Flattering Lies

My first corporate job was at the then cutting edge company, Digital Equipment Corporation. It’s founder and CEO was the legendary Ken Olsen. He was a strong advocate for employee empowerment, even before the term was coined, and was an iconic figure for the over eighty thousand people that worked for him at the time. One of his favorite maxims was that no one knows a job better than the person doing it, so they ought to decide how it should be done.

You can imagine how excited I was when after being with the company for about a year, I was invited to attend a strategic planning seminar with him. I was even more excited at dinner the first night when I realized that I would be sitting at his table. What an honor, and what an opportunity to learn from one of the most enlightened leaders of the time!

There were maybe eight other tables in the banquet hall, and I took my seat at Ken’s. After not too long, the conversation in the room grew animated as the wine began to flow. But not at our table. Ken was a Quaker and did not drink, so few of the senior managers at the table felt comfortable taking more than a sip or too.

As we started on our salads, Ken began a discussion with the manager of one of the company’s European subsidiaries. He opened with, “So why are your results off this quarter?” Another bite of salad and then another question, each becoming more and more intimidating.  By the end of the course, the manager’s salad was untouched and he was drenched in sweat. It was the most uncomfortable meal I had ever had.

When it was over, I joined the other managers at the bar and told them what I had just observed. All of them had worked closely with Ken for years and none were surprised by my tale. As one put it, “Ken has a way of stripping you naked and making you walk down main street.” For those of us at a remove, Ken represented everything right about the company. But when you got close, life could become a living hell.

As time when on, I learned more about Ken’s contradictory management style. One of my managers resigned for a lesser job elsewhere, unwilling to take any more.  My new manager, also a direct report, displayed all of the signs of excessive tranquilizer use.

Perhaps Ken’s odd style was displayed most famously when he gave an interview proclaiming that personal computers were idiotic and the company would never make them.  At the same time, over four hundred of the company’s engineers were busy designing a PC in a group code-named K.O. With poetic irony, Digital was eventually acquired by the low end PC manufacturer, Compaq, when the market for mini-computers started to shrink.

So Ken talked a good game, but didn’t practice what he preached. But I don’t believe that Ken was much different from most managers, or for that matter from myself.  We all fall victim to tricks of the mind.  We have a view of ourselves, our self-image, and we maintain it by ignoring or rationalizing away any information to the contrary. It’s called cognitive dissonance reduction.

I’ve argued that management based on the insights of brain science doesn’t demand learning any new complex algorithms. All it requires is that we hold the idea in our minds that we all create our own unique versions of reality, which will differ from those of others. And given the way the mind works, the idea will drive the appropriate behavior.

The problem is that our minds, through the process of cognitive dissonance reduction, deceive us into thinking we hold the idea in our minds when we don’t. We delude ourselves into believing that we’re highly empathetic and strong participative managers, and all we allow ourselves to become aware of is information that supports the belief.

Because of this penchant for self-deceit. there are fewer “enlightened” managers than one would expect, especially given the overwhelming data that links approaches like participative management to dramatic improvements in performance. Even worse, managers that believe they’re managing participatively, but aren’t, then see direct proof that such an approach fails.

Yes, keeping in mind a couple of the key insights that come out of brain science will lead to more effective management, but only when we also apply them to ourselves. Perhaps the best managers are the ones that think they’re the worst. It makes them question everything they do and never believe the flattering lies we all tell ourselves.

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Engage

The good news according to Paul Krugman is that the recession may end this year. The bad news is that it’s effects are liable to linger for five years. When we’re done cheering that we’ve pulled ourselves back from the brink, we find that doing business in this economy is still one tough slog and it’s not likely to get any easier soon.

The question that’s repeatedly asked is how can managers keep employees engaged in times like these. The answer is to get employees engaged.

A crisis like this puts everything on the table. In good times, all of us are eager to protect the status quo, but in bad times, we’re all looking for a change. When times are really bad, we don’t have to be encouraged to move out of our comfort zones because they no longer exist. The bolder the action, the better.

GM is finally getting rid of the car lines they should’ve ditched decades ago. They’re now able to change the terms of the union contract, shutter inefficient plants, and rationalize their dealer network. But these are not bold actions. They’re just ways to cut expenses mandated by a lack of cash and their new owners, the taxpayers.

Bold action would be to completely rethink their business from strategy through implementation. But the first thing that needs to be rethought is the relationship with their people. GM can no longer afford to squander their resources, and there is no resource more valuable then the minds and hearts of the employees. Hierarchy, autocratic decision-making. and pointless bureaucracy are now luxuries beyond the company’s means. Everyone must be involved in turning the company around.

It should start with an aspirational vision for the future and a viable competitive strategy to ensure there will be a future. This is rightfully the province of top management, but coming up with the best way to implement the strategy is everybody’s job. With the strategy as their guide and within their areas of responsibility, all employees should be involved in joint problem solving and planning sessions to come up with the best way of conducting their business. The people doing the work have a wealth of ideas about how to do it better. All that’s needed is a simple process to involve them.

This kind of involvement not only pays huge dividends for the business, it’s just what people need in times of crisis. When we’re engaged, we don’t have time to sit around bemoaning our fate.  When we contribute, we have control over our destiny and feel less stress. When we’re the ones coming up with new ways of doing our jobs, we’re highly motivated to make them work.

It’s not difficult get employees engaged. Now more than ever, they’re eager to participate, and every manager has the tools necessary to make it happen. All they need to do is make it clear what’s at stake and ask for suggestions. There may be some stumbles at first, but managers will soon learn how to guide employees toward practical ideas that they’re able to implement.

The biggest challenge will be for managers to move from a controlling mode into a supportive one. If they genuinely believe in the need for their employees to be engaged, they’ll intuitively know how to bring it about. If they act with integrity and conviction, employees will even forgive a few missteps here and there.

It’s alway been a good idea to involve employees. For the foreseeable future, it’ll be a necessity.

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Nice Guys

We have a preoccupation with success and what’s responsible for it.  Malcolm Galdwell’s latest book, Outliers, is an attempt to dispel some common myths about what makes people successful, and in a recent column, David Brooks makes the case that genius is more about practice than IQ. But increasingly I’m becoming convinced that success in the business world is about being nice.

It’s always interesting to work with smart people and marvel at how quickly their minds process information, and it’s a treat to experience the really talented.  But if I think back to people I’ve known that are consistently and enduringly successful, the common denominator is that they’re quite likable.  I suspect that this is the case because it’s one thing to come up with a smart business idea, but it’s quite another to implement it and build a business around it, because that involves working through people.

Cognitive scientists believe that our oversized brains evolved to enable us to manage social relations.  All of the rest of what we need to do is easy, but dealing with people is complicated by how complicated they are.  They can say one thing and do another, they can change from moment to moment, and they can even be consciously unaware of what they’re doing.  While designing a sophisticated new chip has its own set of challenges, at least it doesn’t have a mind of its own that is constantly changing.

Likable people are successful because other people want to help them be successful. Maybe it’s our mirror neurons mimicking their mental state, but in their presence we too want to be likable, so we’re eager to do what they want us to do.  Or maybe it’s just as simple as wanting to repay their kindness with our own.

The idea that success is about being nice is appealing because in contrast to IQ or specialized talent, it’s an ability we all share.  To be likable, we simply have to behave the way those we find likable behave.  The only challenge is to resist being so caught up in ourselves that we don’t focus enough on others.  This means having the discipline to consistently direct our attention outward.  If we do it enough, we strengthen the neural networks responsible for it. Perhaps being nice really is a talent, but like other talents, it’s a product of practice, not genius.

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