Incentive Intelligence

Creating Culture and Engagement Is Simple – Just Watch What You Say

Employee Engagement.  Corporate Culture.  

Those two phrases have spawned countless business consulting companies, surveys, interventions and programs.  A ton of energy focused on the search for The Holy Grail of business 2.0 – engaged employees working in a culture that respects the individual and provides an environment for autonomy, mastery and purpose without the shackles of 19th century business theory like rewards and incentives.

Reading the blogosphere and the business press you’d think that creating a 2.0 enterprise would be hard work and a lot of changes.

I’m here to tell you maybe not.

Here’s a very simple and easy way to impact your culture and ultimately your engagement.

Watch What You Say

Take a week or so and listen to how different departments talk about and with other departments.  Pay close attention to the words they use to describe the department and the people.  Just take note of them for now.  If your experience is anything like mine, there will be a few words the crop up on a regular basis.  In my own past the IT department (and HR) seemed to have the most “negative” words associated with them.  From unresponsive, to dismissive, to downright mean.  Now, I’ll admit there are many times those words probably fit well.  But here’s the point.  Using those words have a profound effect on others who hear those words.  You (and your compatriots) are contributing to a negative culture and lower employee engagement simply by using those words.

Some Evidence

I picked this up from The Situationist – a recap of a study done in 1999 to test the impact and power of suggestion has on people.  To recap the recap:

A group of college students expected to help train another group of students from a nearby college by collectively shocking them when they erred on the task.

The participants were “allowed” to overhear one of the assistants tell the experimenter one of three phrases–Neutral: “The subjects from the other school are here.” Humanized: “The subjects from the other school are here; they seem ‘nice.’” Dehumanized: “The subjects from the other school are here, they seem like ‘animals.’” 

That was all the “shockers” ever saw or heard.  Nothing else colored their opinion of the other students - they never saw them or interacted with them during the experiment other than to administer "shocks."

Initially, the planting of the suggestion options didn't have an effect on how much the students shocked their subjects, but as the study continued the effect was major. Those, who were exposed to the word "animals"  progressively elevated their shock levels over each trial after the first, significantly more than the neutral control. Those that overheard "they seem nice" showed aggression significantly below the level of the neutral phrasing.

The upshot from the research is that by calling the group “animals” enabled participants to become morally disengaged, to activate a set of psychological mechanisms that minimized the evil of their deeds, while justifying it in a variety of ways. 

Think about that in your organization.  How many times do you label a group, department team?  How often do you hear others refer to a division in a negative tone or with negative words?  Does that simple word or phrase give otherwise good people "permission" to act differently?  Do you end up creating a negative relationship simply because others overheard your comments?

Phrases and words may seem simple and harmless but they can create a situation that enable good people to behave differently – more negatively – toward others.

That isn’t engagement.  That isn’t a culture of inclusion and success.

Before you spend a ton of money on an Employee Engagement Initiative – just teach people to use better words.

A simple word can have a big impact.

Gravity - Culture - Orbits - Recognition – Incentives (Pseudo-Science Stuff Ahead!)

Incentives and recognition are different things.  Very different. 

Unfortunately, there are people who don’t get it, don’t care or don’t want you to know – but still offer plenty of advice on both.  Many times it is just flat out wrong.  It's like comparing badgers and bananas.

Too often we want a recognition program to do what an incentive should and vice versa.  I think I can help us understand that difference with some pseudo-science... Let’s take a trip to our local Planetarium and get quick lesson on orbits and gravity.

 

Maintaining Your Company’s Orbit

I posted a while back on something called escape velocity based on an episode of The Colbert Report.  In that post I mentioned that your culture is like gravity.  It is the invisible force that acts on your company.  Now think of your company as a satellite orbiting the Earth.  Your company (or the satellite) stays in orbit around the Earth because of the speed it’s traveling and the gravitational pull of the Earth.  Those two forces combine to cancel each other out so that you continually go ‘round and ‘round.

The Earth is your mission/values/point-of-view.  Those values are the mass that is the source of your gravity (culture) that pulls on the satellite.  The things you do each day to drive business results are the velocity that keeps your satellite moving around your mission/values/POV – that’s why you stay in orbit.  Those three forces keep you in orbit.  All is well with the world.

If nothing changes – no resistance, no reduction in gravity or mass – that orbit should go on forever (physics folks don’t get on me for the little things – I’m talking in broad strokes here.)  But that isn’t reality.  Your company is constantly bombarded with little things that can affect your orbit.

New employees.  New products.  New customers.  New competitors.  All those things affect your orbit in one way or another.  In order to maintain your orbit you need to have some counteracting force.

Those forces are recognition and incentives.  But they do different things and are used in different situations.

 

First – Recognition

If your orbit is pretty strong to begin with (speed/gravity aren’t changing much) then you simply need small adjustments on a regular basis to keep you in the sweet zone of your orbit.  Think of them like little “retro-rockets" on the company.  As the company moves around the Earth, these rockets fire short bursts of energy moving the company slightly to the left, right, up, down – maintaining the orbit around the Earth.  You don’t need a lot of energy – but you need a lot of little bursts.  If you remember playing the arcade game Asteroids you know what I’m talking about.  Press the button hard and the little triangle ship goes shooting across the screen.  Press it quickly, in short bursts and it allows you to reposition your ship in the middle of the screen where you to continue to knock out asteroids.  

(For those who know what I’m talking about and are a little nostalgic – at the bottom of the post is an embedded game of asteroids – knock yourself out!  Left /Right Arrows spin your ship, space bar is your gun and "z" is shields and up arrow is thrust.  Email/RSS subscribers may need to click  out here to the page on our site to see and play the game.)

Next – Incentives

However, there are times when your orbit gets really out of whack.  Something major changes and those little retro-rockets won’t do the trick.  That’s when an incentive can really add to your ability to control your orbit.  Think of incentives as the major stages of a rocket that gets your satellite into orbit.  In order to break Earth’s gravity and get the satellite into space you need a lot of horsepower.  If you need to break out of your current orbit you need that kind of power as well.  That’s what an incentive can do for you.  It can change your orbit.

If your market changes, or you go through a huge reorg, or your competitor comes out with a game changing product – little bursts of energy will have some effect – but not nearly what you need to move your company (ie: satellite) to a new orbit.  You need the power of Titan rocket to blast you to that next level.  Once there – those retro-rockets of recognition are needed to fine-tune and maintain your position.

 

Too Much Power

The big mistake I see in many companies is they try to use big rockets to manage all their movement in their orbit causing massive change and just as massive over-corrections.  Just like in the Asteroids game – if you try to fine tune your position in the game using big power you just bounce around the screen and only really land in the center by accident.

 

You Need Power AND Finesse

The lesson here – use recognition to finesse and maintain your company around your culture while your orbit is stable.  But – but if you need to move the satellite on a larger scale – say to a new orbit – think in terms of using incentives as your power play and then kick in the retro’s once you get there.  

• Too much incentive and not enough recognition = too much movement and too little fine control means overshooting your target and more massive power corrections that bounce your company around.  
• Too much recognition and not enough incentive = slower change and possible problems getting to new orbits – and potentially your orbit can decay and you crash.

Does that help?  Does that make it easier to decide when to use incentives vs. recognition and why you need both? 

 

Asteroids made by Neave Games

 

Don’t Talk About Sales Strategy To Improve Sales Performance

Running incentive programs to drive sales is as old as, well, sales.  You can’t swing a cat without hitting a sales incentive program – whether compensation-based, point-based or the granddaddy of them all – the group recognition travel award.  While I could wax philosophical (and in the real world) for hours on how to design these programs for more impact, greater results and less cost, I’ll let this Friday slip by with a simple but interesting tidbit on a way to possibly increase sales performance.

 

Don’t Talk Strategy

For most of my sales life in the incentive industry whenever I had a big meeting or presentation, my sales manager and I would talk strategy right before the meeting (and I did the same when I was mentoring someone else so I’m guilty too).  We talk about our offer, our unique selling position, our pricing, how we’d respond to specific questions – we would talk about how to “win” the sale.

But interestingly enough – some new research may show that was a very bad idea.

 

Talk Pleasantries

From a post on the Futurity site:

"They found that engaging in brief (10 minute) conversations in which participants were simply instructed to get to know another person resulted in boosts to their subsequent performance on an array of common cognitive tasks. But when participants engaged in conversations that had a competitive edge, their performance on cognitive tasks showed no improvement.

'We believe that performance boosts come about because some social interactions induce people to try to read others’ minds and take their perspectives on things,' Ybarra says.

'And we also find that when we structure even competitive interactions to have an element of taking the other person’s perspective, or trying to put yourself in the other person’s shoes, there is a boost in executive functioning as a result.'"

For those of us from Rio Linda, executive function is defined (via my Oracle, Wikipedia) as:

The executive system is thought to be heavily involved in handling novel situations outside the domain of some of our 'automatic' psychological processes that could be explained by the reproduction of learned schemas or set behaviors. Psychologists Don Norman and Tim Shallice have outlined five types of situations in which routine activation of behavior would not be sufficient for optimal performance:

• Those that involve planning or decision making
• Those that involve error correction or troubleshooting
• Situations where responses are not well-rehearsed or contain novel sequences of actions
• Dangerous or technically difficult situations
• Situations that require the overcoming of a strong habitual response or resisting temptation

 

 Sales is All Executive Function

Sitting down and talking to a client about your product/service and working toward a mutually-beneficial result is ALL executive function.  It’s all about listening and reacting.  It’s all about finding new and novel ways to satisfy their needs and your needs.  It’s never really rehearsed.

No one is saying to ignore sales strategy.  That is something you definitely need to do.  

Just don’t do it right before the big meeting or preso.

Increase your performance by talking casually with your boss or co-presenter prior to the meeting.  Talk about books, baseball, the bible – I don’t care.  Just don’t talk shop.

And when your boss or partner starts to press on the “sales strategy” – just show them this post.

Have a great weekend!

 

Related articles

• Friends with cognitive benefits: Mental function improves after certain kinds of socializing (sciencedaily.com)
• Fairness Is Relative - That Means it Changes (For Those in Rio Linda) (i2i-align.com)
• Feedback Is Critical To Change Behavior - Just Not in Most Incentive Programs (i2i-align.com)

“Because There Was A Box” – Filling in Forms and Grocery Carts – We’re not Rational

I don’t know how many times I’ve filled out forms – at banks, at doctors’ offices, when applying for a job and even when dealing with the government (I know you’re shocked there’d be paperwork in government).  I’m guessing you've filled out a few yourself.

If you have filled out a form let me ask this… did you find yourself coming across a box that really didn’t apply to you?  Or one where you really didn't know what they wanted?  Did you experience a bit of anxiety about it?

In other words, BECAUSE there was a box to be filled in, you (and me) felt like you HAD to fill it in (there is also another influence trigger at play here - authority - but that's for another time and post.) 

That box ruled our lives for that short period of time.  Our behavior was driven by that box.

Influence Through Environment

The Heath brothers (Made To Stick) addressed this type of issue in their recent book Switch.  In addition to managing the rider and the elephant (logic & emotion) they talk about managing the environment when trying to influence behavior.  The box on that form influenced your behavior.  It made you WANT to put something in it even if you weren't sure you should just because it was there.

Groceries and Healthy Purchases

Along the lines of the “box” on the form is a study done by Collin Payne, an assistant professor at New Mexico State University showing that adding a little “environmental” clue to shopping carts may help people make better decisions about the food they buy.  

(Although it pains me to say this as a dyed-in-the-wool Buckeye fan O H - I have to give a hat tip to Rick Walsh and his blog for finding and posting this.  He’s finishing his PhD at the University of Michigan.  Check out some of his thoughts here.)

Rick linked to a local New Mexico news site that reported on the study.  From that site:

"Researchers marked a line with yellow duct tape across the width of shopping carts, and placed a sign on the cart asking shoppers to place fruit and vegetables in front of the tape line, and the rest of their groceries behind the line.

'And what we saw was a bump of a 102% increase in purchasing of fruits and vegetables with that simple sign and line,' Payne said."

Yeah – 102% increase by putting a line in a cart.

It’s the box idea – put the line in the cart and people will put some vegetables in there to comply with the cart.

Your Work Environment

Think about your business and how these subtle environmental actions can increase, or change behavior.

From a wellness perspective I could see:

• Painted lines in the employee parking lot 100 yards from the entrance delineating a “healthy zone”
   
• A separate line in the company cafeteria that says “healthy line” (I don’t recommend another sign that says “fattening, high-cholesterol, suicide by food” line though.)

What about other areas behavior that could lead to greater employee performance?

• Links in email footers that ask if the sender wants to recognize the recipient for good work?
   
• A box on the review form that asks how often the employee wants to meet with their manager about performance goals?
   
• A place on every piece of paper/email that goes to clients with a check box that asks if they are satisfied or happy with their connection to the company?

I think you get the drift.  The environment we work in has a lot to do with our behavior and our engagement.  Look around your office and see what the subtle environmental clues are and how adding some "lines in the cart" could influence behaviors.

Think about it.

(Oh… and if you liked this post retweet it – I put a button below.)

The Road to Performance is Paved with Intentions – The Implementation Kind

While the road to hell may be paved with good intentions, performance can actually be improved based on good intentions.  I’m not making any moral comment on whether goal attainment and hell are analogous – just that research shows this to be true.

If you don’t follow Inside Influence you should.  The blog/newsletter/site run by Influence At Work.  IAW is the consultancy started by Dr. Robert Cialdini who authored “Influence – Science and Practice” – now in its 5th edition.  This book is always by my side and should be in your manager’s toolbox as well.

Recently they had a post on their site about increasing voting turnout by asking people to think about how they would get to the polls.  Excerpted from their post:

"The Voting Plan Script (i.e. implementation intentions script) was identical to the Self-Prediction Script but also asked three follow-up questions designed to encourage individuals to create a voting plan on the spot. These questions were, “What time will you vote?” “Where will you be coming from?” and “What will you be doing beforehand?” The notion here is that by answering these questions, individuals will be able to generate a concrete plan that actually takes into consideration all of their other obligations that day, one that will be simple to follow come Election Day."

The results showed that those that were asked about their plan to vote were more likely to vote than those that didn’t have to think about it.  While the lift was small (they have some good ideas as to why) it was still enough to indicate that planning influenced implementation.

How to Use With Your People

You can use this technique with your own staff.  When asking about goals and objectives – even small ones that normally wouldn’t require a big implementation exercise – ask the person how they would go about accomplishing the goal.  Ask what they would do first, second, third.  Get them to start visualizing the process ahead of time.  Creating the plan – even informally – will help with their follow through.

Sales people are routinely given goals and objectives.  I’ve been one (sales person) and had them every year.  I can say that in most cases however, I was never asked about how I planned on attaining them.  I always hit my goals (I’m special) but in many cases it would have been much easier had I spent just a few minutes thinking through the process right then.

Next time you talk about goals and objectives, get the people to outline their plan.  The plan doesn’t have to be perfect – just enough to start to position their behavior toward the goal as something that has already been decided (another commitment.)  

Go check out the post and subscribe to their updates.  I’ll close with what they closed with:

"This research makes it very clear that simply hearing “Yes” from another person is just a starting point, rather than an ending point, for persuasion. To optimize the likelihood that others will follow through with their intentions, consider specifically asking them how they plan to go about accomplishing the goal they’ve promised to pursue. This doesn’t need to be done in a micro-managing or demanding way. Rather, you could ask about the details as they relate to whether or not there are specific aspects of the tasks with which you can help."

So – how are you going to use this information?  What’s your plan?

Don't Think About the Recession - It Will Make It Worse

It's Friday and no one likes to dig into anything heavy on Friday.  So here's a little tid-bit that could help you influence behavior in your organization.

Don't Think About a White Bear

If you've read that headline you're probably having a bit of trouble keeping that cuddly white bear out of your thoughts.  It is something called the "paradox of mental suppression."   This article on Brain Blogger talks about a 1994 book on psychology  called "White Bears and Other Unwanted Thoughts."  The book discusses an experiment designed to see if suppressing a thought had any effect on our ability to actually - suppress the thought.  

Interestingly, it did - but only a little.  In other words, trying to suppress the thought had very little effect on our ability to actually keep it out of our minds. 

But the more interesting part of the experiment was when they allowed folks to think about the white bear after they were told to suppress it.  Their focus on the white bear increased significantly.  In other words, they exhibited a "rebound" effect.  

How Does This Affect Performance

Here's what went through my mind when I read about this experiment...

It's a tough economy.  Employees are probably talking about the business - negatively.  Management probably tells their people - "don't think about it.  Just keep your head down and do your job."  

However, the conversation at the water cooler continues to increase so Management decides that they need to clear the air.  They hold a meeting where they "allow" the staff to talk about the business and how the economy is affecting it - negatively, most probably.

Will this then create the same rebound effect?  Will employees increase the amount of time they are thinking negatively about the business and the economy?  Did clearing the air actually increase the focus on the bad economy and the bad business.  How will this affect their performance?

I don't know.  

The author of the book however suggests that we indulge in "focused distraction" - finding something else to think about.  Duh...

But, from a performance standpoint I'd probably do this...

• Not ask people to "not focus" on the problem.
• Don't ask them to "focus on the problem" - especially after telling them not to.
• Know that this is in the back of everyone's mind and focus on a distracting activity such as new products, new procedures, new ideas, anything that will give them goals and objectives outside the negative news in the business world.

Thoughts?  Nothing too heavy - remember it's Friday.

Motivation And The Theory Of Everything

If you ask people "if you could be anyone who would you be?" you'll get some interesting answers.  I'm guessing a lot of people would chose someone famous, attractive, rich, pious, etc.  Most wouldn't say Michio Kaku.  But I would.  If not only for the coolness factor of being very, very, smart and being on TV on the Science Channel - but to have that great shock of gray hair ( BTW - I'd do it just for the hair.)

If I could go back in time, I'd study harder.  I'd focus more.  I wouldn't have been mean to the girl who sat next to me in 4th grade.  I'd be a physicist.  

Unfortunately, I'm not a physicist so I can't create a time machine to go back and right the wrongs of my past.  

But I have stayed at a Holiday Inn and I can play one on the internet.  And I'm as good as anyone at bending real theories and ideas into a shape that helps me make a point.

Unified Theory

In physics (and please - those that really understand this stuff don't call me out - just go with the overall flow of the logic) there is something called the Theory of Everything (TOE) and its close cousin the Grand Unification Theory (GUT.)  These theories seek to combine, under one theory, the four fundamental forces that govern our universe: the gravitational force, which keeps us from flying into outer space, the electromagnetic force, which light up our cities and energizes our lasers and our computers, and the strong and weak nuclear forces, which lights up the stars and galaxies.  

But these things don't really connect.  They explain the big stuff - black holes, planets, gravity.  They explain the little stuff - protons, neutrons, bosons, muons (really, I'm not making those names up.)  But none of the theories by themselves explain everything and the math behind them doesn't connect to each other. 

In other words we can explain what happens at a large scale and a small scale but it requires different sets of equations and assumptions.

Motivation Is EXACTLY The Same

When I peel back the onion on motivation theory and other theories that try to explain why people do things I see a similar quandary.  We can, through research, explain what a "population" will do within a distribution - meaning we can get pretty close to knowing how/why MANY people will respond to specific influences and motivational tools.  Not all - but many.  

We can also find out what an individual will do given a specific set of criteria and scenarios.  

However, these two things are disconnected and don't allow us to use one, or the other, by themselves to influence behavior.

The Big and The Small

I can, through conversations and discussions understand what will motivate an individual.  But I cannot apply that thinking to the entire group and expect the result to be positive.  There are too many variations and vagaries between individuals for these motivation keys to apply to the group.

Conversely, I can do a study and predict within a specific distribution what the majority of people will do in a given situation.  But on an individual level these predictions fall apart.

In other words we have the same problem with motivation that we have with physics.

The new "research" on motivation can be used to predict a large portion of the population - but it can't be used to motivate individual behavior.  Individual motivations can be used to motivate a specific person but it can't be used to motivate a group.

This Is Why It Is Hard

Because we have this disconnect between the rules for groups and rules for individuals it is a very difficult task to design effective incentive and motivation programs.  However, many managers take on this role not understanding that their job is to manage both theories - not just pick one and run with it.

Let Me Make It Harder

And just for fun... remember what one person does in your organization influences what others do - and therefore you not only have to know the rules that govern the population, the rules the drive the individual but you have to take into account that these things are connected and don't operate independently.

To demonstrate this idea watch the video below (email subscribers will have to click through to the post) on pendulums.  We can, through physics predict the action of a pendulum.  But add a couple more pendulums to the mix and it falls into chaos.  This is similar to your organization.  Many individuals acting on their own, and in connection with, the others in your organization.  

If you thought it was hard to manage the "big" and the "small" - now add the chaotic. 

That' what I do every day.  

Cheers.  And if we don't talk before  - and Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and have a great 2010.

Should You Use Psychological Tactics to Influence Your Employees?

Through a variety of RSS feeds and twitter connections I hit upon a post on Punk Rock HR - a blog by Laurie Ruettimann - entitled "Psychology of Work."  The title does little to communicate the real question she posits in the post.  From the post:

"Is psychology a science? Does psychology have a role at work? Is it appropriate to use psychological information and data in the office to engineer a more efficient work environment?"

Leaving those questions unanswered in the balance of the post, she does say that...

"it’s unfair and unethical to use subjective, pseudo-scientific principles in a decision-making process."

Specifically she mentions decisions made based on the results of personality tests used during the hiring process.  Then, in a somewhat non sequitur fashion, she bounces back to another topic, saying (and I'm paraphrasing here) - that work is work and don't bother to use any "soft science" stuff like psychology to engage me - just fire me if I'm not doing the job.

What's more interesting in my mind is the flow of comments on the post - over 30 at last count - quite a few for a short rant on whether psychology should be used as a tool within the business world.  The comments swing from "Laurie- Can I just get an “amen”??!! You are right on"  - to -  "That said using any information to help us understand behaviour, motivation and drive can only be positive. The assertion that work is purely a transfer of money for skills is far too simplistic and if I dare say it somewhat naive."

As you would expect, this entire discussion caught my eye since I spend most, if not all of my time helping companies craft approaches that help engage, reinforce and guide employee, channel and consumer behaviors.  Our approach uses a lot of concepts and research that are grounded in motivation, social psychology and behavioral economics (soft science according to Laurie.)

Here's my response to the questions that started the original post...

Is psychology a science? 

It does follow the scientific method but does not result in "laws" or "axioms" that can be used to predict behavior like the laws of the physical world (ie:  speed of light.)  This is where I think a lot of folks get bungled up - they are looking for those three laws of psychology that will predict all behavior.  But they don't exist.  As Jason said in his comment on the original post - principles of behavior apply at the population level but not at the individual level - you can't predict with 100% accuracy how one person will respond to a specific stimulus.  Due to the fact that we have free will and because we're prone to irrationality - outcomes can vary.  If someone is looking at psychology as a way to absolutely predict behavior - move on - you won't find it there.  You can find some statistically significant tactics that on the whole - will influence behavior in a general direction.

Does psychology have a role at work? 

Absolutely.  As managers (or any employee) within a company we either have a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholder (public companies) or the owners (private companies) to leverage available tactics to drive the greatest return on their money.  I'll say this now to eliminate the natural response to that statement  - WITHIN CURRENT MORAL BOUNDARIES.  So don't throw up some lame fact about child labor or fraud.  To ignore the application of proven tools to drive performance would mean cheating the investors.

Is it appropriate to use psychological information and data to engineer a more efficient work environment? 

Absolutely - as long as you're not using individual specific data - ie:  Changing pay or other reward mechanisms because you know someone has a gambling problem.  But in general, as stated above, using psychological influence principles is the right thing to do - within reason (again, MORAL BOUNDARIES.)

In addition to my point of view there are a couple of good rebuttals to the initial post:

The Jungle:  Is Psychology a Science
the mbti blog:  A Rebuttal to Punk Rock HR's "Psychology of Work" Post

Would love to hear your take on this as well...

But let's not fall into this trap...

When I first read through the post and the comments I got the feeling I was in the old Monty Python skit about the guy who goes for an argument but all he gets is contradiction.

Watch the video and enjoy! (RSS readers will need to click through for the video.)