Work Matters

Category: Scaling

  • Felt Accountability: Some Emerging Thoughts

    This blog and much of the rest of my life were swamped last week by the intense reactions to the story about how badly United Airlines treated Phoebe and her parents when she traveled as an unaccompanied minor.  You can read the blog post with the original story (and the 90 comments that were not too hostile to print) and the family's statement if you missed it. Also, Diego at Metacool did an insightful post about why the story went so viral.

    At some point, I should write a post with the twists and turns of the story: the surprising hostility, the lies and veiled threats from the media, the stories about United that are far worse than the one published here (warning: stranded older teenagers might be worse than stranded young kids in some ways as they fall into a weird no-mans-land), and the senior executive ( I won't name him, he can out himself) who is on United constantly because he has no choice for his job, despises what they have devolved to, and reports he is sending back the expensive gift he got a few days ago to thank him for the 2 million miles he has flown with United — he is going to suggest that they use the money to give some passenger a little better (or at least less bad) service.

    As I recover from all this madness, I continue to think about felt accountability, the concept that I used to frame the United story.  Huggy Rao and I are rather obsessed with this notion as it is so central to scaling-up excellence — and for de-scaling bad behavior of all kinds.   United is, I believe, a place that has lost that feeling of mutual obligation to do the right thing, where management helps employees, employees help management, employees help each other, employees help customers,  and where customers feel compelled to pitch and play a helpful role too. 

    I am thinking — Huggy gets part of the blame here too — that there might be four different levels or kinds of accountability that a group or organization might have, which go something like this:

    Authorship

    This comes from my friend, early stage venture capitalist, and d.school teaching star Michael Dearing — we heard it just yesterday from him.  This is what you get get in a small start-up, from an inventor, and yes, from book authors like me.  That feeling that not only am I obligated to do the right thing, but that I am the person responsible for designing and making it as great as I can.  Steve Jobs had this in spades, of course, but you mostly see it in smaller organizations or pockets of bigger organizations.  I think of Brad Bird at Pixar as another example, especially his amazing efforts on The Incredibles, how it was his vision, but how he still instilled the feeling in so much of team:  Whatever little part they were working on, he made many members of the team feel as if they were authors — if you want the feel of working with Brad, although DVD's are fading, check out the "behind the scenes" material on The Incredibles DVD.  Amazing stuff. 

    Mutual Obligation

    David Novak, CEO of Yum! brands, argues that this should be the goal of a great leader, to create a place where it feels like you own it and it owns you.   This is what United has lost, what I still feel at Virgin America, JetBlue, and Southwest most of the time.  IDEO and McKinsey have the same feel, as do Procter & Gamble and GE.  I saw it at the Cleveland Clinic when I was patient there.  I also think of people who work for the Singapore government, who can be remarkable in this regard.  These organizations aren't perfect, none can be, but there is palpable weight on people, they feel pressure to do the right thing even when no one is looking, as the old saying goes. And they pressure others to do so as well.   

    Indifference

    Think of the average hair salon, where each stylist rents a chair.  Or a group dental practice, where dentists share a common receptionist and a few services and little else. Some organizations are designed this way and can be quite effective. The mutual dependence is weak, it is a "we don't do much for you, so you don't have to do much for us" situation.   People don't have contempt for their colleagues or customers, it is just indifference.  I was thinking that United had devolved to this state.  But after the deluge last week, I realized it was worse than that.  Hence, my proposed last category.

    Mutual  Contempt

    I first heard hints of this notion at an unnamed university I worked at briefly quite a few years ago.  Right after I arrived, one of my new colleagues said something "this is the kind of place where, when you a full professor, you not only don't care about your colleagues, you feel good when something bad happens to them."   I should hasten to add that this was probably an overstatement, that such contempt seemed to be largely between groups and departments, not so much within them — and they have new leadership and things seem to be better. 

    BUT I also fear that this describes the modern United Airlines, everyone seems to despise everyone else.  I hope I am wrong about this, but the awful stories rolled in from so many sources that it seems as if all the years of cost-cutting, all the battles with unions, all the management changes, all the stress that customers have endured over the years have conspired to bring the organization — at least most it — to this dark place.   It appears that many United employees are keenly aware of this sad state of affairs and it hurts them deeply — especially front line employees.

    I was especially struck by a long comment from a guy who said he was a 25 year United pilot.   If you want to read the whole thing, it takes awhile to get there from the original post as there are 90 comments, and you have to click about four pages back, it is by Greenpolymer, August 14th, at 9:24 pm.  I think this link gets you to the right page if you scroll down toward the bottom.

    This pilot tells a brief story earlier in the post that really got to
    me. It reflects terribly on United's management, and shows that people who act on feelings they are accountable to passengers are punished  — despite claims by senior executives to the contrary:

    I had the
    gall to apologize to my 150 passengers for a shares delay of 45 minutes
    one day. I was asked to write a letter of apology TO MANAGEMENT for
    mentioning the problem. (I think the videos also say something about
    being truthful and taking responsibility)

    This is the worst — and most disturbing — part:

    I used
    to be the Captain who ran downstairs to make sure the jetway air
    conditioning was cold and properly hooked up. Who helped the mechanic
    with the cowling and held the flashlight for him. I used to write notes
    to MY guests, and thank them for their business. I wrote reports,
    hundreds of reports, on everything from bad coffee to more efficient
    taxi techniques.

    No more. I have been told to do my job, and I do my job. My love
    for aviation has been ground into dust. After 15 years of being lied
    to, deceived, ignored, blamed falsely; and watching the same mistakes
    being made over and over again by a "professional management" that never
    seems to learn from the copious reports of our new "watchers", I give.

    It's not an easy thing to do. I am an Eagle Scout, an entrepreneur,
    and a retired Air Force Officer with over 22 years of service. Those
    twelve points of the Scout law still mean something to me, especially
    the first three. I have been in great units and not so great units, and
    the difference ALWAYS came down to LEADERSHIP. Most (and I will be the
    first to admit not all) of the employees that you all have been talking
    about here are desperate. They would give anything to find a LEADER,
    with a VISION, and a sense of HONOR to lead this company.

    Painful, isn't it?  "I used to be… I used to be… I used to be."  I think he is a victim of the years of contempt, which is something far more vile than indifference — not just for United customers, but for people like him who want to care.

    Once again, this post is just to explore some emerging ideas — and to start stepping back from the United incident (although clearly I have not been completely successful at that).  To return to the big picture:

    1. Any comments on the my four categories?  Do they ring true? Any advice?

    2. Now the hard part.  We will return to this one.  How do you build an organization that starts and remains a place where felt accountability prevails?  Tougher still, once it is lost — as seems to be the case at United — how do you get it back?  Or is it impossible?

  • A Call for Change at United: A Statement from Annie and Perry Klebahn

    My last post was about how United Airlines lost Phoebe, my friend’s 10-year old daughter.  All of us involved in this story – especially parents Annie and Perry, NBC’s Diane Dwyer (the only media person that interviewed Annie and Phoebe), and me – were stunned to see how viral it went.  A Google search last night revealed it was reported in at least 160 outlets – including England, France, and Germany with the facts based only on the post written here, Annie and Perry’s complaint letter, and United’s tepid apology.  This blog received over 200,000 hits in the last two days; 2000 is typical.  Annie and Perry have resisted the intrusive onslaught of media people (most were polite, several incredibly rude) and elected to do a single interview with Diane Dwyer.  It appeared locally in the San Francisco Bay Area as well is in a shorter (but I think still excellent) form this morning on The Today Show. Here is the link to The Today Show video and to Diane’s written story on the local NBC site.

    I also want to reprint United's statement because it lacks even a hint of empathy or compassion.  Note that it does not question any of the facts put forth by Annie and Perry and also note that no attempt was made to reach out to Annie and Perry until United was contacted by NBC reporter Diane Dwyer. As one executive I know explained — he is in what they call Global Services, the top 1% of United customers — even the statement is a symptom of how deep the denial is and how shallow the humanity is in the company:

    “We reached out directly to the Klebahns to apologize and we are reviewing this matter. What the Klebahns describe is not the service we aim to deliver to our customers. We are redepositing the miles used to purchase the ticket back into Mr. Klebahn’s account in addition to refunding the unaccompanied minor charge.  We certainly appreciate their business and would like the opportunity to provide them a better travel experience in the future.“

     Charles Hobart/United Airlines Spokesman

    Annie and Perry have written a statement below and as you can see, they aren’t going to be doing any additional media and their focus is on persuading United to change its policies and procedures for handling unaccompanied minors.  They ask the media and anyone else out there to please respect their privacy from now onward.

    As they request, I will also shift my efforts here and elsewhere  to trying to understand how United reached the point where they are so broken, developing ideas about what can be done to save them from themselves, and to press United to break out of its current denial and start down the road to redemption. 

    Here is the statement from Annie and Perry, again, please respect their privacy.

    On behalf of the Klebahn family we appreciate your interest in our story.  We feel strongly that United's program for handling unaccompanied minors is deeply flawed and that they need to seriously overhaul this program and their entire approach to customer service.  

    Hundreds of thousands of families send their kids on United each year as unaccompanied minors. We sent our daughter away to summer camp, but many families are separated for a variety of reasons and sending their kids on planes alone is part of their required routine. United offers this service, and families like us trust and rely on them to provide safe, secure passage for children. The age of the children United takes into their care is 5-11 years old and not all of them carry cell phones, nor have the maturity to know what to do in an emergency. It's astounding how many flaws there are in United's program but at a bare minimum we think they need to change the following:

    • United does not disclose that their unaccompanied minor service is outsourced to a third party vendor–this needs to change so parents can make an informed choice about who they are entrusting their children to when they travel alone 
    • If United is going to continue offering this service to families they need to offer a dedicated 24/7 phone line that is staffed with a live human being in the U.S. so that parents have an active and real resource to use during their travel experience
    • United should also be required to alert parents immediately of travel delays and alternative plans for the minors in their care

    It is still startling to us that after our unbelievable experience it took six weeks, and a press story by NBC, to have United even consider responding to our concerns and complaints. Our only goal in all of this is to have United acknowledge that their program is flawed, and to consider an immediate overhaul before another child gets lost or hurt. Getting our $99 back with a veiled apology means nothing given what we've been through. 

    As an organization United is broken. They have the worst customer rating of all airlines, they have the highest number of official complaints on the US Department of Transportation's website, and the largest number of negative comments on the Internet, Facebook and Twitter. How can they not notice that they are doing it wrong?

    At this point the important thing for us is that our daughter is safe. We can only hope that making our story public will in some way make an impact by adding another voice to the many out there asking United to change. If you would like to add your voice too, please join our petition to change United's Unaccompanied Minor Program by signing your name to the petition we started on Change.org. 

    We would like to thank Diane Dwyer at NBC and Dr. Robert Sutton for their help telling this story.  There will be no further comments or interviews.

    Annie and Perry Klebahn

  • United Airlines Lost My Friend’s 10 Year Old Daughter And Didn’t Care

    My colleague Huggy Rao and I have been reading and writing about something called "felt accountability" in our scaling book. We are arguing that a key difference between good and bad organizations is that, in the good ones, most everyone feels obligated and presses everyone else to do what is in their customer's and organization's best interests.  I feel it as a customer at my local Trader Joe's, on JetBlue and Virgin America, and In-N-Out Burger, to give a few diverse examples. 

    Unfortunately, one place I have not felt it for years — and where it is has become even worse lately — is United Airlines.  I will forgo some recent incidents my family has been subjected to that reflect the depth at which indifference, powerlessness, and incompetence pervades the system. An experience that two of my friends — Annie and Perry Klebahn — had in late June and early July with their 10 year-old daughter Phoebe sums it all-up.  I will just hit on some highlights here, but for full effect, please read the entire letter  here  to the CEO of United, as it has all the details. 

    Here is the headline: United was flying Phoebe as an unaccompanied minor on June 30th, from San Francisco to Chicago, with a transfer to Grand Rapids.  No one showed-up in Chicago to help her transfer, so although her plane made it, she missed the connection. Most crucially, United employees consistently refused to take action to help assist or comfort Phoebe or to help her parents locate her despite their cries for help to numerous United employees.

    A few key details.

    1. After Phoebe landed in Chicago and no one from (the outsourced firm) that was supposed to take her to her next flight showed up. Numerous United employees declined to help her, even though she asked them over and over.  I quote from the complaint letter:

     The attendants where busy and could not help her she told us.  She told them she had a flight to catch to camp and they told her to wait.  She asked three times to use a phone to call us and they told her to wait.  When she missed the flight she asked if someone had called camp to make sure they knew and they told her “yes—we will take care of it”.  No one did. She was sad and scared and no one helped.

    2. Annie and Perry only discovered that something was wrong a few hours later when the camp called to say that Phoebe was not on the expected plane in Grand Rapids. At the point, both Annie and Perry got on the phone.  Annie got someone in India who wouldn't help beyond telling her:

    'When I asked how she could have missed it given everything was 100% on time she said, “it does not matter” she is still in Chicago and “I am sure she is fine”. '

    Annie was then put on hold for 40 minutes when she asked to speak to the supervisor.

    3. Meanwhile, Perry was also calling. He is a "Premier" member in the United caste system so he got to speak to a person in the U.S. who worked in Chicago at the airport:

    "When he asked why she could not say but put him on hold.  When she came back she told him that in fact the unaccompanied minor service in Chicago simply “forgot to show up” to transfer her to the next flight.  He was dumbfounded as neither of us had been told in writing or in person that United outsourced the unaccompanied minor services to a third party vendor."

    4. Now comes the most disturbing part, the part that reveals how sick the system is.  This United employee knew how upset the parents were and how badly United had screwed-up. Perry asked if the employee could go see if Phoebe was OK:

    "When she came back she said should was going off her shift and could not help.  My husband then asked her if she was a mother herself and she said “yes”—he then asked her if she was missing her child for 45 minutes what would she do?  She kindly told him she understood and would do her best to help.  15 minutes later she found Phoebe in Chicago and found someone to let us talk to her and be sure she was okay."

    This is the key moment in the story, note that in her role as a United employee, this woman would not help Perry and Annie. It was only when Perry asked her if she was a mother and how she would feel that she was able to shed her deeply ingrained United indifference — the lack of felt accountability that pervades the system. Yes, there are design problems, there are operations problems, but the to me the core lesson is this is a system packed with people who don't feel responsible for doing the right thing.  We can argue over who is to blame and how much — management is at the top of the list in my book, but I won't let any of individual employees off the hook.

    5. There are other bad parts to the story you can see in the letter. Of course, they lost Phoebe's luggage and in that part you can see all sorts of evidence of incompetence and misleading statements, again lack of accountability.

    6. When Anne and Perry tried to file a complaint, note the system is so bad that they wouldn't let them write it themselves and the United employee refused their request to have it read back to be fact-checked, plus there are other twists worth repeating:

    We asked to have them read it back to us to verify the facts, we also asked to read it ourselves and both requests were denied.  We asked for them to focus on the fact that they “forgot” a 10-year old in the airport and never called camp or us to let us know.  We also asked that they focus on the fact that we were not informed in any way that United uses a third party service for this. They said they would “do their best” to file the complaint per our situation.  We asked if we would be credited the $99 unaccompanied minor fee (given she was clearly not accompanied).  They said they weren’t sure.

    We asked if the bags being lost for three days and camp having to make 5 trips to the airport vs. one was something we would be compensated for (given we pay camp $25 every time they go to the airport).  They said that we would have to follow up with that separately with United baggage as a separate complaint. They also said that process was the same—United files what they hear from you but you do not get to file the complaint yourselves.

    7.  The story isn't over and the way it is currently unfolding makes United looks worse still in my eyes.  United had continued to be completely unresponsive, so Annie and Perry got their story to a local NBC TV reporter, a smart one who does investigations named Diane Dwyer.  Diane started making calls to United as she may do a story.  Well, United doesn't care about Phoebe, they don't care about Annie and Perry, but they do care about getting an ugly story on TV.  So some United executive called Annie and Perry at home yesterday to try to cool them out. 

    That story was what finally drove me to write this because, well, if bad PR is what it takes to get them to pretend to care, then it is a further reflection of how horrible they have become. I figured that regardless of whether Diane does the story or not, I wanted to make sure they got at least a little bad PR.

    I know the airline industry is tough, I know there are employees at United who work their hearts out every day despite the horrible system they are in, and I also know how tough cultural change is when something is this broken. But perhaps United senior executives ought to at least take a look at what happens at JetBlue, Virgin America, and Southwest.  They make mistakes too, it happens, but when they do, I nearly always feel empathy for my situation and that the people are trying to make the situation right.

  • Charter Schools, California and New York City: $6000 vs. $13,500 Per Pupil

    Huggy Rao and I have been reading and talking about charter schools for our scaling-up excellence project.  Charter schools come in many forms, but the basic idea is that these often smaller and more focused schools are freed from many of the usual rules and constraints that other public schools face, and in exchange,  are held more accountable for student achievement – on measures like standardized test scores, graduation rates, and the percentage of students who go onto college.  

    There is much controversy and debate about these public schools:  Are they generally superior or inferior to other forms of public education?  Are they cheaper or more expensive?  Can the best ones be scaled-up without screwing-up the original excellence?  Which charter school models are best and worst? 

    There is so much ideology and self-interest running through such debates that, despite some decent research, it is hard to answer such questions objectively.  But one lesson is unfortunately becoming clear enough that there is growing agreement — that my home state of California is so poor that it is a lousy place to start a Charter school of any kind.  I first heard this a few weeks about from Anthony Bryk, a renowned educational researcher and the current President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.  He was also directly involved in starting and running one (or perhaps more — I don't recall for sure) charter schools when he lived in Chicago. 

    Tony told me that California was providing such meager funding that — although much of the charter school movement started here, there are many charter schools here, and many of the organizations that start and run these schools (called "charter management organizations") are  here — the funding that California schools receive is so meager that they are increasingly hesitant to start schools in California because the schools are condemned to mediocrity or worse.

    I started digging into it, and what I am finding is distressing as both a Californian and an American.  I knew that our schools were suffering, but I did not realize how much.  For a glimpse, here is an interesting and detailed article on scaling-up charter schools in Education Week from last year.  As Tony warned me, the charter operators described in this article are struggling to sustain quality in California and are looking elsewhere. Here is an interesting excerpt:

    Aspire, in Oakland, has also focused so far only on California. It opened its first charter school in Stockton, Calif., in the 1999-2000 school year and has grown by several schools each year. The CMO operates 30 schools and has nearly doubled its enrollment, to 12,000, over the past three school years. James Willcox, the chief executive officer of Aspire, said the difficult budget climate in California is causing him and other Aspire leaders to think about opening schools outside the state. “It’s getting harder and harder to do quality schools in California,” he said, “because the funding is so painfully low, and charter schools get less per student than traditional public schools.”

    He isn't exaggerating. I was shocked to see, for example, that (according to the article) the State of California is currently providing less than $6000 per pupil each year; in contrast, New York City provides $13,500.  Ouch.   I know that government wastes lots of money, and certainly there are inefficiencies in education.  But can we afford to do this our kids and our future?  As Tony suggested, California has degenerated to the point where all they can do is support a teacher for every 30 kids or so, a tired old classroom and school, and little else.

    I knew it was bad, but I didn't know it was this bad.  There is plenty of blame to go around — we all have our own pet targets — but perhaps it is time to put our differences aside and do the right things.

  • Politicians and Persuasion: When to Use Abstract Versus Specific Messages

    As I was reading research this morning for our scaling project, I came across a series of studies that has implications for both politicians and — perhaps organizational leaders — who wish to persuade others to like and support them.  The question tackled by these studies in paper by Hakkyun Kim and his colleagues in the Journal of Consumer Research was when "influencers" are better of using vague, abstract high level messages — ones that are more about "why" — versus concrete, specific, implementation oriented messages — ones that are "how" to get things done.

    Their general hypothesis was that, given the way that people "represent" events in their minds, vague and abstract messages fit with their attention and expectations when the event is far in the future, but as the event draws closer, they become more concerned about concrete details as the practicalities begin to loom. Here is part of their argument:

    For instance, a traveler preparing to leave for a vacation to Cancun the following morning is more likely to process information about speedy check-in for international flights – a low-level, concrete piece of information that is related to the feasibility of the vacation, as opposed to information about the quality of sunsets on the East Coast of Mexico – a high-level, abstract piece of information that is related to the desirability of the vacation. When processing information that does not match their mental representation, people are less likely to experience fluency, and thus may provide a less positive evaluation of the event.

    They used this kind of logic to design a series of laboratory experiments where subjects were exposed to vague versus concrete messages from hypothetical U.S. Senate candidates and asked them to evaluate how positively or negatively they viewed the candidate.  The key  manipulation was whether the election was far off (six months away) or looming soon (one week).  As predicted, abstract messages were more persuasive (and promoted more liking) when the election was six months away and concrete message were more persuasive when it was one week away.

    This study has some fun implications for the upcoming elections.  Let's watch Obama and Romney to see if they keep things vague and abstract until the final weeks of the campaign, but then turn specific in the final weeks.  But I think it also has some interesting implications for how leaders can persuade people in their organizations to join organizational change efforts.  The implication is that when the change is far off, it is not a good idea to talk about he nuts and bolts very much — a focus on abstract "why" questions is in order.  But as the change looms, specific details that help people predict and control what happens to them are crucial to keeping attitudes toward the change and leaders positive.  

    This is just a hypothesis based on this research. Laboratory subjects and the strangeness of political campaigns may not generalize to organizational settings, but it seems like a plausible hypothesis. Now I am going to start looking at some cases of organizational change to see if it actually seems to work. 

    Any reactions to the hypothesis or suggestions of cases to check out?

    P.S. Here is the reference: Kim, Hakkyun, Akshay R. Rao, and Angela Y. Lee (2009), "It's Time to Vote: The Effect of Matching Message Orientation and Temporal Frame on Political Persuasion," lead article, Journal of Consumer Research, 35 (April), 877-889.

  • Diego Rodriguez: This is What Leadership Should Look Like at IDEO

    As long-time readers of this blog know, I am a big admirer (and long time friend) of Diego Rodriguez.  Diego is a partner at IDEO and runs the flagship Palo Alto office, and he writes the always provocative blog Metacool.   Diego's IDEO colleague, Tatyana Mamut, stopped by Stanford last week to serve as judge for the final project in our course on scaling-up excellence (they were wonderful, but that is another story). 

    Somehow, we got to talking about leadership and she told me about a video that Diego had shown people and told them "This is what leadership should look like at IDEO."  Watch it here.  You have to see it, I won't tell you anything else.

    I will offer an opinion, however, after years of hanging around IDEO: This is how leadership usually looks there and has since the earliest days when founder David Kelley started a company (with Dean Hovey) in 1978 so he could have a place to hang out with his friends.  But it is always good to remind people of what is sacred (and profane) in any culture, and this little video does it well.

    P.S. As a bonus, if you click on the link for Tatyana, you get a great short talk on how tools, rules, and norms and how they explain the spread of deodorant use in Russia.  It reminds of when my dissertation adviser — Bob Kahn, half jokingly — defined organizations as "rules, tools, and fools." 

  • Greetings and Bathrooms: One CEO’s Metrics for Retail Stores

    Yesterday, we had the CEO of a large retail chain as a visitor in the Stanford class we Huggy Rao and I are teaching on scaling-up excellence.  I will refrain from using his name as this a class, not a speech to the public.  But he said something  interesting in response to a question about the challenge of "descaling bad behavior."  When I asked what the "warning signs" he looked for during store visits, signs that management was slipping, he offered two metrics (which he said could be applied to many others retail settings too):

    1.   Am I — and other customers — warmly greeted by employees when they enter the store?  He said this was a general sign that employees were focusing on customers.  He added that the small social connection and associated feeling of obligation makes it a bit harder for people to walk out of the store without buying anything. 

    2. Are the bathrooms clean?  He joked that people in his company must think he has a small bladder because he is always asking to go the bathroom.  He argued that dirty bathroom are a sign that the managers and employees are failing to execute in other ways, and because customers react so negatively to dirty bathrooms, it was especially bad for motivating sales and return visits.

    He said that, when he spots these signs, he immediately has a huddle with the store manager and employees to explain why they are of such concern to him and to persuade them to start changing their behavior right away.  He also emphasized that his firm uses all kinds of quantitative measures to run the stores, but as he pointed out, these simple measures add something that can't be seen just from looking at the numbers.

    Ireally liked the elegance of his two measures and how he tied them to his immediate actions.

    I wonder, what other simple measures do you use — as a customer or manager — to assess if a store is being ran well or badly?

    P.S. I was sitting next to a marketing professor from another university during the talk. He argued that if you look at Wal-Mart's recent financial challenges (which the press seems to attribute to such deep cuts in the merchandise prices), part of the problem may be that they are failing along the lines suggested by this veteran CEO.  As he noted, Wal-Mart is eliminating some greeters and moving others away from the entrance; an article in RetailWire comments on reduced and altered use of greeters: "A lot of changes have taken place at Walmart over the years since Sam Walton's passing, but the latest may have him flipping over in his grave. "  That marketing professor also asserted the cleanliness of Wal-Mart bathrooms have slipped in recent years (This is hearsay as I am not a regular Wal-Mart customer; I did try to look online for evidence to support the claim, and while there were individual complaints, I didn't see any systematic evidence one way or another).

  • Eliminating the Negative at the Atlanta Schools

    Today's New York Times has a compelling story about the steps new superintendent Erroll B. Davis Jr is taking to clean-up the Atlanta schools, which were tainted by test score scandals — with teachers and principals cheating in almost half the schools-– that was apparently fueled by pressure and fear created by the previous (and now disgraced) superintendent Beverly L. Hall.  As the Times explains:

    "For years, Beverly L. Hall, the former school superintendent here, ruled by fear. Principals were told that if state test scores did not go up enough, they would be fired — and 90 percent of them were removed in the decade of Dr. Hall’s reign.Underlings were humiliated during rallies at the Georgia Dome. Dr. Hall permitted principals with the highest test scores to sit up front near her, while sticking those with the lowest scores off to the side, in the bleachers."

    The interesting thing about the story to me is that Davis is behaving in ways that follow directly from one of my favorite academic articles, Bad is Stronger than Good.  He is working to eliminate the negative at every turn, immediately firing a teacher who allegedly supplied test scores students (he says he might get sued, but doesn't care), removing tainted senior administrators at a high rate, and during one of his many visits to schools he observed a toilet was clogged and made sure it was fixed before he left. He has also eliminated practices that Hall used that conveyed her superiority, isolation, and mistrust — she did things like insisting that all questions be submitted in writing when she spoke in public so they could be screened.

    Rather than her "Queen of the Ivory Tower" management style, Davis is out and about in the schools and the community eliminating the negative when he sees it, and as the psychologists who wrote "Bad is Stronger Than Good" advised,spreading around positive words and deeds at such a rapid pace that the negative is overwhelmed.

    Most notably, rather than hiding in his ivory tower, he is visiting school after school and thanking everyone he sees for their good work.  And rather than treating teachers as objects of scorn, blame, and mistrust, he says things to principals like “Education is the only industry in this country where failure is blamed on the workers, not the leadership.”

    Finally, Davis has made an interesting symbolic change to send the signal that helping kids, not jacking-up tests scores through any means possible, is what matters most.  The Times reports:

    "When Dr. Hall was the superintendent, she covered one wall in her office with bar graphs showing the test results for all 100 city schools. After Mr. Davis became superintendent, he took the test scores down and replaced them with large color photographs of Atlanta schoolchildren."

    As I noted here recently, my colleague Huggy Rao and I are working on book scaling-up excellence , and teach a related class at Stanford. One of the hallmarks of leaders who scale excellence is that they "make way" for it by removing bad behaviors and emotions that interfere with and turn attention and effort away from doing good things.  The methods that Erroll B. Davis Jr is using to turn around the Atlanta school system don't just provide lessons for other educational leaders, they demonstrate a mindset and actions that leaders of almost any group or organization can use to eliminate the negative — especially to drive-out fear.