Part 2: The manager’s role in challenging the status quo.

Every day, well-intentioned managers work exceedingly hard to ensure efficiency of time and task.  They allocate resources, define expectations and alleviate obstacles.   The system is both predictable and “productive”.  But what happens when a new employee brimming with energy and ignorant of expectations begins rocketing through their to-do list with lightning speed?  Would their manager see this as a miraculous breakthrough in performance? Would they investigate the possibilities for increasing productivity with their entire team, or would this more likely be a sign that this new team member is unaware of the gravity[i] of their responsibilities?

Since the manager is most likely responsible for other team members with similar responsibilities and may have even done the job themselves, they have a vested interest in the status quo.

If they acknowledge, reinforce or even just explore the efficacy of this new behavior they are recognizing that this super human performance may not really super at all but just the average behavior of someone unimpeded by expectation.  Acknowledging this potential will likely generate resistance from many levels.

1. Coworkers will resist being evaluated by a new standard of performance.

2. Supervisors may feel indicted for not recognizing the opportunities for improvement themselves.

3. Those actually responsible for this new level of performance may feel they have set the bar too high to maintain.

If the risk of rewarding innovation is too high the safer role is to adjust the workload until a culturally acceptable level of performance is achieved.

Reality is not defined by what is possible but what is socially acceptable.

This “tendency toward expectancy” was aptly demonstrated during the advent of the census machine in 1890.   Herman Hollerith who invented the device was tasked with training new operators which he estimated could process 550 punch cards per day.  Sure enough under his expert tutelage they did exactly what he expected.

At the same time another team was trained to operate the machine as well, but they were unaware of Mr. Hollerith’s predictions.  They were able to process almost four times as many (2100) cards per day.  We don’t always get what we want, but we do generally get what we expect.

A more recent example you may have noticed involve turn signals.  For as long as I have been driving the sequence has been green to yellow and then red or some flashing derivative.  Now many turn signal lights have been switched to begin with a flashing yellow light to allow turning when no oncoming traffic is present.  It “turns out” that a ten year study by the Federal Highway Administration found that this configuration:

1. Reduced driver delay and wait time by as much as 28%

2. Decreased fuel consumption by 10%

3. Reduced fuel emissions 22%

4. And provides safer turning conditions by being more “understandable”

Multiply the benefits by even a small percentage of the 254 million passenger cars in America and you have to wonder why did it take so many years to see such a simple solution?

We all profess the desire to learn and improve but in reality we prefer predictability over progress.  We don’t see reality, we see what we expect to see.

How to encourage more innovation from your team?

Try everything, encourage everyone.   

I am sure these statistics have changed but, as of the publishing of 40 Years, 20 Million Ideas: The Toyota Suggestion System; by Yuzo Yasuda, Toyota had famously encouraged 17.9 suggestions per person per year in contrast to General Motors which received less than 1/yr./person.  Of those suggestions GM accepted 23% while Toyota welcomed 90% into their innovative process implementing 2 million ideas annually.

How many employee insights have you implemented from your team this year?  If you aren’t sharing samples of success then tales of tribulation will prevail.  Open doors are not enough, open minds need explicit encouragement.  Champions for change must be cheered and new ideas embraced.  Change is hard.  Do everything you can to take the fear out of failure.   Celebrate both the super successes and fabulous failures as innovation requires both.  (Should you praise effort or ability?).  It is help-full to believe that opportunities for innovation are everywhere.

This is part two in a five-part examination of the forces that keep individuals and institutions caught in a cycle of stress trapped by unexamined assumptions and ill designed solutions.  Part one examined the role of self in our illusory imprisonment, two considers the often subconscious part played by supervisors in the continuing incarceration and section three delves into the irresistible influence exerted on us by our peers.  Chapter four introduces the power of using the Positive Peer Pull of “Value Adding” employees to re-engage the energy, optimism and innovation that lies dormant in traditional hierarchical systems. Finally chapter five outlines the system for evolving to a Peer Powered Process.

You may experience 10,000 failures before creating the next light bulb but it is far better to fail in the light of new awareness than succeed in the darkness of denial.

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