Victim of Layoffs? Don't Burn Bridges, Focus on Development

Source: Flexjobs

Eleanor Pringle has written a good column for Fortune titled, "Do’s and don’ts of layoffs: These are the things you should never post on LinkedIn if you lose your job."   

Pringle has some sound advice.  Naturally, she appropriately recommends "leaving well" - that means no burning bridges, no calling out companies or colleagues who you believe may have mistreated you.  She stresses that posting while upset is a recipe for disaster. Pringle has some other sound recommendations, including advice about leaning into professional development opportunities, such as short courses.  She writes:

DON’T waste time while you’re not working.  Not got a job? Prove you’re proactive and post about it. Alistair Stirling, adviser at Stirling Careers Consultancy, said he always encourages his clients to do volunteer work and short courses while they’re on the hunt for their next role.  He explained that not only does it give people something to talk about –either on interviews or on platforms like LinkedIn– it shows you’re not just sitting around at home.

I agree with the recommendation regarding development.  I would stress, however, that everyone should be developing a plan for lifelong learning, if they do not have one.  It's not something that should wait for the unfortunate circumstance of a layoff.   Each person should be thinking about a stream of development activities, above and beyond the training provided by one's company.  Many of these development activities don't cost much money, if at all, these days.  Others do require an investment.  These opportunities should sometimes be about practical skill building ("I'm going to learn how to code...").  However, other opportunities should be just about stretching your perspective and stimulating your thinking on an important subject ("I'm going to read this book about motivation...")   

The Dangers of Self-Driving Cars: Is it the Technology or the Humans?

Source: Car and Driver

On Thursday, Tesla recalled more than 350,000 automobiles with its experimental self-driving software technology.  Apparently, the software may lead to accidents in intersections, and it can cause cars to move at excess speeds at times. 

Interestingly, Missy Cummings, a George Mason University engineering professor and former safety official at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, had warned about self-driving technology's potential problems and limitations in a New York Times article on Wednesday.  She argued that some drivers place too much trust in the self-driving technology, and thereby place themselves and others at risk.  

The Cummings interview emphasized a concept I've been writing about for several years:  compensatory behavior.  The idea is simple.  If we know about certain systems intended to assist us and potentially make us safer, we grow dependent on those systems and sometimes compensate by actually taking more risk.  I first explored the idea in the context of Everest expedition teams.  I once asked the great mountaineer, Ed Viesturs, why he often climbs without supplemental oxygen.  He replied, "I don't think oxygen necessarily makes you safer in the mountains.  It can give you a false sense of security."  As a result, climbers engage in reckless behavior, not realizing quite how much danger they are encountering because of the safety blanket that they think the oxygen has provided them.  Similar issues arose in my study of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, as well as the Boeing 737 MAX design and subsequent crashes.  In the latter case, I also learned that pilots can grow dependent on automated systems, and their skills may erode over time as a result.  Think about driving a car again.  If you always use the backup camera and parking-assist features, you may not be as capable of parallel parking if suddenly those systems are not available to you.  

In sum, I'm not against technologies such as self-driving cars.  I do think, however, that we must become aware of the dangers and risks.  Those risks are not all simply about potential flaws in the technology.  Those flaws also have to do with how humans interact with that technology over time. 

Reducing Employee Turnover: Break Up Long Streaks of Difficult Work

Source: SHRM

We know that many employees find challenging work to be rewarding.  They want to feel that their work is meaningful, and that they are making an impact on others.  At the same time, we have watched employee turnover soar at many organizations in recent years.  Does that mean many employees are not being challenged sufficiently?  Do they find their work tedious and mundane?  Or, are they quitting becuase of burnout driven by other factors?  

Maurice Schweitzer, Polly Yang, and David Daniels have conducted a fascinating study that sheds light on one reason employees may be quitting their jobs.  In an ingenious research design, the scholars studied almost 2 million text conversations among over 14,000 volunteers at a crisis hotline.  These volunteers engaged in some very difficult and stressful conversations with callers seeking assistance.  However, not all calls posed an equal level of stress and challenge.  Some conversations were less tense and demanding than others.   The scholars found that the overall difficulty of the work did not affect turnover among the staff members.  However, the sequencing of the work mattered a great deal.  Here is a summary of their findings, as reported by Knowledge @ Wharton: 

While the content of the conversations influenced the quit rate of volunteers, the data revealed that the order of the conversations mattered even more. Volunteers who experienced long streaks of hard conversations were 22% to 110% more likely to quit. Conversely, breaking up these hard streaks by reassigning tasks to different volunteers would “reduce volunteer quitting rates by 22%, boosting prosocial behavior and likely saving lives,” the authors wrote in the paper.

The scholars go on to explain how long streaks need to be broken up by some simpler tasks to reduce employee burnout.  In short, "When people evaluate a sequence of past events, they disproportionately focus on “streaks” (long streaks of similar events in a row) and on “ends” (the most recent event)."  The scholars have a recommendation for leaders who tend to rely heavily on certain "stars" to constantly take on the most challenging work:

Schweitzer noted the natural tendency for managers to turn to the same reliable employees over and over again to get things done, especially on a deadline. But he urged those bosses to throw some lighter duties into the mix to prevent burnout and bitter feelings.  “Counterintuitively, adding a bit of extra work — specifically, adding easier assignments — can keep workers more motivated, by preventing streaks of hard tasks from being created,” he said.

What Happens When You Invite Questions From Your Team?

I'm reading University of Virginia cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham's new book, Outsmart Your Brain: Why Learning is Hard and How You Can Make It Easy.   The book offers terrific advice on learning strategies for students, as well as tips for teachers on how to help students learn more effectively.  In the book, Willingham writes, 

If your students consistently do not  ask questions, you should wonder about your relationship with them. They are not quiet because your explanations are so brilliant and clear.  They're quiet because they see asking a question as taking a risk.  Ask yourself why that is.  

What a terrific thought-provoking statement for teachers to ponder.  Now replace the word students in the first sentence with the words "team members" or "employees" and consider the implications for leaders at all levels.  If your people are not asking you questions, you have a problem.  Silence doesn't suggest that you have articulated your vision, goals, and strategies clearly and persuasively.  Silence suggests a problem with the climate you have created.  

Super Bowl Ads: Teaming Up is the New Trend

This year's Super Bowl will feature an interesting new trend.  Companies increasingly are partnering with other brands in their commercials.  For instance, several brands have partnered with Netflix to create Super Bowl ads.  Above, you will hear and see Will Ferrell appearing in a General Motors commercial in which he drives GM electric vehicles "through" several highly popular Netflix shows.  Michelob also will be running a Super Bowl ad in partnership with Netflix.  Molson Coors is teaming up with DraftKings in a Super Bowl promotion. 

These partnerships have several potential benefits. First, they spread the cost of very expensive Super Bowl ads across two or more firms.   Second, they help some older brands tap into younger audiences by teaming up with brands that have more Gen Y and Gen Z fans.  Third, they help these ads stand out among a sea of the usual Super Bowl ads that simply try to offer a quick laugh during the game.    

By the way, you might be wondering whether Super Bowl ads truly generate a positive return on investment.  Several years ago, scholars Wesley R. Hartmann and Daniel Klapper conducted a study showing that the ads do generate a positive return, unless a direct rival also runs an ad during the big game. 

Building Resilience

Source: NIH

On college campuses, many faculty members across the nation have been concerned about declining resilience among our students.   Similarly, I'm hearing many business leaders express concerns about a perceived drop in employee resilience in recent years.  

Resilience has been defined as the capacity to withstand or recover quickly from difficulties (Oxford dictionary). In a 2021 Harvard Business Review article, Rob Cross and his co-authors explained why we should care a great deal about resilience in our organizations. They wrote, "Resilience has been shown to positively influence work satisfaction and engagement, as well as overall well-being, and can lower depression levels. There is even evidence that resilience can help protect us from physical illness."

Cross and his colleagues make a very important point about resilience though.  They push back against the conventional wisdom which suggests that resilience is an internal trait.  According to this line of thinking, it's something deep down inside of you that can be drawn up to overcome challenges; if you lack resilience, you somehow are flawed.   Cross and his co-authors offer an alternative perspective:

We can nurture and build our resilience through a wide variety of interactions with people in our personal and professional lives. These interactions can help us to shift or push back on work demands and alter the magnitude of the challenge we’re facing. They can help crystalize the meaningful purpose in what we are doing or help us see a path forward to overcome a setback — these are the kinds of interactions that motivate us to persist. People in our support systems can provide empathy or simply help us laugh and bolster our resilience by shifting perspective and reminding us we are not alone in the fight. In short, resilience is not something we need to find deep down inside ourselves: we can actually become more resilient in the process of connecting with others in our most challenging times. (emphasis added) 

In short, our social networks matter a great deal.  Building and leveraging those networks can be incredibly helpful when we face setbacks and challenges.  Business leaders should take notice.  They need to help their employees connect with one another and with others outside the organization.  Simply asking people to return to the office is not sufficient, nor is holding a few "bonding" days at an off-site gathering.  Leaders need to assist their employees in building relationships with others who will provide critical support, resources, and coaching.  Moreover, they need to help their employees build relationships that will strengthen the sense of meaning that they find in their work, as well as in their lives outside of work.  

Expressing Gratitude May Promote Better Collaboration

In past blog posts, I have featured some excellent research on the benefits of expressing gratitude. Most of that work focused on the benefits to the person giving thanks. New research from UNC-Chapel Hill Professor Sara B. Algoe and her colleagues demonstrates an interesting ancillary benefit from thanking others. They call it the witness effect. Gratitude doesn't just benefit the individuals giving and receiving thanks; it also has a positive impact on third parties who witness this exchange.

In their experimental studies, the scholars found that the research subjects "who witnessed a 'thank you' in one line of text, expressed to someone who previously helped the grateful person, were themselves more helpful toward the grateful person." Moreover, in their studies, they found that witnesses "wanted to affiliate more with the grateful person and with the person toward whom gratitude was expressed." Algoe and her colleagues concluded that, "Gratitude may help build multiple relationships within a social network directly and simultaneously."

Here is an excerpt from the paper that Algoe and her colleagues published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology:

Specifically, when Harry does something nice for Tom, it is the expression of gratitude that provides a rich signal about Harry. At a fundamental level, the witness learns that Harry voluntarily spent time or effort to do something on Tom’s behalf that Tom values. We proposed and found that witnesses would be more interested in affiliating with a person like Tom (Experiment 5). In addition, we proposed and tested the possibility that this signal would reveal Tom to be a morally good person; indeed, we found that benefactors who were more praised by grateful people were seen as more good which, in turn, predicted greater willingness to help them (Experiment 8). Although our evidence comes from one study, we believe this is a promising avenue for future research: prior research documents that people quickly judge others’ moral goodness (Lindeberg, Craig, & Lipp, 2018) and it carries greater weight than warmth or competence in some settings (Goodwin, Piazza, & Rozin, 2014; Wojciszke, Bazinska, & Jaworski, 1998).

In short, this research suggests that a workplace in which expressions of gratitude are commonplace may be fertile ground for more cooperation and effective collaboration.  Leaders should take notice.  

A Genuine Apology Goes a Long Way

Ben Cohen reports today in the Wall Street Journal about a remarkable apology email issued by Andrew Benin, chief executive of Graza, a startup that sells squeezable bottles of extra-virgin olive oil.  Unfortunately, the company did not cope effectively with high customer demand during the holidays.  Many people received their packages late, and some packages were damaged.  Customers complained of leaking olive oil bottles.  Cohen drafted a detailed apology and sent it to over 35,000 Graza customers.  Cohen described the rather unconventional email:

The mea culpa from a one-year-old company with the subject line “Learning from our mistakes” was just about the opposite of a typical corporate response. It explained in plain English and candid detail what went wrong and why. It took accountability for those errors and offered a discount on future orders. It was raw, transparent about uncertainty and messy with typos and misspellings. It was also oddly entertaining and strangely charming.

You can read the entire email for yourself if you view Cohen's article on the Wall Street Journal website.  Like Cohen, I found the apology very genuine and sincere, and it didn't feel as robotic as many corporate apology emails do (I could do without the spelling and grammatical errors though. I am a professor after all).  In Cohen's article, he cites author Marjorie Ingall's advice for issuing apologies.  

1. Say you’re sorry.

2. For what you did.

3. Show you understand why it was bad.

4. Only explain if you need to; don’t make excuses.

5. Say why it won’t happen again.

6. Offer to make up for it.

The six recommendations seems sensible.  However, the real reason for the effectiveness of the Graza email seems to be in the tone, not just the content itself.  You can do the six things above, and yet you may still write a robotic email that sounds inauthentic.  Did this email work? Well, 867 people actually replied to the email, many quite positively. One said, “Thanks for your honesty. I wish more businesses did the same.”

Does Pay Transparency Help or Hurt Workers?

Source: TechTarget

Conventional wisdom seems to suggest that increased transparency about compensation will help workers. For instance, a CNBC story about New York's new salary transparency law is titled, "How NYC’s pay transparency law could help millions across the U.S. earn more money." Naturally, researchers have not taken the conventional wisdom as a given. They have begun exploring the actual impact on employees. Some early research suggests that the impact might not be as positive as some transparency advocates believe.

The UCLA Anderson Review recently published a feature article titled, "Pay Transparency: Will It Help or Hurt Workers?" The article focused on the work of Harvard Business School Professor Zoe Cullen and Brown University Professor Bobak Pakzad-Hurson.  These scholars found that employers with non-unionized workforces might capitalize on the newly available data about salaries across a wide range of firms to drive a very hard bargain with job candidates.  As a result, the transparency laws might depress starting wages.  Here is an excerpt from the article: 

Cullen and Pakzad-Hurson analyzed all job postings, worker bids and other transactions from 2010 to 2014 on the TaskRabbit platform, where employers hire temporary workers for lower-skilled jobs. Online labor markets employ perhaps 7 percent of the U.S. workforce, or 14 million people. The short-term, constantly renegotiated nature of the gigs offers an accelerated look at how transparency works its way through a market. The findings aren’t necessarily applicable to traditional labor markets, but are certainly worth considering in the transparency debate.

The model, in addition to suggesting fierce negotiating by companies pre-employment, indicates workers looking to be hired would not be so tough. Knowing wages are transparent within the company, a worker would want to get hired and then, upon learning what others make, negotiate a raise. The combination of those factors depressed wages, Cullen and Pakzad-Hurson report.

“Our analysis of equilibrium wages, hiring rate and profits under greater pay transparency reveals consequences that are counterintuitive and economically large in a market for low-skill tasks,” Cullen and Pakzad-Hurson write.

More research clearly must be done, and this paper's conclusions from analysis of the TaskRabbit platform might not apply to the broader labor market.  Still, the study suggests that more attention must be paid to the actual impact of these new transparency laws, rather than simply assuming that they will benefit employees.  

Equinox vs. Planet Fitness: Twitter Clash!

Several years ago, I wrote a case study about Planet Fitness, the "Judgement Free Zone" chain of fitness centers.  Therefore, I tend to follow the gym industry.   On New Year's Day, premium fitness center chain Equinox posted the following message on social media.  It created quite a stir.  

 Planet Fitness responded promptly with a humorous and blunt retort.  

Others on social media criticized Equinox as well.  What was Equinox doing scaring potential customers away with what seemed like an insulting tweet.  Yet, we should ask the question: Did Equinox really make a mistake?  To understand the intent of these dueling tweets, we need to assess the contrasting strategies of these two firms.  Equinox targets serious fitness enthusiasts and provides them a premium experience at premium prices.  Planet Fitness focuses on the person who previously may have not enjoyed going to the gym at all.  They are after the person who is trying to get some exercise, but is most certainly not a "gym rat" at all.  Planet Fitness doesn't cater to the fitness enthusiast at all. For instance, they don't have heavy weights at all in their gyms, and they don't offer exercise classes.  Their gyms focus mostly on cardio machines and light weights.  Given their target audience, this humorous rebuttal is right on the money.  It fits their customer quite well, and it provides that sharp contrast with the upscale gym, Equinox.  

Interestingly, both firms are telling certain people they are NOT very welcome at their gyms.  Recall Planet Fitness' famous "I lift things up and put them down" advertisement in which an employee shows a bodybuilder the exit!  That Planet Fitness advertisement is very much like this January tweet from Equinox.  So, neither firm is off the mark here.  They are each addressing their customers with distinct messages that fit their contrasting audiences and their associated needs and wants.  They are both trying to attract their core customer by explicitly describing who doesn't fit at their gyms.

Owning Your Job

Source: Verywell Mind

Adam Bryant has written a thought-provoking piece for Strategy+Business this week. The article is titled, "Want to set yourself apart? Own your job."  Bryant argues that people who exhibite a strong sense of accountability and truly own their jobs are much more likely to achieve professional success.  Here's an excerpt from his article:

People with these qualities figure out how to get something done, even if the path to success is unclear. When things get tough, they don’t point fingers or throw up their hands in frustration or complain that something isn’t fair or is too hard. Ownership is not just about having a strong work ethic—it’s about having a sense of responsibility to follow through and deliver.

Bryant stresses that the highest performing individuals don't dwell on the reasons why something is challenging, nor do they focus on the situational factors that inhibit expected performance.  Instead, they focus on how they can still accomplish key goals despite these obvious obstacles.  

The article might prove unsettling to some readers. Undoubtedly, some people will label it "old school" and dismiss the logic as out-of-step with today's workforce.  On the other hand, Bryant's comments do remind me of the academic literature on locus of control.  Individuals can exhibit more of an external or internal locus of control.  Those with an external locus tend to explain their performance by focusing on situational or enviromental factors. Those with an internal locus tend to explain their performance by focusing on their personal action and behaviors.  What did I do that caused this particular outcome?  In research on academic achievement, scholars generally find that students perform better in their courses if they exhibit an internal locus of control.  In a sense, Bryant is making an argument consistent with those research findings.  He's arguing for the benefits of an internal locus of control.  

New Year Brings Choice: More Distinctive or More Conventional?

Image Source: Wikipedia

As we approach the new year, we have a choice as individuals and as organizations: Will we become more distinctive or more conventional in our work?  Are we open to experimenting, testing new ideas, and learning by doing?  Or, will we play it safe because we fear negative feedback, criticism, and perhaps failure?  Leaders too need to think about the message they send to their team members.  Are they creating a climate where people are more likely to fall in line with the conventional wisdom, or are they establishing a culture where people are willing to try new things?  Moreover, leaders need to consider how team members interpret certain results and feedback that they receive.  Will that feedback encourage them to continue to push boundaries, or will it stifle their creativity instead?

Interestingly, new research by Giacomo Negro, Balázs Kovács, and Glenn Carroll explores this very question. The scholars published their work in the American Sociological Review earlier this year.  These scholars studied professional musicians. In fact, they collected data on more than 125,000 albums by a wide variety of musical artists. Negro and his colleagues examined how artists' work evolved after either winning a Grammy award vs. earning a nomination but not winning an award. The researchers discovered that Grammy winners tend to "release albums that are more likely to stand out stylistically from other artists." In contrast, the nominees who did not win awards tended to produce subsequent music that was more similar to the work of fellow artists.  

Negro and his colleagues argue that winning an award inspires musicians to take a chance and produce new music that is original and adventurous.  They try different styles and even explore new genres.  The scholars use the Irish rock band U2 as an example.  The band earned  Grammy awards for its groundbreaking Joshua Tree album in the late 1980s, yet Bono and his bandmates chose to try on a very different style with the subsequent album, Achtung Baby.  They went on to earn a Grammy award for that music as well.  

What happens when artists simply get nominated, but fail to win an award? They appear to become more conventional.   Why?  Negro argues, "One possible interpretation is that the nominees interpret the feedback on their artistic choices as essentially negative feedback or a negative signal that what they tried to do did not win them the award."

Unlocking Creativity in One Amazing Graphic

Thank you to reader Amelia Crabtree, a geriatrician from Melbourne, Australia, for creating this amazing infographic about my book, Unlocking Creativity.  I'm so grateful! 

Eight Good Books I Read in 2022

 As I look back on the past year, I wanted to recommend eight interesting books that I read in 2022.  

The Right Connections to Make in Your Job Search

Source: www.reliantsproject.com/

Imagine that you are searching for a new job, and you are leveraging LinkedIn as a resource in your search.  You are trying to make the right connections to facilitate the process.  What types of connections are most useful?  First and foremost, you should be building that network LONG BEFORE you are actively in need of new employment.  Don't wait.   Second, you need to consider the types of connections that are most impactful.   For a long time, scholars have argued that connecting with others with whom you have "weak ties" can be more useful than leveraging those with whom you have "strong" ties.   Why?  People with whom you have weak ties enable you to access opportunities, information, and resources that are not readily available to you already.  They help you discover options not known to your close friends and immediate co-workers.  Branching out can be powerful and effective.  

Professors Iavor Bojinov, Erik Brynjolfsson, and Sinan Aral collaborated with two researchers at LinkedIn to test the theory of weak vs. strong ties.  They examined two experiments conducted in 2015 and 2019 involving millions of LinkedIn members and the "People You May Know" algorithm on the social media site.  They discovered that connections with "moderately weak ties" tended to be most effective in the job search process.  These folks tend to be a bit more junior or senior than you, but not extremely distant in terms of stage of their careers.  

Moderately weak ties tend to be most useful for those working in fast-moving industries, or fields such as research and development.  Staying on top of new trends and discoveries outside your narrow domain turn out to be critical in those fields.  Finally, people engaged in remote work tend to benefit a great deal from moderately weak ties, in part because they need those connections to discover novel information they might not otherwise uncover due to the sometimes socially isolating aspects of working from home.  In sum, don't just focus on people you know well when building your network, but consider the diminishing returns of making connections with folks very distant from you.  Finally, the researchers stress that hiring managers need to think about building moderately weak ties as well, because those connections can help them discover talented candidates outside of their smaller group of people with whom they have collaborated closely in the past.  

What Gap Inc. Can Learn From Signet Jewelers CEO Gina Drosos

Source: CNBC

For years, Gap has struggled with a muddled corporate strategy.  Three of the company's four major brands (Old Navy, Gap, and Banana Republic) have blurred competitive positions.  Thus, they focus on overlapping target markets with product offerings that are not clearly distinguishable at times.  They cannibalize each other's sales far too often.  Moreover, while Old Navy has a clear low-cost positioning, and Banana Republic tries to be a differentiator, Gap has remained "stuck in the middle" for years... not clear about whether it's trying to compete on price or achieve higher willingness to pay, and not clear about whether it's a basics brand or a fashion retailer. 

I think Gap could learn a great deal from the turnaround led by CEO Gina Drosos at Signet Jewelers.  Her company owns several major jewelry chain brands (Zales, Kay, Jared).   Fortune recently profiled Drosos and her work improving performance at Signet.  Here's an excerpt from the article by Phil Wahba:

The Signet empire may not always be trendy, but it has considerably more momentum these days than it did when Drosos, the company’s first female CEO, took the helm. Not so long ago, it was not nearly as clear cut what purpose each of Signet’s three biggest chains were most suitable for. Indeed, as Signet fell into a rut during the 2010s, its biggest banners cannibalized each other and started to become almost indistinguishable. Drosos recalls a time when any sales event at Zales would mean a corresponding drop in business at Kay, a problem made all the worse given that the chains often operated rival stores within yards of each other at the same tired malls. “We had all of our banners pretty much on top of each other in the middle tier,” says Drosos.

Now each of the three major brands focuses on different occasions, customer needs, and price points.  The company still faces major challenges given its reliance on brick-and-mortar retailing with a heavy dependence on mall customers.   However, Signet has made some moves to enhance its online presence, including the acquisition of Blue Nile.  More work remains to be done if Signet will survive and thrive given the decline of malls in the United States. 

Of course, to make all this happen, Drosos had to change a toxic culture and address the fallout from a sexual harassment scandal involving a prior CEO.  Here's another excerpt: 

Drosos has also begun to change Signet’s culture—by making sure shell-shocked employees, primarily women, feel heard and included and are willing to buy into management’s vision, and dramatically overhauling the board... The toxic culture went beyond rampant misbehavior: It also took the form of a quasi-autocratic approach to business in which the bosses, disproportionately men, didn’t listen to what people in the field, the predominantly female frontline Signet workers, were seeing. Drosos, says that as a board member from 2012, she had always pushed for Signet to diversify its workforce and culture. When she became CEO, she says, the board told her to accelerate that effort.

The transformation of the culture, naturally, is key to this turnaround.  You cannot design and execute a new strategy without great ideas from people at all levels.  If you don't create an environment where people feel safe speaking up and sharing their ideas, you can't develop a winning strategy in a very challenging competitive landscape. 

One Key to Staying Motivated: Don't Expect Steady Progress

When you start a new project, do you expecct to achieve steady progress toward your goal, week after week?  If so, you might be fooling yourself.  Progress on a challenging initiative is rarely that steady over time.   Expect bumpiness!  Perhaps even more importantly, you might find it difficult to stay as motivated during your work if you have these misguided expectations.  

Check out this new experimental research by Gráinne Fitzsimons and Jessica Paek of Duke University.  They conducted an experimental study in which people were asked to complete tasks for compensation.  Research subjects earned a small amount of incentive pay if they achieved the goal of performing more than 50% of the tasks correctly.   In the experiment, one half of the research subjects achieved steady progress toward their goal, while the others encountered a much more uneven set of results over time.   These scholars found that the latter became less motivated as they worked.  However, if people recognized at the outset that the progress toward the objective would be uneven, they did not have the same type of demotivating experience.  Fitzsimons explains, “Being unrealistic and expecting steady progress is going to make it harder to stay motivated when you meet those inevitable bumps in the road."  

For me, this research reminds me of the work of cognitive scientist and learning specialist Daniel Willingham of the University of Virginia.  Willingham argues that teachers need to assign work that is "desirably difficult" if they wish to maximize learning by their students.  The challenge is very much a Goldilocks story.  If the work is too difficult, students become easily frustrated and demotivated.  If it's too easy, then they don't learn very much.  The sweet spot is when students are challenged, but they can see themselves making progress toward the goal.  Of course, for many students, that progress is uneven.  Some expect a smooth learning process, and that can be problematic.  Learning a new skill is rarely free of obstacles, frustrations, and even dead-ends.  If we expect to see those challenges along the way, we have prepared ourselves for some frustrations.  If we expect smooth sailing, we are setting ourselves up to fail.   As this research by Fitzsimons and Paek demonstrates, the same type of dynamic applies to all of us in our work, not just students.  We have to set the appropriate expectations for ourselves and our team members BEFORE we begin a challenging task.  The key is to frame the work appropriately.  If we frame the project as a learning/development opportunity that will involve challenges, then we are preparing ourselves to succeed.  If we frame it as a routine endeavor that should proceed smoothy, we are setting ourselves up to fail.

Why Your Company Should Build a Volunteering Program

Stanford Professors Jeffrey Pfeffer and Sara Singer have published new research on the subject of company-sponsored volunteering programs.  They studied survey data from more than 53,000 employees in the UK.   They found that company-sponsored volunteering programs can improve job satisfaction and employee commitment.  Perhaps that result does not surprise you.  However, this research also identifies two key reasons why these programs have beneficial effects.  According to Pfeffer and Singer's findings, these programs enhance social bonding among employees, and they enhance the extent to which employees identify with their employers.  What do these scholars mean by "identifying" with employers?  They define it as feeling a sense of belonging, being willing to recommend the company to peers, and sharing the values and goals of the enterprise.   Singer commented on the research implications:

Employer-sponsored volunteer programs are pretty widespread; it’s just that the uptake isn’t very high. The challenge is really in creating programs that encourage people to participate. You’ve got to make opportunities for things that employees want to participate in because they provide meaning and purpose. You have to provide the flexibility that allows them the time to do it. Creating the conditions that allow employees to participate in company-sponsored volunteering programs is key.

The scholars emphasize one very important point.  You won't get the full benefits if people are off volunteering on their own.  They need to be conducting this service work in collaboration with their fellow employees.  Especially in a time of remote or hybrid work, this time together in person can be vitally important for building commitment to the organization and to one another.   

How Leaders Avoid Hero Syndrome

This week Kellogg Insight features a conversation with Colonel Fred Maddox, an assistant professor at the U.S. Army War College and Chief of Staff of the Army senior fellow at the Kellogg School.  Maddox discusses how leaders should react when the execution of a very important project falters badly.   He suggests that many leaders enjoy being the heroes, swooping into the situation and trying to solve the problem personally.   Maddox cautions against this approach, "When leaders act like they’re the only ones who can solve something, it can become an issue for the whole organization because they’re not focused on strategy and they’re doing someone else’s job.”  Moreover, he argues that such "heroic" action can demoralize team members, because they feel as though their skills and voice are not respected.   

Why don't leaders trust their team members in these spots?   Maddox argues that leaders often don't believe in the skills and expertise of their team members.  However, leaders do believe in themselves, yet sometimes that confidence is not well-grounded.  The situation may be far more complex and/or novel than the leader would like to admit.  They need help from their team members; they cannot solve it alone.  However, they somehow convince themselves that they can rectify the situation without assistance.   It's hero complex 101.  

Maddox explains how the military uses various simulations and training exercises to develop the skills of team members.  An investment in training and development does not only help the team members hone their skills; it builds the leaders' confidence in their team members.  Leaders need to find time to see their team members in action in a lower-risk, safer space.  

He explains that a good leader doesn't simply issue orders in these training scenarios.  Instead, the effective leader inquires as to how various people on the team would try to solve a specific probelm.  He calls this Socratic approach "walking in autonomy."  It's essentially a conversation in which the leader coaches and mentors, rather than solving the problem directly. Then, Maddox advocates using the "after-action review" to analyze the decisions that have been made and the impact those choices had on the results - good or bad. Providing time for reflection, feedback, and learning proves crucial for employee development, and these activities help build the leader's confidence in the people throughout the organization.

Is it time to fire yourself?

Source: Intel

This week, author and leadership development consultant Adam Bryant wrote a thought-provoking article titled, "Is it time to fire yourself?" for Strategy+Business. Bryant tells the story of Bracken Darrell, CEO of Logitech International.  After five years leading the firm, Darrell asked himself the question, "Am I the right person for the next five years?"  He pondered stepping down.   Instead, though, he chose to continue as the CEO, while adopting a fresh perspective.  Darrell explains, “I have to rehire myself but have no sacred cows. It was super exciting and fun, and I started changing things that I had put in place. Fortunately, I didn’t have to change things radically, but I felt new again.”  

Bryant also recounts the legendary story of former Intel CEO Andy Grove contemplating how his replacement might adopt a very different strategy facing the specific circumstances challenging the firm in the early 1980s: 

"Grove asked Gordon Moore, Intel’s cofounder, 'If we got kicked out and the board brought in a new CEO, what would he do?'  Moore responded by saying that a new CEO would take Intel out of the memory-chip business. 'Why shouldn’t you and I walk out the door, come back and do it ourselves?' Grove responded. And that’s what they did. They shifted Intel from memory chips to microprocessors, a crucial pivot that led to decades of prosperity for the company." 

Bryant offers a compelling argument for why leaders should consider what might happen if they were replaced.  How might a new person look at the situation?  What other perspectives might be helpful to me now?  Am I stuck in a certain mindset or beholden to certain assumptions that may no longer be valid?  Leaders at all levels absolutely should ask themselves these questions from time time.