Performance Management: Changing Behavior That Drives Organizational Effectiveness (part 3)

Separating Behavior from Non-Behavior

by

Charles Lamson

What Behavior Is Not

If you will remember that behavior is an observable action, you will avoid most of the egregious errors in managing behavior. The following is a list of the four most common assumptions that cause out-of-control variability in management systems. If you can control these management inputs, you will go a long way toward creating the behaviors you want.

Generalities are not behavior.

Unfortunately, many people who talk about behavior have a very imprecise definition of the term. Performance appraisal forms often ask the manager to discuss the employee's behavior and then give them key words such as professionalism, creativity, teamwork, enthusiasm, or quality of communications. Some managers talk about having a commitment to safety as if it were a behavior. Additionally, terms such as selling, monitoring, checking, delegating, supervising, managing, taking ownership, and being proactive fail the test for behaviors. They do not describe what you can observe someone doing.

When we use imprecise terms to tell people what to do, we have to expect a great deal of variability in how they interpret our directives. Many managers think that they are being clear when they tell their direct reports things like, "I don't care how you do it. Just get it done!" They assume that the person understands (from policy, procedures and precedents) their meaning. We have even heard managers say things like, "If I have to tell them how to do their job, I don't need them." The literature on failed companies is filled with cases where the senior manager gave direction only in general terms. Enron senior management wanted entrepreneurs, resulting in managers who started unfunded and unscrutinized ventures that robbed funds from the revenue producing units of the company as well as from the honest majority of the company's employees. One of the worst forms of management is when the boss asks for something and gives as his/her criterion for success, "I'll know it when I see it."

Attitudes are not behavior.

Business seems to have a considerable interest in areas such as safety awareness, quality consciousness, and cost consciousness. These general descriptions are often referred to as attitudes. Such descriptions are particularly difficult to work with because they are assumed to come from a state of mind. They are not behaviors but refer to a vast collection of tasks and behaviors. Additionally, different people using these terms are usually referring to different tasks and behaviors. When we refer to safety consciousness, we may want people to duck as they walk under overhead pipes, clean up spills, put on safety glasses, and warn others of safety hazards. Quality conscious may mean doing extra engineering tests on materials and designs, inspecting incoming raw materials for defects, cleaning the assembly area and frequently checking machine settings. Cost conscious may mean turning off equipment when finished, cleaning and lubricating equipment daily, and checking settings at the beginning of a job. For an engineer, cost consciousness may mean documenting engineering change orders, calculating loads on schedule, and recording time charged to the job. Terms and phrases denoting attitudes always fail the measurability and activity criteria for behavior.

States are not behavior.

It is also important to differentiate between states and behaviors. A state is a static condition that exists as a result of behavior. Wearing safety glasses is a state; putting on safety glasses is a behavior. Sleeping is a state; getting in bed is a behavior. Sitting in a chair is a state; sitting down is a behavior, getting up is a behavior. States do not require action. Action is usually required to get to a state but, once there, no action is required. Once you fall asleep, no action is required to remain asleep. Once you sit in a chair, no action is required to stay there. The problem is that the action (behavior) that created the state may not be one of which you would approve. Behavioral consultant Courtney Mills recounts the following:

A distribution manager I was working with wanted his crew to put their safety glasses on as soon as they walked through the warehouse door. He explained that he never reinforced someone for wearing safety glasses (a state) unless he knew they put the glasses on at the warehouse door. He insisted on the standard for recognition because one day when he went into the warehouse, he saw an employee hurriedly putting his glasses on when he saw the manager coming. The manager said later that he almost reinforced the employee for wearing the glasses, but thought better of it because he did not reinforce the behavior of putting on his safety glasses only when he sees a manager coming.

Values are not behaviors.

Defining mission, vision, and values has long been a leadership function. Mission, vision, and values are activities that help companies articulate their chief functions or activities (mission), their direction, focus or impact anticipated for the future (vision) and what is acceptable in terms of how they treat one another and go after business success (values). Articulating mission, vision, and values, however, has had little impact on behavior in most organizations as they still have articulated and communicated these things very well only to end up in trouble with both the law and/or stockholders. Executives have completed mergers only to realize later that they had no expertise in the acquired business or that the acquired business was not a strategic fit. Employees have been caught lying, cheating, and stealing to get customers, reduce costs, or increase profit or stock price. It is no longer sufficient to post mission, vision, and values on walls. Unless the leadership actively manages the behaviors they describe in these documents, they could be permitting internal counterproductive competition and other destructive actions. Activities such as creating behavior-based mission and values statements can produce worthwhile guidelines for business; but, without an assessment of the true behavioral impact, those documents can also breed employee cynicism and deceit.

A value like honesty is not a behavior; it is a group of behaviors defined by their impact on the observer. You may consider yourself as honest but others may see you as being dishonest because of what they know, or believe, that you said or did not say, or by the way you talk about what you do. Many organizations have failed to change values because they think that values are behaviors. Teamwork, for example, is a value that most organizations have. It is certainly not a behavior, but many behaviors. The criticism "We don't work as a team" could mean many things. Until teamwork is broken down into behaviors and/or tasks that describe it in measurable and observable terms, you may be very frustrated in your efforts to increase teamwork. Your organization may list speaking up when there is a problem as a value, but employees find that those who do speak up are told to "Get on board" or "Stop criticizing" or in other ways given the message that the value of open communication and the action that should go along with it are two very different things. Stated values are not behavior, and values that cannot be described in specific behavioral terms are almost impossible to instill in an organization. If you know the behaviors that are necessary to produce valuable results in your organization, you know more than most managers and are much closer to improving organizational efficiency and effectiveness.

*SOURCE: PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT: CHANGING BEHAVIOR THAT DRIVES ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS, 4TH ED., 2004, AUBREY C. DANIELS & JAMES E. DANIELS, PGS. 35-37*

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