PUTTIN' COLOGNE ON THE RICKSHAW

In the last couple of posts I’ve looked at the concepts of The Illusion of Skill and The Talent Gap. These are two areas where the performance review process falls short of being effective. Since most performance review processes focus on employee skills, the Illusion of Skill explained why people won’t necessarily believe what they hear in the review. The Talent Gap detailed what the true focus of the performance review process should be. This week’s post will focus on another of the common psychological constraints that we all function under: the illusion that we are in control.

In his book The Art of Thinking Clearly, ©2013, Rolf Dobelli provides an insight into the Illusion of Control that we all suffer. He tells us: “The illusion of control is the tendency to believe that we can influence something over which we have absolutely no control. In 1965, researchers H.H. Jenkins and W. C. Ward conducted a now famous experiment in which they set out to investigate a person’s acoustic sensitivity to pain. They placed the subjects in two separate rooms, one with blank walls and the other with a large red “Panic” button. The button was purely for show–not connected to anything. Results showed that the subjects in the room with the panic button where able to withstand significantly more noise than those in the other room. Why? The red panic button gave them the belief that they were in control of the situation.” Despite Jenkins and Ward not coining a name for this phenomenon, they in fact we’re the first to discover what’s now being called the “Illusion of Control.”

Do you believe you control more than you really do? Do you think you’re commanding your way through life? Do you believe that you can somehow control the people around you?Are you one of the subjects in the room with the big red button?

Dobelli also details another human condition that contributes to our illusion that we are in control. It’s called “The Availability Bias.” This is our tendency to let our past experiences easily affect our decision-making or reasoning ability. That is, if a task, or problem, reminds you of a time when you used a particular skill (or talent) to influence what happened, you are likely to believe you have more control over the outcome of the task than you do. When making decisions the availability bias occurs when a story you can readily recall plays too big a role in how you reach your conclusion. This “bias” is alive and well in all of us and thus in workplaces everywhere. This bias partially explains why we seem to never learn from the past−we’re quick to rely on it and thus repeat it.

By the same token, “The Illusion of Control” explains our tendency to overestimate our true ability to control events−to believe that we can control outcomes that we demonstrably have no influence over. The effect was named by psychologist Ellen Langer, a researcher from UCLA in 1975, and has been replicated in many different contexts and experiments−predated by the above Jenkins and Ward experiment.

Langer showed that people often behave as if chance events are personally controllable. In a series of experiments, Langer demonstrated first the prevalence of the Illusion of Control and second, that people were more likely to behave as if they could exercise control in a chance situation where (what she called) ‘skill cues’ were present. Skill cues are much the same as the availability bias−if we’re convinced we have skill in something then we think we can control it, despite it maybe being nothing more than a game of chance. Recall the example I gave in my previous post in which my experience in stock trading leads me to believe I have that skill and thus I have control over my future stock trades.

However, the only situation in which we can be sure about how much control we have is when we demonstrably have no control at all, and in those situations people often still believe they have control. On the flip side, keep in mind that it’s been proven, across many studies, that even when people have a great deal of control, they underestimate it.

A few more examples might help to explain this further. Do you play the lottery? Many people believe they have more control by picking their own numbers vs. a quick pick. Also, people believe they are less likely to get into a car accident if they are driving. This explains why those not driving will stomp on the imaginary brake pedal if they see a potential accident about to happen. In the game of craps, gamblers tend to throw the dice harder when they need higher numbers, and lighter if they need low numbers.

Current TV beer ads show sports fans who believe they can influence the game from their living room by obsessing about some routine they do or wardrobe they wear. The tag line is: “It’s only weird if it doesn’t work.”

All these demonstrate our belief that we can somehow control the outcomes of otherwise random events.

What’s really interesting is that researchers have also learned that although most individuals operate under an illusion of control at least some of the time, cynical individuals are much less likely to harbor such illusions. When it comes to accurately assessing control, people who are cynical have a much better grip on reality.

Recall my post from a couple weeks ago called “The Devil’s Advocate.” People who take the role of a devil’s advocate are typically those who have a somewhat cynical view of what they see around them. When we need to have control, we forgo and ignore any critical assessment we can make of a situation and thus cut ourselves off to looking at the downside to our decisions.

Ironically, there can be more “control” in a cynical (Devil’s Advocate) position than in one marked by efforts to keep everything within an illusionary zone of control. While much less research has been done on people’s illusion of control in situations where actual control is high, these situations can be much more frequent for us if we just open up ourselves to being more critical of what we see around us.

More often than not, you can’t influence how things will go and you certainly can’t always control how things will turn out. The bottom line: you may be in charge, but you’re not necessarily in control.

Skills, knowledge, and talents are distinct elements of a person’s performance. Skills are the “how-to” of a role, i.e., the capabilities that can be transferred from one person to another. Skill is defined as: proficiency, facility, or dexterity that is acquired or developed through training or experience (repetition or practice). Knowledge are the facts and information acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject; or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation.

The distinction among the three is that skills and knowledge can be taught, whereas talents cannot. The key thing to understand is that Skills plus Knowledge do not necessarily equal Talents. Last week’s post talked about the Illusion of Skill and how we all tend to believe we’re better at certain things then we really are. This week I want to concentrate on the other side of the equation: Talent.

ThefreeDictionary.com defines talent as: “a marked innate ability, as for artistic accomplishment; a natural endowment or ability of a superior quality.” The operative word in this definition being: “innate.” Thus talents are innate to an individual. It also defines innate as: possessed at birth; inborn possessed as an essential characteristic; inherent and (the most important definition); produced by the mind rather than learned through experience.

In their best-selling book, First Break All the Rules – What the World’s Greatest Managers Do, ©1999, Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman tell us that instead of skills and knowledge manager’s should be focusing on discovering and nurturing an employee’s innate talents. They sum it up “There are so many kinds of talents and that the right talents, more than experience, brainpower, and willpower are the prerequisites for excellence in all roles.”

Buckingham and Coffman define a talent as “a recurring pattern of thought, feeling, or behavior that can be productively applied. Talents are what your find yourself doing often. Every role, performed at excellence, requires talent, because every role, performed at excellence requires certain recurring patterns of thought, feeling, or behavior.” Why is this important? Because as they further point out: “Conventional corporate recruiting practice advises managers to select for experience, skill, intelligence, or determination. Talent, if mentioned at all, is an afterthought. However, talents prove to be the driving force behind an individual’s job performance. It’s not that experience, knowledge, brainpower, willpower, and determination are unimportant, it’s just that an employee’s full complement of talents–what drives him/her, how he/she thinks, how he/she builds relationships–is more important.”

Talents can also be described as strengths. Strengths are defined as: a good or beneficial quality or attribute of a person. In their book, Now, Discover Your Strengths, ©2001, Marcus Buckingham & Donald O. Clifton, Ph.D. tell us that “Only 20 percent of employees working in large organizations we surveyed feel that their strengths are in play every day. Most bizarre of all, the longer an employee stays with an organization and the higher he/she climbs the traditional career ladder, the less likely he/she is to strongly agree that he/she is playing to his strengths. Most organizations take their employees strengths for granted and focus on minimizing their weaknesses. Management becomes expert in those areas where their employees struggle, delicately renaming these as “skill gaps” or “areas of opportunity.” But this isn’t development, this is damage control. Damage control is a poor strategy for elevating either the employee or the organization to world-class performance.”

Buckingham & Donald O. Clifton tells us there are three basic types of talents. They are: Striving, Thinking, and Relating. Examples of each of these talent categories are detailed below:

Striving Talents

• A Competitive Achiever: a drive that is internal, and self-imposed with a need to gauge one’s success comparatively
• Desire: a need to claim significance through independence, excellence, risk, and recognition
• Competence and Receptiveness: the striving for expertise or mastery and embracing learning new skills
• Belief: a need to orient your life around certain prevailing values
• Mission and Vision: a drive to put your beliefs into action
• Service: a drive to be of service to others
• Ethics: a clear understanding of right and wrong which guides your actions

Thinking Talents

• Focus and discipline: an ability to set goals and to use them every day to guide actions
• Arranger: an ability to orchestrate things; the need to mentally rehearse and review; to move others to action
• Responsibility: a need to assume personal accountability for one’s work
• Conceptualization: an ability to develop a framework by which to make sense of things; an ability to find coherent patterns from incoherent data
• Strategic Thinking: an ability to play out alternative scenarios of the future

Relating Talents

• Empathy: an ability to identify and respect the feelings and perspectives of others; the perception and awareness of, and attentiveness to, individual differences
• Relator: a need to build bonds that last and an ability to build an extensive network of acquaintances; need to build feelings of mutual support
• Stimulator: an ability to create enthusiasm amongst peers
• Persuasion An ability to persuade others logically and without emotion
• Courage: an ability to use emotion to overcome resistance

The bottom line is that these “talents” are what should be sought out through the performance review process. Some of these I’ve seen represented on performance review forms, others not. The key point is that they are most often believed, erroneously, to be “skills,” not talents. This is an important distinction because skills, like knowledge, can be taught−talents cannot be taught.

As Buckingham and Clifton noted above most performance review processes are geared toward identifying “skill gaps” in the employee and then tasking the employee to somehow “change” to comply with the evaluators’ perverted sense of what it will take for the employee to be a success. However, as Buckingham & Coffman would council us:

• People don’t change that much
• Don’t waste time trying to put in what was left out
• Try to draw out what was left in
• That is hard enough

In my mind, the talent (above under Striving talents) that is the most important to be reinforced by management on a daily basis and nurtured through the performance review process is “Competence and Receptiveness.” These include the innate need for a person to strive for expertise, or mastery, of their job duties and to embrace the learning of new skills. Because, after all, the performance review process could be boiled down to just the simple appraisal of whether the employee performed their job or not, i.e., job results. After all, the current most overused buzzword in business is “results.”

Charles Darwin (1809 – 1882) sagely noted over a century ago: “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”

In a survey of faculty at the University of Nebraska, 68% rated themselves in the top 25% for teaching ability. In a similar survey, 87% of MBA students at Stanford University rated their academic performance as above the median. This phenomenon of believing we’re better than we really are is called “illusory superiority,” a cognitive bias that causes people to overestimate their positive qualities and abilities (skills) and to underestimate their negative ones, relative to others.

In scientific terms this is called the “Dunning-Kruger Effect,” named after Cornell University professors David Dunning and Justin Kruger who are attributed with identifying this effect.

Another psychologist, Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel prize-winning pioneer of behavioral economics, coined the phrase “The Illusion of Skill,” in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, to describe this phenomenon. His research was based on investigation into the long-term financial performance of stock-traders. His research started with the simple premise that many stock traders typically think their own stock picking skills are above average. He set out to find out if that was true and what skill these stock pickers believed they had that their colleagues didn’t have.

However, Kahneman’s research led him to a different conclusion. He tells us: “The results resembled what you would expect from a dice-rolling contest, not a game of skill.” None had any particular “skill” that made their picks a success.

I can personally attest to this, in that I’ve done quite a bit of stock picking/trading and in retrospect I’ve probably had as many, if not more, losers than winners, yet I’ve always thought of my stock picking skill as above average. The fact that I didn’t lose my shirt was really just luck, not any exemplary skill that I’d convinced myself I had.

The take away from Kahneman’s work is that it can be inferred to apply to the typical workplace as well. As he tells us: “We often interact with professionals who exercise their judgment with evident confidence, sometimes priding themselves on the power of their intuition. In a world rife with illusions of validity and skill, can we trust them? How do we distinguish the justified confidence of experts from the sincere overconfidence of professionals who do not know they are out of their depth? Overconfident professionals sincerely believe they have expertise, act as experts and look like experts. You will have to struggle to remind yourself that they may be in the grip of an illusion.”

Kahneman’s “Illusion of Skill” is something from which we all suffer. We delude ourselves into believing that skill, not chance or luck, accounts for our successes. And we’re not alone. One of the conclusions Kahneman draws is that “the illusion of skill is not only an individual aberration; it is deeply ingrained in [our] culture.”

Kahneman suggests that, “you should not take assertive and confident people at their own evaluation unless you have independent reason to believe that they know what they are talking about.”

The central premise of the Illusion of Skill phenomenon is that most individuals lack the “skills” that enable them to assess their own “skills,” and as a result, they come to hold inflated views of their performance and ability. Thus they exhibit an over-confidence in their abilities.

However, Kahneman tells us: “The confidence we experience as we make judgments is not a reasoned evaluation of the probability that it is right, but little more than a “feeling,” determined mostly by the perceived credibility of the story we delude ourselves into believing about ourselves. Even when the evidence for us thinking this way is sparse, unreliable, or nonexistent, we still convince ourselves our skills are better than they really are. Thus, people who express high confidence probably have a good story they’ve convinced themselves of, which may or may not be true.”

He adds, “Consistent with this notion, research shows that even clearly incompetent individuals (compared with their more competent peers) are unaware of their deficient abilities. And to make matters worse, even if we receive negative feedback about our performance, we will still come to an inaccurate understanding of why that failure has occurred. We never blame our own lack of skill.”

Kahneman explains why this is: “The problem is that ‘failure’ is subject to more ambiguity than success. For success to occur, many things must go right: The person must be skilled, apply effort, and (as we’ve found out) perhaps be a bit lucky. However, for failure to occur, the lack of any one of these components is sufficient. Because of this, even if people receive feedback that points to their lack of skill, they may well not believe it and attribute the failure to some other external factor.”

This helps explain why our society, and our workplaces, are so “me” oriented and why no one takes full responsibility for their actions−they blame everyone else for their failings.

The “Illusion of Skill,” becomes another contributing factor−the last nail in the coffin so to speak−to the demise of the performance review process that’s religiously practiced in most organizations. Practitioners of the performance review system need to acknowledge the Illusion of Skill as the reason all the subjective skill evaluations that are given employees every year do not necessarily increase performance or productivity. The employee may nod his/her head in the review and go right on thinking what an idiot the evaluator is for underrating their skills.

Mike Royko (1932 – 1997), a renowned Chicago newspaper columnist and winner of the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, once said: “Show me somebody who is always smiling, always cheerful, always optimistic, and I will show you somebody who hasn’t the faintest idea what the heck is really going on.”

Last week my post dealt with cynicism and the old cliché about the glass being half empty or half full. The fact is that in real life circumstances the glass is both half-full AND half-empty. And this is the focus of this post…it’s better to be a realist than a blind optimist. That said, I would agree that it’s definitely beneficial to have a generally positive outlook about work and life in general, however there’s a big difference between unrealistic blind optimism and recognizing the realism in every situation.

Optimism and pessimism, like many things in business, are at opposing ends of a continuum, of which the midpoint is realism−either one, in the extreme, are toxic to the workplace.

The fact is that it’s how we deal with the bad things that happen that gets us through life and the work day−not the good things−it’s easy to cope when everything fits into place. A pure optimist believes that success will happen to them−that the universe will reward them for all their positive thinking. In other words they DO NOT have a grasp on the obvious. The pessimist, on the other hand, becomes hog-tied by their negative, often caustic, beliefs that everything is for naught and, no matter what they do, failure is on the horizon.

In my opinion these are the type folks (hopeless optimists and depressed pessimists) that need to be purged from an organization if it’s to be a success in the long run. These are two metrics that really should be on every performance review form.

The fact is no organization ever got into trouble by being realistic about their fortunes, but there are plenty of stories about organizations that have failed because they didn’t face the reality of their situation.

A realist is someone who wants to know the truth of every situation. They want to see a reasonable and logical way to do things. They want realism built into any and all plans that they’re a part of−they recognize the need for giving serious thought to how they will deal with obstacles. They prefer to deal with the facts of a specific situation instead of relying on feel-good rhetoric and pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking.

However, the biggest problem in today’s business environment is that most management teams will quickly tell the realist that they are “being negative” when they dare to express their concerns, or reservations, or point out the obstacles that stand in the way of their goals. The fact is most organizations don’t even take the realists seriously. They don’t even listen to them. Here’s a test for your organization: if when you make any negative comment about anything your organization is undertaking, are you labeled a “drama queen?” This is the label given most realists and its proof management isn’t listening.

Which brings me to the point of this post−wouldn’t every organization be better off by nurturing the realists in their midst?

David Butler (1894 – 1979), an American actor, film director, producer, and screenwriter, once said: “Find the crazy people in your organization and listen to them.” This is an accurate quote because most management teams consider the realists to be “crazy.”

The irony is that when planning something that’s really critical for the organization most organization’s I’m familiar with will implement what’s called the “red-team review” approach to vetting their plans. The “red-team” is an organized effort to shoot holes in a plan by identifying the short-comings. These red-teams act as “the devil’s advocate.”

A devil’s advocate is someone who identifies the shortcomings of a plan, or identifies issues and problems that haven’t already been addressed. The devil’s advocate is in essence arguing against a plan, not because they necessarily disagree with the plan, but because facing the potential problems that could arise helps make any plan as bullet-proof as possible. In any important undertaking, it is absolutely worthwhile to have someone put on their devil’s advocate’s hat and ask: “What could go wrong? What are we overlooking or ignoring? What should we consider now that, if we don’t, we’ll regret later?”

It’s always interested me that many organizations will employ the red team devil’s advocate in the process of vetting a plan, yet that same “realistic” position is frowned upon when tackling everyday challenges and problems. Also most “Red Teams” are usually made up of upper management types−the folks who’re not in the trenches. Red teams should include the very people who have to execute a plan−they know the real pitfalls−give them a chance to voice their opinions. Unfortunately most organizations require the people in the trenches preach the party line and salute smartly−they never get to let loose how they really feel about a plan.

David Furth calls the devil’s advocate “The Corporate Fool,” in his book by the same name. Based on how most “realists” are treated in most organizations I agree with him. In his article “The Corporate Fool and the Search for Healthy Organizations,” Firth, an author, and consultant in the areas of organization development, employee engagement and leadership, explains what happens when an organization doesn’t listen to the organizational “Fool.”

Firth tells us, “The Fool knows the truth is a very simple solution to most business problems. But we don’t use it. And then the project collapses and everyone crawls out of the wreckage and says ‘I knew that would happen’.”

As William Arthur Ward (1921–1994), author of Fountains of Faith, and one of America’s most quoted columnists once said: “The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.” Most organizations need just that−people who recognize the sails need adjusting.

I read somewhere once that a skeptic thinks the glass might be half full, a cynic is pretty sure the glass is only half full, and a pessimist knows that the glass, even if it is half full, contains poison anyway.

If you want to achieve a major goal, or to generally be a success in your career, conventional wisdom says that the best approach is to always think positive−be an optimist. Whether preparing for a critical presentation, a meeting with your boss, or facing a job interview we’re told the best defense is an upbeat offense. While this mindset might sound compelling, beware as it often backfires. Many of us are more successful when we focus on the reasons that we’re likely to fail. This is why I’m a firm believer that the best offense is having a good defense, i.e., focus on the things that are, or can, go wrong and then plan appropriately.

In a series of studies, the psychologists Julie Norem and Nancy Cantor compared optimists and pessimists. In their book, The Positive Power of Negative Thinking, they tell us “If you’re an optimist, you envision the best possible outcome and then eagerly plan to make it happen. If you’re a pessimist, even if you’ve been successful in the past, you know this time could be different. You start picturing all the things that could go wrong.”

I know what you’re thinking−a couple weeks ago (November 7^th “If You Fail to Plan, You Plan to Fail”) I preached how obsessing on past failures, as being the source of great lessons to be learned, is absurd. That’s still true. What I’m talking about in this post is the fact that a good skeptic will have looked at the past, learned from the past, and moved on. However there’s more to “moving on” than blind optimism. Part of the process of moving is doing your best to anticipate what might go wrong moving forward. That’s the essence of “planning for success.”

This post builds on that concept in that what really needs to be done when planning for the future is to add a healthy dose of cynicism when planning for the future.

As the quote above would suggest there’s a progression in thought process going from skeptic, to cynic, to pessimist. Despite whether you’re a skeptic, cynic or pessimist, my point is that as you plan for success; remember that Murphy’s Law will always find a way to derail “best laid plans” and trying to anticipate what might go wrong is the key to effective planning for the future. It’s much more than just “knowing what not to do.”

You’re probably thinking that my advice is the exact opposite of what’s been preached almost universally in today’s business environment. Most people would tell you that optimists outperform cynics, because they benefit from their confidence and high expectations. At first glance, Norem and Cantor found that pessimists were more anxious and thus set lower expectations for themselves in analytical, verbal, and creative tasks which sound like justification for always being an optimist, right? Yet from their studies they found that they (the pessimists) really didn’t perform any worse.

They tell us “At first, I asked how these people were able to do so well despite their pessimism. Before long, I began to realize that they were doing so well because of their pessimism. Negative thinking transformed anxiety into action. By imagining the worst-case scenario, pessimists motivate themselves to prepare more and try harder.”

In his article “The Power of Negative Thinking,” Adam Grant, (2013 the Huffington Post Business) tells us, “In the U.S., we favor optimists over pessimists. When economists surveyed more than 1,000 U.S. CEOs, they found that more than 80 percent scored as ‘very optimistic.’ At the same time, we need pessimists to anticipate the worst and prepare us all for it. On average, research indicates that people who never worry have lower job performance than those who worry from time to time. Studies also show that when entrepreneurs are highly optimistic, their new ventures bring in less revenue and grow more slowly, and when CEOs are highly optimistic, they take on more risky debt and swing for the fences more often, putting their companies in jeopardy.”

The fact is we need both optimists and pessimists (and skeptics and cynics) if an organization is to be a success. However, you must remember that both styles are deadly at their extremes. Pessimism can quickly become fatalistic, and optimism becomes toxic if not obnoxious (everyone would like to strangle the person who’s perpetually smiling). The key is to find a moderate range that combines the benefits of both approaches. Too much optimism is a dangerous thing. If you’re to be a successful leader you must learn to moderate between the optimists’ blue sky view of the world and pessimists’ more clear-eyed assessment of any given situation.

Psychologists Heidi Grant Halvorson and Tory Higgins write in their book Focus – Use Different Ways of Seeing the World for Success and Influence, “It’s the fit that counts. If you’re the kind of person who’s always telling other people to look on the bright side, you might want to reconsider. Whether people succeed is not a matter of thinking positively or negatively, but rather whether they choose the strategies that match their thinking styles.”

The problem is that in today’s business environment pessimistic, skeptical people are usually labeled cynics, and cynicism is a behavior that is largely frowned upon in the modern business environment. Businesses today preach “team playing,” and “positive attitudes” as the only traits (they’re not really skills) that will allow you to get ahead. However, there are many positive contributions that can be made by the cynics of the world:

• Cynics are giving us honest feedback: in today’s business environment sycophantic behavior permeates the management suite.  Cynics don’t usually play that game. Cynics communicate from the heart (contrary to popular belief they care more than the optimists), so you don’t have to question whether the person is being honest with their comments and observations.
• Cynics are our reality check: when people question the probability of something happening–when they are playing the devil’s advocate–they remind us that things aren’t necessarily going to plan. This is especially important if the management teams tend toward hopeless optimism.
• Cynics truly let us know how people perceive us:  these quick, “on the spot” quips (most often labeled “sarcasm”) are largely unedited thoughts and attitudes spoken out loud. Cynical, sarcastic, remarks give us a clue that we need to work on syncing our thoughts, words and actions.
• Cynicism provides the opportunity to learn: if we take the time to listen to the cynic and not dismiss them immediately as “disrespectful” or “not a team player” or a “drama queen’ we actually learn something that we really need to know.

Also cynics can actually be organizational motivators. Since sarcasm is the preferred method of communication for the cynics, it can be the best motivator in the workplace, says Daniel Bates, who writes for the website The Daily Mail out of the UK. He tells us: “Employees who have to put up with a sarcastic colleague or boss are more creative than those who don’t, a study has found. An earful of snarky barbs every day makes you work harder and smarter than if your office was a more caring environment.” Researchers tell us that being exposed to sarcasm required more “cognitive complexity,” or the ability to see things from more than one angle.

While I’m not an advocate that any workplace dwell on cynicism, but it is an ingredient that shouldn’t be excluded from the mix as it adds a healthy dose of realism to any organization. We can truly learn positive lessons from the cynical, sometimes sarcastic, remarks we hear only if we pay attention and then try to address the root issues that help create the cynical mindset.

Last week’s post talked about how organizations get so obsessed with understanding their past “failures” that they end up virtually “planning to fail.” While this can be a definite problem in today’s business environment, I’m not sure it’s the only culprit in why many of our best laid plans fail.

We’ve all heard the quip: “A lack of planning on your part doesn’t constitute an emergency on mine.”  It’s always been one of my favorite sarcastic retorts that I never really had the suicidal gumption to use as often as I’d have liked−I’m sure many of you are thinking the same−especially when it was a boss that was guilty of not planning properly.

Despite our starting every project (or day for that matter) with the best of intentions we quickly find there are many reasons we fail at executing our responsibilities successfully on time. We plan down to the most minute detail of what we believe needs to be done to make a project successful, parsing out hours to complete each task as if there were nothing else in the world that needs to be done but that task and nothing will get in our way. However, as we all can probably attest, most of these plans end up being derailed within weeks, if not days, of the project kickoff. Why does that happen?

First, and most prominent, is the problem that the title of this post implies. We end up spending most of our time doing someone else’s bidding, not the important (planned) things needed to make ourselves, or the project we’re working on, successful. In other words, we let the lack of planning by others constitute an emergency for us. We let other people’s urgent issues, poor time management, poor planning, obsessive-compulsive psychosis, personal agendas, and procrastination, to take priority and control over our workday agenda.

This is especially true when we look to our bosses. Boss interference has to be the single biggest reason why most people cannot stay focused on what they really need to do in any given day. Remember, poor planning on their part should not constitute an emergency on our part−yeah right. This is why we have a hard time really being effective, but we do however become efficient in doing the meaningless. The irony here is that you’ll spend most of the year doing the boss’ bidding and then at review time he/she will write you up for not producing results−a no-win scenario.

Of course we tell ourselves that the key is being disciplined enough to brush off the constant interruptions and “urgent” requests and do our own important tasks. They’ll tell us (and we erroneously begin to believe) that only if we were more “proactive” we could “multi-task” our own stuff along with their stuff. But that’s wishful thinking at best−it’s hard to tell the boss to “take his problem down the hall to someone who gives a damn.”

So, how can we ever be a success at anything when all of our time is spent just dealing with the meaningless crap other people drop on our desks. They come at us all day pushing their urgent “problems” that need our immediate attention?  We could practice learning to say NO! Of course that may be catastrophic the first time you try it because at the very least, you’ll be labeled as “not a team player” on you next performance review. At the most you’ll be written up for insubordination.

However, if you survive saying NO, and not letting yourself get dragged into other peoples’ drama, you’ll eventually be able to stop screwing up your own goals and actually find yourself being more successful in your job.

That all said however, you need to assume that occasionally “the shit will hit the fan” and you’ll get sucked into some crises.  This is the second reason the best-laid plans can go awry. Crisis management is inevitable in any project. There’s two ways this can derail you. First it can be a crisis totally irrelevant to the project you’re working on or it can be a crisis within your project. Keeping in mind last week’s post, and regardless of where the crisis springs up, crises management is often a sign of insufficient or poor planning (i.e., risk identification) coupled with insufficient time (to allow reacting to the unexpected) allocated into a project’s timeline.

If there’s to be any focus on past failures, this is where the retrospective lessons-learned exercises should focus−probing deep into the root causes behind the everyday occurrence of some form of crisis. These recurring crises can paralyze an organization. Most organizations would quickly find that they’re chasing the same old problems because they never really solved the “root cause” the first time the problem bit them in the ass. And, as I’ve written about in the past, sometimes the root cause of many crises is that pyromaniac that’s masquerading as the boss.

As I noted above, there’s also another rampant problem in today’s planning mentality−the lack of sufficient time being built into project schedules to actually do a good, thorough, job. Part of that is driven by that “sense of urgency” mentality that permeates business today−everything is always rushed. There’s never “slack” (to handle the unexpected) built into any schedule. The irony here is that you’d think all those lessons-learned probes into “what went wrong” would have uncovered this? The fact is that lack of sufficient time being allocated to do a good job is seldom identified for what it really is. The reason is that that would be a direct reflection on management and force them to accept some “accountability.” Instead it’s easier to ask everyone to “take a challenge” and then blame them for any failures because they didn’t work miracles with insufficient time.

This brings us to another underlying problem that “plans never go as planned.” It’s the age old problem of sociopathic management owing their success to their narcissistic view of themselves and not any real planning on their part. Some management teams do not even know “how to plan.” These “masters of verbal facade” are great at coming up with pie-in-the-sky vision statements but when it comes to laying out effective “tactical” measures to reach a certain goal they come up with the short straw.

And along this same vein, there’s the age-old problem of management solely focusing on results. It’s that urgent “get-it-done” and “get-it-done quickly” mentality, i.e., the obsession with “efficiency” over “effectiveness.” That’s the “ends always justify the means” line of thinking. However, well-designed plans address what needs to be done, i.e., the specific tasks (effectiveness) as well as how those tasks are to be done (efficiency). Of course allocating enough time to do the job right is also important as is recognizing that along any projects’ path the unexpected will undoubtedly happen and having a “Plan B” is as important as having the original plan.

In the end, you must be prepared to spend most of your career chasing the latest crisis du jour, or kowtowing to the things that other people find important, at the expense of those things you find important.

If there’s any skill that you need to hone (and its one not found on any performance appraisal form) it’s the ability to stay on track, focus on what’s really important, and not be derailed from the tasks you deem important, despite all those whose lack of planning is expected to be your emergency.

Benjamin Franklin supposedly once said, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” Sir Winston Churchill is credited with another, oft repeated, saying: “Those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.” And along that same vein there’s the phrase we hear often in the workplace, “learn from your mistakes.”

Thomas A. Edison once said: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” That advice makes for a catchy quote but little else because I’m not convinced that that’s the mind-set in which we should approach “learning from the past.” By concentrating on your past failures you are doing little better than “planning to fail.”

Jason Fried, co-founder of 37signals, and author of the New York Times bestselling book Rework provides us a new perspective on that “learn from your mistakes” quip. He tells us, “You’ve heard it over and over: “Learn from your mistakes.” Or maybe you’ve heard “fail early and often.” There are plenty of catchy quotes about failure. Most of them end with a clever little twist that makes it sound like it’s a good thing. Is it?

“I don’t understand the cultural fascination with failure being the source of great lessons to be learned. What did you learn? You learned what didn’t work. Now you won’t make the same mistake twice, but you’re just as likely to make a different mistake next time. You might know what won’t work, but you still don’t know what will work. That’s not much of a lesson.

“If you’re going to spend your time pondering the past, focus on the wins not the losses−the lessons learned from doing something right will provide a better chance of continuing your success. What have you done right? What worked? Why did it work? How you can repeat it? Instead of making something worse a little better, how about making something good a little better? Don’t spend so much time looking down. Look up more.”

His take away is that there’s a significant difference between ‘now I know what to do again’ and ‘now I know what NOT to do again’−the former being better than the latter.

What Fried is pointing out is that, “Everything is a learning experience.” Good or bad, there’s something to be learned.” But I would also agree with him that all learning isn’t equal, i.e., there’s a big difference between understanding what you did wrong v. what you did right.

Everywhere I’ve ever worked in my career, management has been obsessed with trying to understand what has failed in the past. They hold lessons-learned studies on every project that didn’t turn out as expected−none on the projects that went to plan, albeit they were usually the minority. Even so, these “inquisitions” were usually focused on trying to find a person, or group of persons, that can be “held accountable,” or more appropriately “blamed,” instead of actually learning anything. I can’t remember ever participating in a committee that was charged with studying a successful project to discover “what did we do differently here that contributed to success?” Have you?

Herein we find a major problem with today’s management mind-set−this obsession with what went wrong in the past. It’s the underlying theory for the whole performance review industry. Here’s how the process works: Let’s rehash, in a once a year goat-rope, all the things someone didn’t do right, and sprinkle in a subjective assessment of all the person’s shortcomings in the skills needed to do their job, all the while conducting the “review” under the guise of somehow “motivating” that person to plan to do better next year.

I don’t know about you but that’s not “motivating” in any way, shape, or form and it certainly never taught me how to do things “right.” Of course we all know that the true reason for the performance review process is to use that negative, failure focused assessment, as a justification to give mediocre raises. But that’s a subject for another day.

Unfortunately that “focus on past failure” premise that drives the performance review process doesn’t stop there. Most organizations are thoroughly convinced that the best way to succeed is by obsessing on past failures. As an aside, I find this ironic at best because if anyone in the organization were to obsess, and voice their opinions, about the failings of the organization (as management does) they’d be labeled a recalcitrant, a cynic, or sarcastic, and would be quickly purged from the organization. And to add further irony, management would use the performance review process to justify eliminating that person.

Alas, even if lessons-learned exercises were to focus strictly on past success I’m sure that another age-old business problem would rear its ugly head. Organizational amnesia would set in and make sure the “lessons are not learned.”

So that Benjamin Franklin quote from the beginning of this post should be re-written to say: “If you fail to plan for success, you are planning to fail.” This is the new mind-set that needs to be cemented into today’s business mind-set. If we focus on the successes of the past, both at the organizational level, and personal level, we will all learn how to “plan for success” and maybe organizational amnesia wouldn’t be able to gain a foothold.

We’ve all probably heard the phrase “no good deed goes unpunished” many times in our careers. The entire performance review process is a working model of this in action. This profound phrase is most often attributed to Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), but it’s also been credited to Clare Boothe Luce (1903-1987). Who really knows who first spoke these words but what I do know is that these words ring as true in today’s modern workplace as when they were first uttered by Oscar or Claire. The age of this quote proves that this type curse of the working class is nothing new.

I’m also sure many of you have been the victim of this seemingly ridiculous statement and that’s why when it happens you were undoubtedly left scratching your head in disbelief. Here’s an example: You see a problem, report it, and you end up being called the bad guy rather than the person who actually caused the problem.

Why does this happen and for what purpose? How could we do our best work at something or attempt to help the organization by honesty bringing up issues that need attention and then someone will twist it around and we’re blamed for something we ostensibly had no control over? The sad fact is that most often it’s for someone’s personal gain. Remember tearing down another to make oneself look better is a common practice in the workplace. I’ve talked about this many times before.

Others however just like to simply stir the pot−they get a perverse pleasure from causing chaos or watching a rival (or anyone for that matter) get hammered. In the end it’s usually to distract everyone’s attention away from the true culprit and the sad fact is that this behavior is found in almost every workplace.

But how can you protect yourself from someone taking your “good deeds” and turning them into your personal liability?

The article, “To Escape Blame, Don’t be a Hero – Be a Victim,” by Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, published in the March 2013 issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, presents an interesting approach to protecting yourself from your good deeds being turned against you. The article presents findings based on experiments conducted by Gray, a Professor of Psychology at The University of Maryland and Wegner, a Professor of Psychology at Harvard University.

They tell us, “Our research suggests that morality is not like some kind of cosmic bank, where you can deposit good deeds and use them to offset future misdeeds. Instead, people ignore heroic pasts−or even count them against you−when assigning blame.”

The authors suggest that the explanation for this is our tendency to divide the world up into what they call “moral agents”−those who “do” good and evil−and those who “receive” good or evil. Further they tell us, “Psychologically, the perceived distance between a hero and a villain is quite small, whereas there’s a wide gap between a villain and a victim. This means that heroes are easily recast as evil doers, whereas it’s very hard to turn a victim into a villain.”

The authors explain why. “One possibility is that when we hear that a person has done a lot of good, we expect them to know better than to do something bad. As a result, we hold them even more accountable than an average person.”

The authors also believe that people don’t see everyday situations divided between heroes and villains, but between people who “act” and people who are “acted upon.” They tell us, “In that sense, a hero and a villain are both powerful people who affect others, and it’s pretty easy for a hero to be re-categorized as a villain based on a single action. On the other hand, victims may be perceived as relatively powerless, not just against the world but against themselves. Therefore, we may hold them somewhat less responsible for antisocial behavior.”

Here’s the bottom line advice: in the experiments involved in this study, those who highlighted their past suffering were held less responsible for transgressions and given less punishment. The takeaway being that we should never exalt our good deeds but humble ourselves by playing them down.

In my research I came across a very easy and interesting “experiment” we can all do to determine (as if we probably didn’t already know) whether our workplace, particularly our boss, is prone to demonizing the good producers of the organization. The experiment goes like this:

The next time you’re talking to your manager, give glowing praise for one of your colleagues, telling your manager how this other employee did such a great job with such-and-such−or how he/she went the extra mile−whatever it may be.  Then, sit back and watch.  If your manager then attempts to dismiss the praise, or doesn’t openly agree with you, or attempts to badmouth, or smear, that employee, then you’re definitely working in an organization where truly “no good deed goes unpunished.”

There are a lot of articles out there talking about Organizational Effectiveness–what it is and how it’s measured. The most common concept is that the effectiveness of an organization is measured solely by revenue and profits, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg.

“Organizational Effectiveness,” or in the case of many organizations “Organizational Ineffectiveness,” is really a study in “Organizational Structure.” I’ve talked many times before about organizational structure (from the organization chart perspective) and how I think a flat organization is the best path to prosperity, but few organizations are structured that way. Most organizations cling to the old complex “hierarchical” structure with many layers of management upon management. Intuitively this structure has many impediments to “effectiveness” built in to its very nature.

From an organizational effectiveness perspective, organizational structure is more than just the depth of the organization chart. The Business Dictionary defines organizational structure as the “hierarchical arrangement of lines of authority, communications, rights and duties of an organization.” Many would misinterpret that to mean “organization chart.”

Another source defines it as “the formal system of task and reporting relationships that controls, coordinates, and motivates employees so that they cooperate to achieve the organization’s goals.” The operative phrase in this definition being “motivates employees so that they cooperate to achieve the organization’s goals.” Thus the real purpose of organizational structure is to create an “environment” that motivates employees to be effective and productive at their tasks and create a system that promotes coordination and unity between different departments (however many of them there are). I believe this second definition more accurately defines the key to organizational effectiveness.

Sadly, most management teams fail to realize this as they believe that the structure is purely the mechanics of the organization chart. However, the key to effectiveness goes way beyond the “hierarchical arrangements of lines of authority.

“Organizational effectiveness” is the measure of how effective an organization is in achieving the outcomes the organization intends to produce, i.e., effectiveness in achieving the organization’s vision or strategic goals. You can see how these two concepts: organizational structure and effectiveness are intertwined, i.e., both being defined in terms of an organization’s ability to meet its business goals and thus stay in existence.

In his book, Organization Theory and Design, Richard L Daft synthesizes that all down to what he proposes are the seven key characteristics of organizational effectiveness:

• Strong corporate culture and positive working climate
• High team spirit, loyalty and teamwork
• Confidence, trust and communication between employees and management
• Decision making near the source of the information regardless of where on the organizational chart
• Undistorted horizontal and vertical communication
• Good rewards for managers for performance, growth and development of employees
• Interaction occurs between the organization and its parts – conflicts are resolved in the interest of the organization

Note that all of the above are independent of the organizational chart. The problem in assessing organizational effectiveness in this way is that these characteristics are sometimes very difficult to actually see in action. Sometimes the best way to determine whether an organizational structure is effective is to take a look at the flip side: the effect of any of the above not being in place. My point being that often it’s easier to identify and understand something by focusing on “what it’s not” v. “what it is.” So what would be some obvious evidence that an organizational structure isn’t effective? This question forms the basis for what I believe are the two true measures of organizational effectiveness: quality control and customer satisfaction. Both directly affect the two common measures of organizational effectiveness: revenue and profit.

Quality Control: This is more than just the quality of products produced on the production floor. An effective organization will provide an environment where checks and balances are in place that provides a level of quality control in all that’s done, including the handoff of work from one person to another or from one department to another. An example might be when the engineering department and the manufacturing department actually work together (versus being at odds with each other) to create quality products (design and workmanship) that meet the customer’s expectation. This positive constructive interaction is the true form of quality control. When the lack of this quality control is becoming an issue, it may be because the organizational structure is ineffective and breaking down.

Customer Service/Satisfaction: An ineffective organization doesn’t interact effectively with its customers. In an ineffective organizational structure, there is no cohesive way of handling customer issues. On the surface it might appear the organization really doesn’t care whether its customers are happy. This is especially true of an organization that has an inflated self-image, or believes they are infallible. This would also apply to an organization that provides a product no one else provides, i.e., they have a corner of a market. They begin to feel that customers will continue to buy their products regardless of how they are treated.

In the final analysis it’s these two factors that are the true measures of organizational effectiveness−the test of a healthy organization is how they deal with these on a day-to-day basis. If you practice the first, the second comes easily and subsequently so does revenue and profits. So based on the above ask yourself whether your organization is effective or ineffective?

Most organizations discover what effectiveness really is after it’s too late−after their products start receiving a bad reputation or they start losing customers. Has your organization come to grips with the reality of their situation? That’s really hard to do for some management teams. Sadly, there’s no quick fix for organizational ineffectiveness because most organizations are only short term focused and will inevitably only choose quick fixes or Band-Aids. This is an ineffective behavior in and of itself.

From my experience the most popular way that many organizations react to ineffectiveness is to try to “reorganize” their way out of trouble−the misconception being that the key to effectiveness lies in the organizational chart. In ineffective organizations these “reorganizations” happen like clockwork. When this happens the organization’s management is doing little better than stumbling around in the dark hoping to stumble upon the right fix. This tactic is nothing new−it’s been a staple of management for millennia.

Gaius Petronius Arbiter (c. 27 – 66 AD), a Roman courtier during the reign of Nero is credited (but not verified) with once writing: “We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up in teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing, and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.”

Sadly for many management teams that’s about all they can “effectively” do is provide an “illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.”

In just about all aspects of life, we live in a “What have you done for me lately?” society. There is never a time when you can rest on your laurels of past achievement and successes. This is no truer than at work. It’s ironic in a way because it’s in direct opposition to the fact that many organizations do, in fact, rest on their laurels as I detailed in my blog post back on September 25^th re; “The Self Licking Ice Cream Cone.” It’s interesting how many businesses have the “What have you done for me lately” mentality when it comes to employee personal performance yet those same organizations, as a whole, have fallen into a lethargic existence milking whatever business they have with very little “motivation” or innovation to develop new products.

The “What have you done for me lately” mentality is prevalent partially because of the constant state of turmoil–the Chaos Theory–in which organizations are constantly struggling to stay afloat. If you don’t see it in your organization you certainly do see it in sports. It’s why players get traded (or in the corporate world laid-off). They are having a bad year–despite maybe being hall of fame material–and they are dropped from the team or traded. I always find it funny how many times those dropped, or traded, players move to another team and once again become stars–Peyton Manning being the most famous example lately.

Could it be that they excel because they’ve moved to an organization with a different management mindset?

I’m convinced that if nothing changes we’ll always be mired down in the “What have you done for me lately?” mentality. It’s just another manifestation of the “me” focused society we live in today. “What have you done for me lately” reinforces the selfish attitude that everyone around us is here to serve us. Unfortunately this may never change and seems to be getting even worse–if that’s even possible.

That said I believe it can and needs to change. If this mentality in business is ever to change it will require management to change–to focus on changing their practices that perpetuate this attitude. The first “practice” that comes to mind is the infamous performance review system. It’s a practice because, in the case of performance reviews, practice does not make perfect.

Most performance review evaluations are based on what the boss has observed of the employee in roughly the past 30-60 days preceding the review, so good deeds or achieved goals early in the year are most often brushed over if not totally forgotten. It truly becomes a case of what the employee has done recently that will drive whether he/she gets a good, or bad, review and whether he/she will get the usual pittance of a raise in salary or nothing at all.

For management, the real question to ask is “what’s the employee going to do moving forward,” versus them always having to defend themselves for what they’ve done, or not done, in the past. Business needs to change the focus of the annual performance review process from a backward-looking, narrow perspective that asks the question of the employee, “What have you done for me lately?” to a forward-looking, more productive (in the long run) approach that asks, “How can you contribute in the future, and (most importantly) how can the organization help you to achieve the organizational goals all the while benefiting your career?”

Of course changing the focus on the future, not the past, also applies to all other management thinking. Thus the real question of “What have you done for me lately” should be asked of management by the employees. What management must be doing is creating an environment in which every employee is motivated to give their best effort every day of the year.

You see a feeble attempt at this many times when you hear management say, “We’ve got to motivate our people?” At least they’re recognizing that they have a motivation problem. However their answer is usually to try to come up with some silver bullet scheme to motivate the employees. This is a sure sign of a dysfunctional organization and it’s a sure sign of failed management. Saying “We’ve got to motivate our people” shows a lack of understanding about what motivation is and how it is achieved. Management has the wrong understanding of motivation when the word “motivate” is used as a verb. Whereas using the word “motivation” as a noun shows they understand it’s a state of mind not an action that only they need to take.

What’s always missed is that motivating the employee is not really the task of management. Motivation comes from within each of us and it’s the culture of the organization that either enables or extinguishes motivation. Thus the real task of management is to create the right workplace environment–culture–for self-motivation to flourish. An example is when management sets a believable vision and goals, then allows the workers to use their initiative to get the job done as they see fit. That’s the true definition of motivation

The way to create this is to build a culture of trust, empowerment and shared accountability. Management must also create an environment in which it’s encouraged to voice differing opinions without fear of reprisal. Fear is one of the biggest demotivators there is. Thus employees motivate themselves because they have everything to gain by being motivated to do a good job and because they feel they’re part of a winning team and do not want to let the team down.

Achieving a state where all people are fully empowered, engaged and motivated is a large undertaking. It requires tremendous focus and leadership to achieve. It cannot be something management does at off-site meetings once a year, through the annual performance review process, or by decrees posted on the lunchroom wall.

And it certainly can’t be accomplished by constantly asking the question, “What have you done for me lately?” That’s the biggest demotivating statement that can be asked of anyone.