between knowing what to do and actually getting it done. When I’m helping clients with a pretty challenging change program—the journey to lean manufacturing—we start with the most common sense phase: organizing the workplace. If tools, materials, documents, supplies and information are difficult to find and in bad shape when I do find it, what are the chances that I’m efficiently producing a quality product or service? So, it’s just “common sense” that an organized workplace is better for everyone than an unorganized workplace. So why is it so very challenging to get managers to embark on, much less sustain, good workplace organization practices? The answer, of course, is that it’s one thing to “know” that an organized workplace is better than one that isn’t, but it’s entirely another to carry out the disciplined, day-to-day work to create and sustain an organized workplace.
Another bit of “common sense” that we’ve all been hearing for years: if you want fewer problems in your organization, get employees involved in helping you identify and solve problems. So … why don’t more managers and supervisors delegate problem solving to their employees? Or at least get their input on problems and potential solutions? I ask this very question to my university students. Easily 70% of them tell me that, indeed, they generally felt left out of problem solving, even when they knew more about an issue than their supervisors did. That pretty well matches the number of employees at my past clients and employers who say similar things. It’s apparent, then, that giving lip service to the value of employee input and actually taking steps to obtain and act on that input are very different enterprises. The former is easy to do, the latter … not so much.
In one sense, those who denigrate the basic principles of human motivation as common sense have a point. The theoretical bases for most of those principles are well-known, having been reported in all media for the past many decades. There aren’t many startlingly new bits of knowledge coming from the scientists with respect to why we all do what we do. What’s too often missing are managers who are willing to carry out the often tedious work necessary to put that “common sense” to use.
I had a client several years ago who was eager to see employee problem solving teams established in all of its plants around the country. During a visit to one of the plants, the general manager told me that he had tried, without success, to get volunteers for a problem-solving team. I was surprised to hear it because I knew that there were a number of bright, engaged employees at the plant. When I asked how he went about his efforts to get volunteers for the problem-solving team, he replied, “We posted a sign-up sheet on the bulletin board next to the time clock.” I told him that, rather than a sign-up sheet, he needed to go around to his best and brightest employees and actively recruit them. We went together that afternoon to hold conversations with several such workers. We had a strong problem-solving team by quitting time. Common sense told that manager that a signup sheet for garnering members for problem solving teams, an initiative that was new for the plant, would be all that was needed. That common sense was wrong. (Some readers may wonder why I didn’t recommend this approach to the manager in the first place. I guess I thought it was just common sense that active recruitment of team members was better than a sign up sheet!)
On the other hand, I had another client, a general manager of a division of a large public sector organization in Ohio, who agreed with the common sense notion that the more his employees understood about the organization’s strategy, goals, and metrics, the better the organization’s performance would be. Each year, he held a face-to-face meeting with all of his 400+ employees to talk with them about strategy, goals, and metrics. His division was regularly at the top in terms of performance.
My point is that implementing common sense can be difficult. There are few, if any, shortcuts. There are no arcane secrets regarding employee morale that, once known, make the path to high performance quick and easy. It always takes time, energy, focus, and perseverance. In other words, optimal performance is a product of devoted effort over time. Isn’t that just “common sense”?
Rick Bohan, principal, Chagrin River Consulting LLC, has more than 25 years of experience in designing and implementing performance improvement initiatives in a variety of industrial and service sectors. He is co-author ofPeople Make the Difference, Prescriptions and Profiles for High Performance.