HOW TO BUILD A GREAT CULTURE
I’ve been coaching youth soccer for 15 years now. It took me a while but I finally learned that if my players are not exhibiting the behaviors I want to see at practice, it is ultimately my responsibility to change things. No matter how hard or how often I yell, I can not MAKE them do anything. The solution, I’ve learned, is to change the game instead of trying to change them.
If I want them to pass to each other more during a scrimmage, for example, I could introduce a rule whereby a goal scored after ten passes is worth double. If I am unhappy with their intensity, I can make the field smaller to force them to move more. And if they are unable to execute on a particular drill, I’ve learned over the years that it’s probably a design flaw.
We express the same frustration in business. We blame employees when things are not done the “right” way. We cite their lack of motivation or care as reasons for our failure. Naturally, we try to use authority or threats to "fix" the people instead of fixing the “game.”
WILLPOWER IS FINITE
As people, our willpower is finite. And every decision we make, from the moment we open our eyes to when we go to sleep, uses up this precious resource. Naturally, our willpower is at its weakest at the end of the day. Things like stress, lack of sleep or anxiety further weaken our willpower and our ability to make decisions. An employee experiencing any of these will find it very difficult to do the “right” thing.
Our brains are always looking for shortcuts to help us use our energy efficiently. Heuristics, habits and pattern recognition are devices our brain creates to conserve our precious resources.
As effective as they are, those devices also create biases, fallacies and “irrational” behaviors. And when we overburden people’s willpower, or our own for that matter, it inevitably lets us down. We should not rely on the strength of willpower but of our systems instead. To address this problem, behavioral economists created something called nudging.
NUDGE THEORY
Nudging people means designing choices to encourage and support the behaviors we are promoting. The ten passes rule I introduced is a nudge.
A good nudge is built on what theorists call Libertarian Paternalism. It means that it should give people the freedom to choose or to opt out of undesirable arrangements if they want to do so. Doubling the number of points for my players if they score after completing 10 passes is a good nudge. The players can still choose to score without using the 10 passes rule without any penalty. Instead of forcing them to pass more, the game now incentivizes them to do so.
A bad nudge would be to say that you can only score after completing 10 passes. Restrictions and punishments are bad nudges because they remove the element of choice.
In an attempt to break down silos between departments or foster more connection and collaboration within a team, a good nudge would be for a company to opt for an open office floor plan where serendipitous encounters can occur and genuine connection can form; a bad nudge would be mandatory team-building activities.
THE POWER OF EMPATHY
Empathetic leaders always assume the best in people. That’s their superpower. Because they believe that people are always trying to do their best, they blame failure on design flaws, not on people. They try to fix the “game” instead of fixing people.
There are two types of design flaws: Having bad systems or processes, and having people in the wrong places.
1. Having bad systems and processes
When people are not doing what they are supposed to, it’s usually because there’s something wrong in the system. Despite how simple our brains make it seem, being human is very complex. There are billions of data to compute each millisecond so the system is always looking for efficiencies, shortcuts, and prioritization. So, complexity is the enemy of any system. If your system is too complex, people will not do it. Strive for ease of understanding and ease of use.
Feedback is also an important part of a good system. If I don’t know whether or not I’m making progress, or how I’m performing, it’s unlikely that I will seek to improve. To maximize the power of feedback, make your feedback frequent and visible.
Incentives are also powerful in any system. Rewards are strong incentives. But here, it’s important to understand what drives people. Aligning incentives with the right behaviors is an important part of any design because incentives can also quickly create bad habits if there’s misalignment.
2. Having people in the wrong place
Empathetic leaders also recognize that the flaw in the design might be that we have people in the wrong place. It doesn’t mean that the person is flawed, it means that their strengths and interests are not properly aligned with their job and responsibilities. When this kind of misalignment occurs, people tend to be disengaged and therefore underperform. But empathetic leaders recognize this for what it is: a design flaw and not a character flaw. So they either retool the employee with training, change their job function, or let them go so they can find a better fit in a different system.
Incompetent, lazy, or useless are some of the words that poor leaders often use to explain people poor performance. But empathic leaders do not attack people’s character. They focus on the “game” instead. And because they assume the best in people, they investigate what might be going on with the person that explains their lack of performance. More often than not, there’s a plausible answer if we learn to be patient, and if we deploy enough empathy, care and compassion for those in our charge.
Ultimately, it requires a great deal of empathy to not attack the players of the game but focus on the design instead. And the only way to do that is to fundamentally change our beliefs about people, to assume that everyone is always trying to do their best.
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PS: After 15 years and many failed attempts, I still do my fair share of yelling. Please send help! 🙈