Sorry Sir, I’m Just Not Feeling Motivated

Posted on by Stuart Murray
Scream. Courtesy of Crosa.
Scream. Photo courtesy of Crosa.

What is the trade-off between a compassionate workplace culture and strong corporate performance?  Surprise, there isn’t one!  Corporate performance is subordinate to organizational culture and the emotional intelligence of senior leaders.

This article by Travis Bradberry of Emotional Intelligence 2.0 fame describes an interesting conundrum.  A large number of top corporate leaders have poor emotional intelligence.  The highest emotional intelligence is found amongst front-line managers and then each management level upward the leaders display increasingly diminished emotional intelligence.

Bradberry attributes this phenomenon to two factors.  First, corporate boards are selecting for leaders who deliver the numbers, such as profits, sales volumes, and stock price appreciation.  Second, the work environment of senior leaders impairs emotional intelligence and inhibits its growth.  Severe stress, lack of rest, regulatory enforcement, and a low-trust and blame-heavy environment can drag anyone into an emotional stone age (and keep them there).

What is fascinating is that corporate leaders with high emotional intelligence, although fewer in number, still perform better than others.  It may be that organizations will select the occasional gem of a leader, but otherwise we are mostly recruiting and promoting lower-functioning leaders into senior roles.  So how do mean bosses even get the job in the first place?

It is reminiscent of Jeffrey Pfeffer’s book Power: Why Some People Have it and Others Don’t.  Pfeffer provides endless examples of how an executive’s career prospects are often inversely proportional to their performance.  In brief, being a cold and calculating savage will motivate people to not mess with you.  It is possible to rig your career towards a poisoned and under-performing work environment where you still reign supreme.  When corporate leaders spend all day making power plays, there appears to be no beneficiary of this behavior other than the leader.  Look directly at these kinds of leaders.  How are they doing?  They seem to be doing well.  It’s just everyone around them who is falling apart.  It’s all of those people who just can’t play the game and can’t keep up; they aren’t able to deliver corporate performance.  Of course, the punchline is that downstream inability to perform is a hallmark of inferior top leadership.

There is another consideration; do major corporations have sufficient protections against leaders who have personality disorders?  The best-known personality disorder is psychopathy, which is well-documented in Robert Hare’s Without Conscience.  The other disorders are important, but psychopaths are special.  When you get to know the type, it sounds like the personality of someone who perfectly reflects the values of an emotionless profit-maximizing corporation.

Indeed this was well documented in The Corporation, a movie by Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott, and Joel Bakan.  Their critique is that the behavior of major corporations (as institutions) ticks all of the boxes on the checklist of psychopath behaviors for people.  If we promote leaders who reflect corporate values, and the corporate values are that we should act like psychopaths, then who is going to end up in charge?

There is a lack of insight amongst psychopaths, corporations, and many corporate leaders, and this lack of insight is at the root of poor emotional intelligence.  Let’s face it, if you got cut off in traffic by some jerk on your way to the office, and then a colleague cuts in front of you at the coffee station, it’s easy to get snippy.  Do you keep control? Are you even aware that you’re just carrying-forward a residual emotion from an hour earlier?  I mean, if it’s possible to carry-forward quarterly accounting indicators, surely it’s possible to carry forward emotions.

How can corporations be unaware of the need for a compassionate working environment?  I think it’s because hierarchy diminishes the two-directional information flow up and down the chain of command.  If the board wants numbers, executives commit to deliver, and the rest of the hierarchy snaps into line, this reveals an opinion that the best opinions come from the top.  However, this might not be how the world really works.  It is an organization’s history, geography, and people that determine the culture.  And it is the culture that determines the customer experience, the spirit of innovation, a healthy attitude towards rules, compassion during crisis, and discretionary effort amongst staff.

One does not simply demand good numbers.  Rather, we harvest good numbers from a well-cultivated culture.

Honey, I Shrank the Unemployed

Posted on by Stuart Murray
Shrink Tricks. By Arne Endriks (Edited)
Shrink Tricks. Photo courtesy of Arne Endriks.

What if we just pretended that society’s problems had already disappeared?  It sounds dicey, but that’s often how things are done.  People who are struggling with unemployment are having a hard time explaining their lives.  And if you’re sitting in a job in human resources, you know that you have to understand this crowd.  Whether you’re administering layoffs and terminations, sorting through a long list of unqualified job applicants, or talking to friends and family who have a little problem at work, you know that the bewildered masses are your people.  But thankfully, you can make their problems disappear through government statistics.

An article from June 1, 2017 in the Huffington Post notes that the share of Canadians with a job has hit  a record high.  The content can be dense and confusing, but at issue is that people wrongly think the unemployment rate is a meaningful indicator of how well the economy is doing.  For labour economists, unemployment rates border on being a garbage statistic.

The unemployment rate is the number of people who have jobs divided by the number of people in the labour force.  But people have all kinds of reasons for not being in the labour force.  These include: discouragement from a long unemployment spell, disability, the decision to stay at home with kids, retirement, financial independence, postsecondary studies, prison, and travel.  Governments can also reduce unemployment by deciding that certain people aren’t trying hard enough to get a job and, therefore, they aren’t really in the labour market.  There’s a lot going on that has nothing to do with economic statistics.  Since the labour force is half of the equation, the unemployment rate itself is of debatable value.  You can still use it occasionally (i.e. for month-over-month comparisons), but only with caution.

A far better statistic is the employment-to-population (EP) ratio.  We know who has a job, and we know how large the population is.  Take these totals, divide one by the other, and suddenly the data is clean and interesting.

The Huffington Post article notes that the EP ratio in Canada is now 78.6 percent, its highest level since Statistics Canada first started measuring this in 1976.  That’s good for Canada.

It’s also interesting to look at the second diagram in the article, which describes the labour force participation rate.  The labour force participation rate takes those two denominators we described earlier and combines them.  It is the number of people who are in the labour market divided by the population (within the relevant age group).  The labour force participation rate disregards whether the person actually has a job; it’s an indicator of how involved people are in the world of work.

Canada has a high participation rate relative to the US.  Amongst the working-age population, over 77 percent of Canadians work or are looking for work.  Labour force participation rates in the US used to be 77 percent, back in the late 1990s.  In the twenty years since, participation has slipped 5% to 72 percent.  The decline happened during three different presidents, and only half of the decline was during that nasty recession that started in 2008.

Long story short, the US has an unemployment rate of 4.1%, but they have an extra 5% of the population that could work but doesn’t.  It’s the tale of two economies, two Americas.  There is one America where things are bright and sunny, people aspire to career growth, and they talk about red wine and heirloom tomatoes.  But in the other America, things are not so great.  Theirs is a world where people lost their jobs to globalization or technology, lost their homes to the mortgage fiasco, and are now losing family members to the opioid crisis.  This is a crowd for whom voting for Donald Trump is totally rational.

Yes, we can pretend that society’s problems don’t affect us, and that those who don’t fit into the new economy are not our concern.  But those who don’t fit in get to speak their mind, and it’s not in a way that some find pleasant.

It’s About Policing Numbers, Not Number of Police

Posted on by Stuart Murray
The Police, by Luca Venturi
The Police.  Courtesy of Luca Venturi.

Can big data reduce crime?  Yes it can.  This is a great TED Talk by Anne Milgram about using analytics to improve the criminal justice system.  The talk from October 2013 describes how Milgram successfully attempted to “moneyball” policing and the work of judges in her role as attorney general of New Jersey.  Hers is a great story, and has many features in common with the Moneyball book and movie.

The speaker describes how she built a team, created raw data, analyzed it, and produced simple and meaningful tools.  Her most impressive outcome is a risk assessment tool that helps judges identify the likelihood a defendant will re-offend, not show up in court, or commit a violent act.  She and her team have successfully reduced crime.

Baseball players and police officers alike have a culture of bravado and confidence which may be critical when handling conflict, intimidation, and credibility.  Yet what police officers and baseball players often need is a safe space to question their assumptions, assess whether they could do better, and decide that they will do better.  These types of vulnerable moments don’t play out well when a player is at bat, or when an officer is handling complaints from the perpetrators.

In Milgram’s talk, where others see cool math tricks, I see a change in mindset and demeanor.  The speaker expresses curiosity about the information, enthusiasm for unexpected findings, modesty about baseline effectiveness, a lack of blame, and a can-do attitude about trying to do more and do better.

It’s a great metaphor for business.  In those workplaces where managers fiercely claw their way to the top, there may be a reduced willingness to talk about shortcomings in a manner that requires trust and collaboration.  Yet making exceptional decisions require that leaders choose an entirely different mood and posture while they explore an uncharted area, allow information to out-rank instinct, and aspire to a more subtle kind of greatness.  Put posture aside, and just do good work.  The way things are changing, those are the only kinds of people who will stay on top.

You Can “Say” Team, But Do You Feel It?

Posted on by Stuart Murray
Soccer Practice. Courtesy of woodleywonderworks.
Soccer Practice. Photo courtesy of woodleywonderworks.

Does life get in the way of your workplace productivity?  Typically, it’s the opposite.  Your personal life determines how you show up.  When colleagues talk about life, and make their work meaningful to their lives, that’s when they become a team.

This is a great story from a colleague of mine from graduate school.  Alyssa Burkus describes the time she was working on a project for an organization (Actionable.co), and started seriously to consider an offer to work for them full-time.  During a team check-in about people’s weekend she announced to team members that she had achieved a milestone anniversary in surviving cancer.  There was an outpouring of sympathy and support.  She felt it.  She had found her tribe.

If you listen closely in your own workplace, you might hear other moments like these.  Some moments are better than others.  When people “have a specialist appointment” how much time do we give them?  When people have a death in the family, do they tell us, and do we have their back?  When two people talk about their kids having learning disabilities, how long are they allowed to talk?  At my current employer I had to delay my start date because there was a minor complication with a scheduled surgery.

The reason these scenarios are powerful is that many personal topics are simply more important than work.  As an employer you don’t so much own people, you just borrow some of their time.  When employees develop a sense of self-respect and a pride in their contributions, they willingly rise above what is expected from them in the job description.  I love going above and beyond for people whom I respect, and who have respect for me.  This feeling is stronger when employees forget about their salary, which is the dream of every well-informed compensation team.

The ability to have these conversations is part of a healthy workplace culture.  It turns up in employee surveys as a determinant of workplace engagement.  It drives turnover statistics and the amount of steam people put into discretionary effort.  Missteps in these areas are often at the root of conflict, harassment, and grievances.  When an employee expresses physical or emotional discomfort, the degree to which others care and take action is a major factor in accident claims, absenteeism, and long-term disability costs.  With equity and inclusion the emerging practice is to bypass categories and go deeper into individual perspectives.  With employee communications, people mostly read the personal stories.  And the best source of information for leadership development in the eyes of the employees who are following your lead.

I do a lot of math about workforce analytics and I can confirm for you that according to my calculator, emotions are the boss.

I think the reason vulnerability and compassion are so powerful is that it’s really hard to fake it.  You can tell when people mean it, and you can tell when people don’t.  As Alyssa puts it, “…this isn’t a call-to-action to start creating ‘meaningful moments’ initiatives, where the word from the top is leaders need to be more personal, or where HR tracks ‘connection point KPIs.’” It’s about authenticity.  Perhaps we need to develop metrics to guage that.

Foreign Investment Takes a Shine to the Rust Belt

Posted on by Stuart Murray
cement factory. by Miroslave Vajdic.
Cement Factory. Photo courtesy of Miroslav Vajdic.

What if every critique you could make about the modern workforce was briefly disproven?  I happened upon one shining example in a recent article in the New York Times.

It’s opposite land in Moraine, Ohio.  A Chinese glassmaker named Fuyao put a half-billion dollars into an abandoned General Motors plant and created over 1,500 jobs producing windshields for the North American auto sector.  The investment narrowed the physical distance between the investor and clients, which presumably lightened the load on the environment.  The plant has been unionized by the United Auto Workers who would normally think of this as their turf.  Health and safety conditions fall squarely under US law.  There are more visible minorities in executive positions.

Some people have a problem with all of this.  White male executives lost jobs to make space for Chinese managers who were brought in, triggering at least one lawsuit.  The drive to unionize was successful but really difficult.  There is a debate about how hard the employees should work.  The investor is operating just one inch inside the law on health and safety, spurred into action by a hefty fine.  (Who knew that kind of thing worked?)  On Weibo, a popular microblogging site in China, someone called out the owner as a traitor for out-sourcing jobs to the US.

I can barely think of what to say.  It’s just one of those things you hope would happen, until you realize you are suddenly deprived of any legitimate reason to complain or criticize. Maybe we should decide we don’t have to chase reassuring opinions, and get comfortable with contradiction?

Why So Complicated? Go Simple!

Posted on by Stuart Murray
Simplicity, Child Stares at Art (Stuart)
Photo by author, all rights reserved.

The world is complicated.  Do corporate leaders think this is a good thing? No, they do not.  There is an emerging effort to put a greater priority on keeping things simple, while human resources leaders get their people to adapt to changes in the nature of work.

In June of 2014, Josh Bersin developed a fresh opinion that simplicity is the next big thing.  (You’ll need to click past the Forbes pop-up screen, but then you’re in)  Large global corporations were at the time expanding their business, organizing mergers and restructuring efforts, and putting talent management ahead of cost reduction.  There was also a pre-existing struggle to redesign performance management, reduce workload for overwhelmed employees, and create a stronger and more integrated workplace culture.

Bersin notes “We have inadvertently become far too enamored with our technology, mobile phones, social networks, photos, video sharing tools, and all the various competency models, frameworks, process diagrams, and workflows we design in HR.”  Indeed.

By contrast, some organizations have put a lot of effort into simplifying their approach.  This could include reducing the number of competencies they encourage from seven to four, or reducing the performance management process to three simple steps, or creating apps that attach to their HRIS where the apps accomplish just one thing.  Solutions become smaller items that almost belong on Etsy.

For those of you who have written a one-sentence email to an executive it is obvious that keeping it simple is more work, not less.  Designing simple things for a lay audience also requires a special perspective and a devotion to good design.  Yet concentrating effort and attention to just one thing has obvious payoffs in focus and effectiveness.  I don’t have data.  In this case, you can go on instinct.