organization behavior

During the First World War, the Army replaced all the soldiers’ cloth caps with tin helmets.  The injury rate of those soldiers actually went up by quite a long way…  What was the reason?

What we measure

Statistics may be one of our most effective and efficient vehicles for communicating information.  It is natural for people to trust numbers over words, because statistics present numbers in an attractive format that everyone can follow.  In addition, numbers represent a wide variety of information – including election poll numbers, service level agreements & KPIs, net promoter scores, football results, engagement surveys, the retail price index …or of course profit.

This perception of reliability in the data is risky.  Looking at our children’s school grades to the cost of the Tokyo Olympics to the percentage of trains that run on time - what that data doesn’t tell us is how much our children are learning, how good the Olympics will be, or the quality of the customer's journey on those trains!

The problem with the numbers

The problems come when the data used to represent the outcome, becomes the outcome.  The numbers are not the means to the end.  Happy customers are the means to the end – the customer feedback scores are a representation of that means!  It drives me nuts that organisations focus so much time and effort on getting good feedback scores, rather than focusing that effort on just making them happy.

Another story is that of our old favourites – traffic wardens. For many years now, local press around the UK has been reporting that traffic wardens have been giving out bogus tickets because they have to fulfil a certain quota of tickets per hour.  Anything from buses, police cars and even tow trucks have been ticketed – but I don’t believe that it’s the traffic warden’s fault… If you were working in a culture that actually defined your success in your job by the amount of tickets you gave (and docked your wages if you didn’t meet that target), what would you do? 

What difference would it make to the traffic wardens if their success was defined as the lowest number of disputes?  What if success was defined by the greatest number of people re-educated with not having to give a ticket?  What if a traffic warden was rewarded for having to give out the least number of tickets (because people in their 'patch' parked properly?) How would that change their approach?

The trouble with focussing on the numbers is not the numbers. It’s the focus. In the gym you can focus on the number of calories you burn, or you can focus on your quality of health.  On Twitter, you can focus on the number of followers you have, or on the quality of those relationships.  At work, you can focus on your call abandon rate, meeting room utilisation, profitability or KPI adherence.  Or you can focus on delivering an awesome service for each and every person and let the numbers take care of themselves!

And the solution to my riddle? The number of injuries of those soldiers did indeed go up – but the number of deaths from head injuries went right down, saving thousands of lives. The piece of shrapnel would have previously killed them outright.

Having read my two previous posts, you'll now know that the workplace industry is very focused on productivity at the moment. Well, I say "productivity", but that's a trap... So substitute that word with creative, or collaborate, or innovative, or awesomely smiley (delete as applicable).  We also know that a sense of purpose is the biggest factor to make them productive/collaborative/innovative/smiley. But how do we get there?   How can the Workplace industry go about creating exceptional workplaces?

Well, I'll give you a clue - the biggest effects are not in the design. Creating an amazing place to work equally does not come about because you've got ergonomic seating, a concierge service, good air and noise quality, an Italian marble reception, a fantastic coffee machine, efficient chillers, or an above-the-recommended-minimum square foot of office space per person. These certainly contribute, but I think that these are hugely over-inflated causes of workplace productivity.

For me, there's a bit missing in the middle. The pink, squidgy bit in the middle. That's right, the thinking, feeling human being... I believe that the physical workplace should be far more focused on driving the thing that's right in front of its nose - and that's human behaviour. A recent Forbes article has done some research into "The Top 15 traits in business" - the likes of autonomy, passion, hard work, cultural fit, presentation and collaboration. So - the big question - can the workplace industry help to engender the those behaviours in the people who work there - making them more collaborative, autonomous, passionate and hard-working?

According to the CIPD, "Nearly 50% of employees describe the culture of their organisation as a ‘formalised and structured place to work, where procedures govern what people do and hold people together’. 55% specified that they would prefer to work in ‘an organisation with a family feel, held together by loyalty and tradition’"  

Additionally, ClearCompany say that "39% of surveyed employees believe that people in their own organisation don’t collaborate enough", and an Ipsos Mori poll concludes that only "a fifth of people are proud of their employer's behaviour". So what part does the workplace play in making people more passionate, collaborative and engaged? I've recently seen a few excellent examples of organisations that have understood this sociological link.

• Sky's campus in Livingston have an area where you walk into the call centre that's decorated to look like a customer's front door - so they are literally 'walking into the customer's world' before they speak to them. Rackspace have gone one step further, theming their entire office like a customer's home
• Sea Containers House residents Ogilvy & Mather have deliberately removed power sockets from secluded areas, to discourage lone working and force people to work in shared spaces and collaborate more
• Red Bull Racing and Mitie have introduced technology which drives hundreds of tiny, incremental improvements that mirrors the needs of the drivers on the track
• Receptionists at Coutts do guest profiling for the VIPs, to make sure the welcome is personalised, making sure the visitors feel more important and prestige
• Lego have introduced 'activity based working' to their London HQ, which has flexible working spaces and no offices. This 'reflects the diversity of the company', and encourages people to learn from each other

There are also many, many other good examples of workplaces that not only understand and adapt to the humans that use them - but also that are able to actively drive the behaviours that the organisation is looking for. There's still plenty of work to be done in the interconnected worlds of FM, HR, Communications and Leadership - but I for one would welcome more cultural alignment between all parts of the organisation, with all parties trying to engender the behaviours that will make them succeed.

Productivity. First of all, I struggle somewhat with the word. The dictionary defines productivity as “the effectiveness of productive effort, especially in industry, as measured in terms of the rate of output per unit of input”.  Inspiring stuff, huh?

But I’m not convinced that’s the purpose and function of the workplace. Producing widgets. Profit. Things. I’m sure that lots of workplaces care about producing more stuff, cheaper, with a better people-per-square-foot utilisation ratio – or that click rates, shipping targets and customer orders go up because the workplace is awesome… But a lot of industries define productivity differently! For some, customer relationships are key. For others, it’s about the quality of their publishing, effectiveness of their marketing or the reputation of their handbags. Does a charity care about productivity in the same way as a bottling plant might do? Probably not.

For me, “productivity” can be translated into “whatever success represents for that organisation”, and it’s a little naïve to assume everyone wants a high  work rate.

Part of the issue, I believe, is down to the sort of things that the Workplace industry measures. A lot of effort is put into quantifying the effectiveness of the buildings and environments (including visitor numbers, air quality, coffee consumption, call response times, energy usage, etc, etc). This effectiveness is naturally geared towards that which can be tangibly measured. I think the well-work aphorism, first uttered by Elliot Eisner works perfectly here, when he said “not everything that can be measured matters, and not everything that matters can be measured”. 

Just because you have data that will tell you exactly “the effectiveness of productive effort… as measured in terms of the rate of output per unit of input”, should that be the intended outcome? What about value and effectiveness of the brand and your reputation as an employer?  What about the quality of ideas and level of inspiration and engagement? What about trust, wellbeing and the feeling your team get when they walk in the door every morning? What about the experience of your visitors? What about the cultural alignment of the workplace to the organisation?

This has resulted in most of the Kubler-Ross stages of denial, anger, bargaining, depression – everything bar acceptance. Their reasoning, according to the behavioural science department of the London School of Economics, was that escalators of over 18.5m tend to have fewer people walking up on the left, as it’s too much effort. The result is a vacant left side and a crowded right.

But it seems that the number-crunchers have forgotten a few key facts.

One rule for everyone doesn’t work

Just because fewer people will want to walk up long escalators, it doesn’t mean that no-one will. There will arguably now be even more angry, suited businesspeople who are blocked by left-standers.

This creates mixed messages

Only four London stations are above this 18.5m height ‘threshold’; namely Angel, Holborn, Green Park and Tottenham Court Road. If we have to stand on both sides at one of these, why not all of the stations? How will we know which ones to walk at, and where to stand?

They’ve underestimated our London-ness.

And by this, I mean our engrained mind-set. Us Londoners are happy not having to talk to anyone while travelling, wrapped up in our ‘social norm’ of civility and autopilot commuting. The shock of having this comfort zone unpicked in in such a blatant way is disturbing to the status quo. This is London, not Paris. 

Instruction doesn’t work

It’s one thing to be told with a range of methods (by a person, a robot-lady, over the tannoy and with some yellow stickers) what to do. It’s another to be told why. If people don’t know why, they are very likely to return to their original behavioural patterns as soon as they can. 

Above all, there are lessons for the world of business. Large-scale behavioural change does not come about overnight, nor does it react well to being told what to do. People need a range of factors to come into play, in order for the underlying culture and mind-set to shift. This often includes (but is certainly not limited to) communication methods, leadership and peer role-modelling, reward & recognition and purpose.

For me, it illustrates an interesting point. No matter what the numbers may say or how "good for us" it may appear to be, there’s just one group of people that might derail the whole programme… The very people whose behaviour you’re looking to change.