Fish Tanks, Expectations & Employee Skills…

Professional and amateur fish enthusiasts know that big tanks encourage big fish.  Move a fish that has been in a small bowl to a larger tank and it begins to grow; even though it is fed exactly the same amount of food and treated in the same manner as before.  The larger tank somehow signals to the fish: “You are to grow.”  A small bowl telegraphs: “You are to remain small.”

This fish metaphor applies to individuals and the organisations they work in.  The fish bowl represents the organisation’s (including management’s) expectations of just how fully each employee will develop.

We consistently see managers who create a “small bowl” for employees through multiple messages of minimal expectation.  In turn they get back employees who set their performance to those minimal expectations.  Rarely will an employee grow beyond the constraints of his or her “bowl.”  As a result individuals frequently arrive at their place of work in a physical state of readiness, in terms of performing their duties and responsibilities, but lacking the mental or emotional connection to fully engage with the task in hand.  Resulting in a feeling of numbness as they walk through the door.

Employees tend not to exhibit the level responsibility that we wish they would.  Nor do they appear to exercise what we would consider to be good judgment; to a point where they just don’t seem to care much about their jobs or their organisations.  They simply do the bare minimum of what’s expected of them; leaving management wondering why these employees have seemingly unplugged their brains, common sense, caring and passion for quality.  All too often the employees, the school system or a degenerating society usually gets the blame.

Simultaneously, employees are concerned that their jobs don’t give them much in the way of satisfaction.  They therefore save their creative energies for outside activities; such as family and hobbies.  Which results in everyone losing.  Employers receive reduced output for their investment and employees artificially maintain a small, incomplete stature while on the job (headless and heartless).

Minimal expectations have been communicated to employees in a number of ways for the past 100+ years.  We have told employees specifically what to do and when to do it.  We have tightly controlled them with time clocks, buzzers, bells and coffee breaks.  We’ve held few meetings with employees, carefully separating the work-planners from the work-doers.  Consequently, we have not communicated much information about the organisation, its financial health. its position in the marketplace or its competitors.  Employees often receive little specialised training to make them proficient in their jobs.  We’ve given little positive reinforcement or recognition for average or above-average performance.

All of this treatment, taken collectively. is tantamount to placing the employee in a small tight tank; with the clear message that we don’t expect much performance or growth.  The underlying message is that we have modest expectations.  We let them know in the way we behave that we really don’t think they count.  These practices are dangerous; since subordinates generally appear to do what they believe they are expected to do!

What Happens in Bigger Tanks

The problems created by low expectations and small-bowl treatment are not news to anyone.  What are of interest, however, are the examples of organisations who are attaining superlative results; with essentially the same type of workers as their less successful counterparts.  The effects of communicating high expectations, as well as behaving positively toward employees, have been vividly dramatised when a new management team comes into an organisation formerly owned by another company.  The new managers communicate high expectations and behave positively toward the employees.  Subsequently, the same employee group produces a higher quality product while simultaneously lowering personnel costs.  Suddenly, the workers are being asked to use their heads in addition to their hands.  They’re expected to provide ideas for work and productivity improvement.

Progressive organisations like these appeal to the employees through discussions on values and corporate philosophy; along with increased information sharing.  Overall commitment comes from a direct link to the heart, as well as the head, of the employee. According to researchers at the Public Agenda Foundation, workers are motivated to work hard when:

  • Their tasks are interesting, varied, and involve some learning, challenge, and responsibility.
  • They have enough information, support, and authority to get the job done.
  • They help make decisions that affect their jobs because good managers recognise that workers know their jobs best.
  • They understand how their own work fits into the larger picture.
  • They are treated as individuals; personally important to the company.

In essence, therefore, it is clear that the expectation is now for the whole person to be on the job.  It’s a much larger fish tank. The result is that people rise to the occasion and grow to meet the greater expectations.  Employees find that their opinions are eagerly solicited.  They attend meetings with their supervisors to look at issues of both quality and efficiency.  They receive a good deal of information about the organisation, its objectives and their own work group’s performance (including profits, position in the marketplace and competition).  They are familiar with the underlying philosophy and values of the company; which are made known and frequently emphasised by those at the top.  A much greater emphasis on experiential training, focusing on full days of interactive skills development, replaces hours of attending what might otherwise be referred to as a talking shop.  Both average and above-average workers get frequent recognition for their performance.

Kollmorgen Corporation – an early example.

In the early 1980’s I came across a story of one American organisation that had benefited considerably from an expanded vision of worker responsibilities and expectations; namely Kollmorgen Corporation.  In 1974 Kollmorgen’s chairman of the board, Bob Swigget,  advocated a practical philosophy based on freedom and respect for the individual.   At Kollmorgen each employee was exposed to both the risk and reward of the market place; whilst actively being encouraged to assume responsibility for their own success (or otherwise) resulting from their level of engagement, contribution and creative input.

Kollmorgen’s philosophy of trusting people to be creative and constructive, when given more freedom, paid off during the hard times experienced in the Industrial Motor Drives Division – when the national economic recession caught up with the machine-tool industry.  In 1982, when the division’s bookings dropped 40%, the division president held fast to the philosophy of sharing responsibility and information.  By the end of 1983, the people of Industrial Motor Drives had successfully introduced 20 new products; making it possible for all of their laid off co-workers to return to work.  The division president expected bookings to increase by 20%, shipments to grow by 40%, and earnings to just about double in 1984.  He concluded, “I think the merits of our approach show up in the way the division has come back so quickly and so strongly from that trauma”.

How We Got Here

How is it that we’ve come to expect and get so little from our employees?  There are numerous contributors.

Our low expectations began with our roots in Europe and the traditional autocratic behaviour of that society.

Management at the turn of the 20th century was influenced by the average worker’s low level of training and education. The perceived need for control and regimentation was compounded by the dangerous chemicals and machinery with which so many worked.

Another cause lay in a range of prevailing management theories. For example, Scientific Management, along with its positive contributions, did a great disservice to  management; separating planners from doers and designing jobs to be sufficiently simple that they required the least possible amount of training.

Management responded to strong militant labour unions in an adversarial way; because unions were perceived as behaving in an adversarial way toward management. This vicious cycle spiralled downward until relatively recently; when Labour and Management finally began to advocate collaboration and cooperation.

The fifth contributor. as many would argue, has developed from an inherent characteristic latent in all mankind that causes any person given power to begin to exercise that power in a tyrannical way over those without it. A well-known psychological experiment randomly assigned some people to be prisoners, and some people to be guards in a mock prison.  The guards began to treat the prisoners with contempt and hostility.  The experiment was a troubling demonstration that power can bring out the worst in us.  A long history of experience shows that people in power tend to abuse it, much as Lord Acton said in his often-quoted statement, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”  Management has had virtually absolute power and some executives have, indeed, been corrupted by it.

The Competitive Advantage Today

We are at a unique juncture where it is now possible to leave behind our history of confining employees and receiving commensurate limited output.  Organisations who recognise the broad capabilities and needs of contemporary employees can take innovative action to reap unimagined returns.  They will avoid the unknowable costs of employees who don’t use their heads and hearts and who behave inconsistently with the “larger picture.”  Those who take innovative action now to create larger tanks for their employees will increase their company’s competitive advantage, as well as their ability to adapt in a volatile marketplace, building a strong foundation for the future.

Kanter pointed out the opportunities for innovation:

“Staying ahead of change means anticipating the new actions that external events will eventually require and taking them early.  Before others.  Before being forced.  While there is still time to exercise choice about how and when and what and time to influence, shape or redirect the external events themselves.  But this does not mean turning into wild-eyed futurists or believing science fiction.  In a practical sense, it means ‘leading the pack’ without getting too “far out.’  I am reminded of a Woody Allen short story about an advanced civilisation.  Usually when we think about advanced civilisations, he recounted, we have in mind one that is thousands or millions of years ahead of us.  But what worried Allen in the story was a civilisation that was just fifteen minutes ahead: Its members would always be first in line at the movies, and they would never be late for an appointment.  In short, a little lead time might be all the competitive advantage one needs!”

I have already seen positive results from the organisational vanguards who have experimented with larger tanks.  We believe that the ultimate way out of the uninspiring past between management and workers depends upon three necessities.

1. Expectations

First, we must create a whole new set of expectations – both about employees and on the part of employees.  Employees must come to expect new things not only from management but also from themselves.  They must be willing to accept a new role and responsibility inside corporations or public agencies.  Management must absolutely convey to employees that we expect them to come to work with their hearts and heads well connected to their hands.  We need to take advantage of the humanness of the employee if we are ever to increase productivity to its full potential.  We need to communicate to them that we think they count.

This requires a change on the part of top management; with higher expectations for worker involvement and contributions by them.  In times past the message has been that top executives expected people to work harder;  which seemed to equate with longer hours or more  perspiration.  The new message needs to be one requiring intellectual and spiritual contributions, beyond the mere physical ones.

2. Skills

Secondly. we must teach people the skills of being a good employee; not just the technical skills needed to do the job.  Whilst technical skills are vitally important there is also a need for “employee skills” – in the same way that we accept the need for general management skills.

These employee skills fall into four broad areas:

  1. How to initially understand and learn their jobs and what is expected of them.
  2. How to be an effective team player in an organisation, including:
  • How to offer and receive help from co-workers.
  • How to become a contributing member of a team meeting.

3. How to build stronger relationships with an immediate boss; including an ability to confront difficult situations.

4. What it takes to work successfully inside a large organisation with policies that must cover large numbers of people, including:

  • How to influence the system when its impact is negative.
  • How to evaluate the way actions and daily decisions affect the business.

Employees consistently underestimate their ability to influence the system as much as they underestimate their personal importance to the company.  Bringing about such changes is the key to a whole new work ethic.

Fortunately, training programs can now use new technology to successfully produce measurable behaviour changes.  We are well aware that much training in the past was merely talking at people and attempting to jam information into them.  Now we have effective techniques to demonstrate skills, combined with participant rehearsal or practice, enabling new behaviours to be acquired.  Employees who’ve participated in this type of program demonstrate increased skills, confidence and commitment in approaching workplace challenges.

3. Combining Expectations and Skills

Thirdly, we must change our expectations and teach “employee skills” simultaneously.  Doing merely one at a time is not sufficient.  Only by combining them will organisations make real progress.

Consider the metaphor of a person suffering from appendicitis, with all the attendant symptoms of fever and stomach pains. Taking large doses of aspirin may reduce the fever and kill the pain, but the underlying disease goes on unchecked; and can even prove to be terminal.  This patient can best be helped by medical or surgical treatment of the appendicitis plus medications for the symptoms of fever and pain to give short term relief.

For the last few decades, companies have indeed been treating the symptoms of employee disaffection.  The richly varied remedies have included recognition pins, company, bonus awards, picnics. insurance plans, sick leave, career discussions, pensions and many more.  The reality is the that the real illness cannot be treated by such superficial remedies.  The real disease is the small “fish bowl” into which people are placed; with all the attendant constraints, minimal expectations and lack of training in the skills necessary to function as an effective employee.

While all the fringe benefits and employee relations activities are worthwhile, they will never cure the underlying corporate disease that comes, as Studs Terkel has observed, “when peoples’ work is too small for their souls”.

Organisations are beginning to experiment with programs designed to change expectations and to teach workers the skills and values that all employees should have.  Such programs teach employees how to keep their bosses well informed, and how to enlist bosses and co-workers as allies rather than adversaries.  The time has come for us to profoundly change our expectations of people in the workplace and to invest in them – in terms of the training required to allow them to be fully effective and to grow to their full potential.  Programs similar to the ones described here can be a blueprint for expanding the fish tank of mutual expectations for growth.  The outcome for organisations using tank-expanding interventions will be higher levels of productivity, greater innovation and increased loyalty;  in place of what may have seemed like an angry pack of wolves snarling at management and its decisions.  They will replace adversaries with friends, substitute collaboration for competition and conflict. Products will come out with improved quality.  Service will reflect a caring displayed in the small things that go beyond what’s expected.  Overall, a higher level of responsible behaviour than we have seen in the past will demonstrate the power of the hearts and heads of employees at every level of the organisation.

 

Acknowledgments to;
  • John H Zenger (formerly of Zenger Miller Inc)
  • Jean E Edwards (formerly of Zenger Miller Inc0
  • John Hill – TAP.mdip (formerly Master Trainer for Zenger Miller UK)