Work Matters

  • Switch: The Heath Brothers Have Another Awesome Cover

    I just started reading an advanced copy of the Chip and Dan Heath's new book Switch: How to change things when change is hard. So far, it is at least as good as their last book, Made to Stick,which was a bestseller and has rapidly become the standard handbook for anyone who wants to design an idea that will spread and endure — people in almost every field I know now use it, marketing, public health, political campaigns, organizational change efforts, and on and on.  I will write a more detailed post on the content of the new book as the publication date of February 15th approaches, but I wanted to devote this post to the cover of Switch, which I think is magnificent and perhaps even as good as the amazing Made to Stick –which even included textured and realistic feeling duct tape on the cover.   I include it below, followed by the Made to Stick cover. What do you think?  Do you agree with me that the Heath brothers have perhaps the best pair of book covers ever on two business books? Or am I being overly biased because I like these two guys so much? 

    Switch 

    Made-to-stick

  • Drive: Daniel Pink’s Definitive and Fun Guide to Motivation

    I just spent a couple hours reading Daniel Pink's new book, DRIVE: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.  Dan's publisher sent me an advanced copy of the book and I became very interested in it after seeing his splendid TED talk, which I blogged about some weeks back.  The book is even better than the talk, as Dan does a masterful job of boiling down the results of a huge body of behavioral science research, presenting in way that is extremely engaging, and showing how it has profound implications for managers, teachers, parents or anyone else who wants to motivate others (and themselves) to be as effective as possible. It will be for sale in about two weeks.

    He does a masterful job of showing the limits and drawbacks of widely accepted assumptions about motivation — showing the limits of carrots and sticks, and then showing the power of autonomy, mastery, and purpose. In addition to his compelling use of stories and examples (you don't want to miss his "Tom Sawyer" effect and explanations of why so many lawyers dislike their jobs so much), I especially liked his toolkit at the end of the book, which offers fantastic evidence-based advice. Check out the idea for peer-to-peer bonuses, illustrated by a civil engineering firm where at any time anyone can award a $50 bonus to one of his her colleagues.  I also like the steps he offers managers for giving-up control, which is also based on piles of evidence about what really motivates people — consider his argument that the best bosses are careful to avoid not controlling language when possible.  Using words like "must" or "should" can undermine the perception of autonomy and control that is so motivating to people. And we all like his advice that employers should pay above the industry average — which is based on research showing that the motivational gain is so high that doing so REDUCES company costs. 

    Drive provides a splendid summary of the best research on motivation, but never seems like a textbook, it carries you along as Dan adds his little creative twists to show why we as parents and managers are doing so many things wrong that seem so right — and how the best solutions to motivating people are usually so simple and so inexpensive.  Millions of people take introduction to psychology courses each year and nearly as many take introduction to organizational behavior classes: If you teach one of these classes, you might consider using Dan's book in place of or as a supplement your text for part of the course — your students will love it.  And anyone who wants to motivate others — which is pretty much all of us — can learn a lot from this book.

  • The Good Cop, Bad Cop Technique

    Perhaps my last post on assholes and policing got me thinking about the word cop, but in any case, I don't think I've talked much about a stream of research that I did years ago — about 20 — with my colleague Anat Rafaeli on "the expression of emotion in organizational life."  We studied various settings in which people were expected to express certain emotions and suppress others, or used emotions strategically as part of their jobs.  We studied occupations including grocery store clerks, telephone bill collectors, and cops.  In particular, Anat and I published a paper that combined qualitative data that she collected on Israeli police interrogators (to be clear, these were Israeli cops trying to get confessions from Israeli citizens, as we wanted to avoid the entire Arab/Israeli and terrorist thing) and data that I gathered during a three-month ethnography of U.S. telephone bill collectors who collected overdue Visa and MasterCard payments for a large bank.

    Our research, building on prior work on influence (especially Robert Cialdini's masterpiece), suggested that the reason that encountering both a nice and a nasty person was more effective than just a nice person or a nasty person was because of the "psychological contrast effect." In essence, the impact is to make the "carrots" offered by the good cop seem even sweeter and the "sticks" offered by the bad cop even harsher.  Both the cops and the bill collectors used this method routinely, although as the cops worked mostly face-to-face and the bill collectors did this over the phone, there were different variations used, and of course different stakes.  But the contrast effect seemed to be evident in both settings. For example, Anat's fieldnotes of an interrogation she observed indicated:

    There were two interrogators in the room. There was an extreme difference in their style. One (the manager) was a real source of stress to the suspect, while the other was much less threatening, even friendly. The second one was also physically less threatening. He was slim, less muscular, more dressed up, and more delicate in his appearance. During the interrogation he also drifted along with the suspect, while the other used a much harsher tone.

    It also seemed to be effective.  For example, one "good cop" bill collector told me how when his friendly style isn't working, he sometimes has a "bad cop" co-worker do the call:

    Then, usually, they pay pretty quick. Especially if it is Tom who does it. He has had a couple of managers tell him to cool down, where he has just pissed this person off and this person hangs up in a huff. But the next thing you know they're on the phone to the nice collector going, "What do you want, what do you want? Don't you ever have him call, I don't ever want to talk to him again, he was so rude."

    We also identified some interesting variations of the good cop. bad cop method. Looking back, they sound to me like we could have used simpler language, but I was a young academic then, and was probably rewarded by the peer review process for doing so… and wasn't quite at the career stage where I was concerned about writing for human-beings.  The variants include:

    1. Sequential good cop, bad cop: This is the classic approach, as we saw with the above bill collector, where you start with the good cop and go back and forth between encounters with the two until your "target" complies — in this case wither paying the bill or confessing to the crime. Just like in the movies, the targets usually caved-in to the good cop, sometimes saying things like " I never want to see that guy again." 

    2. Simultaneous good cop, bad cop. That was they both work on you at once. The bill collectors didnt use this method, but the police did — and would argue openly with each other to strike fear in the heart of the suspect (Anat has notes of a bad cop saying "He looks like dirt to me" and the good cop saying "He looks like a good guy to me."

    3. One person plays both bad and good cop.  The idea here is to create contrast, as one interrogator explained "I speak in a very low, relaxed tone. So that way, when I yell, it really makes them jump."

    4. Good cop in contrast to hypothetical bad cop. The bill collectors used this a lot, they would be customer service oriented but warn that if the debtor didn't pay now, they would be turned over to a collection agency, where not only would the people be nastier, they would be taking more aggressive action to take away their house or car.  

    Please note I am not endorsing these methods, especially by the police, but the fact is that good cop, bad cop is an effective tool for compliance because using it — often in very subtle ways — does apparently enhance the impact both the carrots and the sticks. In fact, this qualitative study is bolstered by experiments on negotiation teams by researchers Susan Brodt and Marla Tuchinsky  showing that — under most situations — having both a good cop and a bad cop on a negotiation team is a winning strategy.

    BUT there was also a twist we did not address in our research, and in fact, would have been tough to do as we were studying people in "the wilds" of organizational life.  Their research shows that starting with a good cop and then using a bad cop was not effective, that the method only was effective for negotiating teams when the bad cop went first and the good cop followed.   So, this may mean it really should be called "The Bad Cop, Good Cop Technique."   In thinking about this finding, and looking at our old data, I notice that — in just about all the cases we looked at — although the cops or bill collectors started out nice at times, they would switch back and forth between good and bad cop, so there would be many times when the good cop followed a bad cop — as the example of the nice and nasty bill collector above shows.  One exception is the "hypothetical" bad cop technique, where the good cop warns that if you don't pay now, things are going to get a lot nastier — which in the case of debts, everyone knows is not a hollow threat.

    As I wrote in The No Asshole Rule, although I generally am opposed to workplace assholes, there are times when they do seem to be effective — after all, fear and intimidation do change human behavior, despite the dangerous side-effects.  The implication of this theory and research is if you are an asshole, and want to be a more effective one, you would be wise to team-up with a good cop.  This isbecause doing so will make your nastiness sting even more and because good cops also often play the role of toxic handler, cleaning up the mess that asshole bosses and other nasty people leave behind.

    I wonder, do other people use variations of good cop, bad cop? Or have you had it used on you?

    Here are the citations to the
    articles:

    Brodt, S.E. and Tuchinsky, M. (2000) Working together but in opposition: An examination of the “good cop/bad cop” negotiating team tactic. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 81, 155-177.

    Rafaeli, A., and Sutton, R., (1991). Emotional contrast strategies as means of social influence: Lessons
    from criminal interrogators and bill collectors. Academy of Management Journal, 34, 749–775.

  • The Asshole: John Van Maanen’s Classic Article on Police Officers

    New Picture

    This the opening page of MIT Professor John Van Maanen's delightful and insightful article  It is about the meaning and power of the word "asshole" among the police officers he studied during his now classic ethnography of police officers, which he did for his dissertation research in the 1970s. John didn't just talk to cops, he went through the police academy, rode along with them on patrols (and got involved in all sorts of crazy things like chases), and was otherwise embedded with them for a year or so.  He has since gone on to become among the most renowned organizational researchers.  John had a huge impact on my generation of organizational researchers because, when we first started graduate school, qualitative methods were generally treated as unscientific, obsolete,  and so biased as to be enticing but not anything that should ever be published in a top academic journal.  Due in large part to John's example and leadership, by the time many of us had graduated with our PhD's, there were many corners where qualitative studies had become acceptable and encouraged.  And even once exclusively quantitative researchers were starting to do qualitative studies.  There is still controversy about them in my field, but also a fairly widespread acceptance now that such methods are useful for describing organizational life in rich detail and for generating theories and hypotheses that can be tested with quantitative methods.  This is an oversimplification as academics get very emotional and anal about little differences, but I think it is as close to the truth as I can get without delving into a very dull and very long rant.

    To return to John's article, the thing that strikes me is how compelling the opening and the language are — it is impossible for me to read this, although I have many times before, without getting excited about reading the rest. That opening sentence still cracks me up, "The asshole — creep, bigmouth, bastard, animal, mope, rough, jerkoff, clown, scumbag, wiseguy, phony, idiot, shithead, bum ,fool, or any a number of anatomical, oral, or incestuous terms — is part of every policeman's world."  He then goes onto to turn the corner (with the help of that great opening quote) and show the reader that this language reflects sense-making and guides action in a police officers world.  I discuss this article in The No Asshole Rule, and, no doubt, it was one factor that encouraged me to write the book and have the courage to use the title. 

    John's other work is equally fascinating (and even sometimes uses cleaner language). He has had a big positive effect on my field, and I appreciate it. I also love the opening line of his bio at MIT "John Van Maanen studies groups of people the old-fashioned way: by living with them."

  • The Happiness Project: I Hate Self-Help Books But Love This One

    I wondered out to look at the mail, and there it was, the result of Gretchen's Rubin's year long quest to make herself happier. "The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun."  Frankly, perhaps because I was a psychology major for ten years (through my PhD in Organizational Psychology), most self-help books make me want to vomit.  But once I started reading Gretchen's book, I couldn't stop because — unlike all those books that seem to tell fake stories about others or promise too much or are too sappy — Gretchen's compelling voice, great stories, and first person-perspective (and brutal self-assessments at times, few of us are as aware or as open about our imperfections) make the book simply irresistible.

    I cheated and read the first and last chapters and have now worked through most of the rest of the book (I am supposed to be writing several letters of recommendation right now and doing some work on my book, but this is making me much happier).  This is the rare book that is remarkably conceptually and empirically sound (she really knows research on happiness well), linked to great literature and other writings, but somehow at every stage is tied to her experience in a way that made me introspective, but I thought in a constructive rather than selfish way. 

    I don't want to give away too much, as really, you deserve to give yourself the gift of reading the book.  I first put in a few quotes from the book in this post, and then decided to take them out, as I think that presenting them out of context undermines the flow of emotion and logic that hit me as I read paragraph upon paragraph. I would also add that her voice is similar to her blog, but in reading her book, you can see why the daily rhythms of writing a blog can never replace a great book (even one based partly on a blog)– it comes across as a complete and emotionally satisfying story, and ends with a set of lessons (and a lovely twist about the effect of the project on her husband) that both sides of my brain believe will make me — and those I care about –  happier as we travel through life.  

    As I suggest in the title of this post, The Happiness Project might be the perfect self-help book for people like me who hate self-help books. 

    P.S. The book comes out December 29th.  Reading it strikes me as a great way to start the year.

  • Jeff Pfeffer on “Perverse Norms” About Good Management

    I was reading through an old but still spot-on book by my friend and co-author Jeff Pfeffer,  The Human Equation, which provides an evidence-based case about why companies that put people first enjoy superior financial performance over the long-run.   Jeff makes an argument that is a variation of something one of my college friends used to say, "eat shit, 10 billion flies can't be wrong."  But he adds prestige and status as an added twist in a section he labels "Perverse Norms about What Constitutes Good Management," and how such norms often emerge even though they conflict with the evidence.   He uses the example of layoffs — which are no doubt sometimes necessary.  But executives often seem to act in ways that clash with evidence showing that companies that do layoffs last and least tend to perform best over time:

    " If the world believes that laying-off employees by the carload is good management and confers status on those that do it with the most vigor, it will be difficult for executives to resist the temptation to conform to the normative definition of "good management" and thereby achieve approval."

    As usual, Jeff is smart and blunt.

  • Eight Signs You Are Boring: Wisdom from Gretchen

    Gretchen over at The Happiness Project has a great list of eight signs that you are boring another person. They are all wonderful, but I especially like the last one:

    8. Audience posture. Back in 1885, Sir Francis Galton
    wrote a paper called “The Measurement of Fidget.” He determined that
    people slouch and lean when bored, so a speaker can measure the boredom
    of an audience by seeing how far from vertically upright they are.
    Also, attentive people fidget less; bored people fidget more. An
    audience that’s sitting still and upright is interested, while an
    audience that’s horizontal and squirmy is bored.

    As usual, I find Gretchen to be insightful, funny, and remarkably helpful — alas, I see a bit of myself in a number of her tips and it makes me squirm.  It also reminds me, however, that I have a weird obsession with the virtues of being boring. I touch on it in this post, in more detail, in Weird Ideas That Work.

    There are just certain times in life that you don't want to attract attention, don't want people to listen to you very carefully, and don't want to get their emotions cranked-up — and boredom is a perfect solution in such cases.  A former Stanford administrator I knew was the master of strategic boredom.  He could fairly charismatic and entertaining when he believed it was constructive.  But the more controversial and heated that things became, the more dull and mind-numbing his delivery became…. I saw him defuse tense meetings on at least two occasions by lulling angry people into a listless state.   It was tiring to experience, but fascinating too.

  • Guys List of the Top Ten Candidates to Run GM

    Guy Kawasaki has applied his usual charm and delightfully twisted sense of humor to develop a list of 10 candidates to run GM. Here are Guy's top three, but don't miss the list:

    1. Steve Jobs (Apple). GM would create the most
    beautiful cars, but you’d need to refill it once a day. You could only
    buy accessories from the GM store after Phil Schiller approved them.
    Gas pumps would need new nozzles because Steve mandated non-standard
    gas-tank fittings.

    2. Steve Ballmer (Microsoft). GM cars would look
    similar to those of German and Italian marques, but it would be seven
    revisions into the car’s lifecycle before they ran decently.

    3. Sarah Palin (Unemployed). Palin would introduce
    cars that you couldn’t brake or steer called Rogues. Shotgun racks
    would be a factory option on the Cheney model. However, before they
    ship, she would resign. When Katie Couric asked her which car magazines
    she read, she responded, “Most of ‘em.”

    Also, I was thinking that a serious candidate might be Xerox's Anne Mulcahy, as she led one of the toughest turnarounds in recent U.S. history. Plus all the men have failed at this job, so perhaps it is time to try the other gender! Or, perhaps Carly Fiorina could do this instead of running for the Senate in California to demonstrate that she can keep and flourish in a job where she P& L responsibilities — something she didn't demonstrate at HP.  And if Carly failed, she could have the special distinction of having been thrown under the bus by both John McCain and Barack Obama!

  • Quote of the Day: Roaches and Assholes

    I want to thank everyone for the great comments on my last post, which raises the question: Is the only effective way to deal with an impossible boss to suffer in silence until you can escape? 
    Every comment so far is extremely thoughtful. I was especially taken taken with how John described how he had learned to deal with impossible bosses as he traveled through his career.   My favorite line, however, comes from Jason, who comments:

    "Since I
    read your book I've been watching at my firm and my observation is that
    asshole bosses are like roaches–there is never just one."

    As I've written here many times, being an workplace asshole is often a malady that you catch from other people.  But the roaches analogy is a lovely way to out it.

  • Working for an “Impossible Boss:” Is the Only Option to Suffer in Silence Until You Can Escape?

    I was just reading a compelling and heavily research based by psychologist Robert Hogan called Personality and the Fate of Organizations.  In Hogan's chapter on "The Psychology of Managerial Incompetence," he cites an interesting study by by McCall and Lomdardo (see this book for a summary of much of it) where they had interviewed a large number of managers about "career defining events."  Every manager reported that they had spent a long stretch "working for an impossible boss, not difficult, cranky, or abusive, but impossible."  So their first conclusion is that just about every adult will have to work for an impossible boss at some point.  The researchers reached a second conclusion that troubles me, "when working for an intolerable boss, if a  person sticks up for him or herself and refuses to bullied,  his or her career will be irreparably damaged.  When working for an awful boss, a person's only option is to suffer in silence."  

    I was taken aback by this advice. It certainly isn't always wrong, as I suggest on my list of tips, there are times where the best option when working for a bad boss is to suck it up and take it — and get out as fast as you can. But there are just too many examples — and research too — about how trampled underlings have successfully fought back against abusive and incompetent bosses.  A couple famous cases come to mind right away — Brad Bird now of Pixar fame and Robert Townsend, the author of the classic Up The Organization — indeed, Bird's case, he was hired by Pixar in part because he had no tolerance for incompetent authority figures; indeed, his past firing from Disney was career enhancing move. 

    These guys ultimately succeeded, in part, because they fought back against bosses they did not think were competent.  I also have had several longstanding email exchanges with people who are now CEOs because they fought back against and ousted their incompetent and mean-spirited predecessors.   In The No Asshole Rule,  I do emphasize that if you have an asshole boss, sometimes the best thing to do it is become emotionally detached and not let it touch your soul. But I also argue that there are times you can fight back, and when underlings band together and fight back — and practice some skilled politics — they can win against a bad boss, and help rather than damage their careers too.

    I should also add that, although the typical person stuck with an impossible boss might be better off riding out the storm in silence and turning the other cheek, if everyone followed this advice, bad bosses would never be punished, reformed, and fired and terrible decisions would never be stopped.  If you haven't read Michael Lewis' story about AIG, this might be a good time to do it.  He presents well-researched evidence that one reason that AIG messed up so badly was they had an "impossible" boss named Joe Cassano running their Financial Products unit, who was intolerant of dissent, and those who tried to stand-up to him learned it was better not to and left, leaving only people who didn't fight back, suffered his tirades in silence, and said things like "Joe, you are right."  The article estimates this unit lost about 45 billion dollars, and suggests that the fear that Cassano instilled in his followers was a large contributing factor.  I wonder, are those underlings who suffered in silence really better off now — not to mention U.S. taxpayers who have loaned AIG nearly 200 billion bucks.

    That's my reaction. What do you think?

    1. Is this advice right?  If you have an impossible boss, is it usually is a career-limiting move to fight back?

    2. How do you know when to fight versus when to keep your head down and escape as fast as you can?

    3. What is the best way to fight back?