Performance Management: Changing Behavior That Drives Organizational Effectiveness (part 15)

Pinpoint Behaviors and Results
by
Charles Lamson

Every job has specific behaviors and specific results associated with it. If you cannot recognize the difference between them, you might manage only results or only behaviors. Either strategy often creates problems in the long run. When you pinpoint behaviors only, you may not always get the desired result. When you pinpoint results only, you may inadvertently reinforce the wrong behaviors. Enron is a case study in how to mismanage both behaviors and results. People there were reinforced for breaking all the rules, so rogue outfits were created within the organization but outside of the management hierarchy. Some people were reinforced so lavishly that they repeatedly violated commonly understood rules of ethics and law. The lesson highlighted by Enron is that you will get more of what you reinforce, so you should pay attention not only to the results, but the behaviors that made them possible.

Some behaviors lead to the desired results and others do not. For example, we often emphasize attendance and short breaks for clerical personnel. Coming to work and taking breaks are behaviors. The problem is that the poorest performer in the organization could be someone who takes no breaks and has perfect attendance. Without results, these behaviors have little value in and of themselves.

Yet, results are often overemphasized. Sales managers typically hold their salespeople accountable for meeting sales quotas. Meeting the quota is a result. Sales mangers may ignore the behaviors that are important for making a sale and reinforce or punish salespeople for producing or not producing results. Failure to meet a quota is a serious problem in the typical sales organization, and the usual management response is to punish the performer in some way. But instead of punishing for not meeting quotas, managers should tell performers specific behaviors for making sales such as getting lists of prospects, calling them, making appointments, preparing presentations, et cetera. Then managers should give the performer feedback and reinforcement for any improvement. If the salespeople do these things and still do not make sales, it might be an indication that the manager has not pinpointed the critical behaviors for the result of making a sale.

Pinpointing Behavior

Pinpointing behavior involves two challenges. The first is separating behavior from non-behaviors and the second is determining whether or not the behavior you select will drive the outcome you want. You overcome these challenges by simplifying and testing the effectiveness of your pinpoints.

To simplify, pinpointing behaviors describe them in terms of observable, muscle movement. This implies that you must see the behavior you have described and that behavior must involve physical action of the performer. This is consistent with Lindsley's (1965) observation that behaviors are verbs and results are nouns. Even this guideline can be troublesome if you fail to attend to the requirement for physical movement. Some verbs, such as supervise, lead, analyze, or delegate, have no physical component that can be observed at any particular point in time. Just because a verb has an ing form does not mean we are describing behavior. A common, but inaccurate, description of project management behavior is meeting deadlines. This defines an outcome, not a behavior. At the moment the deadline is met, what do you observe the performer physically doing? Probably you see him or her place a document in your in-box or you might see them click the send button on their e-mail.

You should always pinpoint the result you want before you describe the necessary behaviors. When you pinpoint behaviors, you are, in essence, developing a hypothesis that the behaviors you have identified are the critical components of some desired result. If you are the person asking for the change, establishing the validity of this relationship is your responsibility. Unfortunately, managers commonly tell people what to do and then blame them when the desired outcome is not produced. These managers never validate the relationships of behavior to results because they are sure of the linkage, even when it does not exist. They then blame the performer ("If you had just done what I told you...") when the result is not forthcoming because he or she did not do the required behaviors. Managers frequently do not get the feedback that the failure was a failure to pinpoint correctly, not a failure of execution. As a result, the manager never learns to improve his/her pinpointing skills and the performer is forced to guess what the real behavior requirements are.

*SOURCE: PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT: CHANGING BEHAVIOR THAT DRIVES ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS, 4TH ED. 2004, AUBREY C. DANIELS & JAMES E. DANIELS, PGS. 118-120*

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