Finally, the recession is over! Unless you are still unemployed or working that job at McDonalds you got after you were laid off from your law firm or still in the process of declaring bankruptcy or trying to sell that house that is worth less than your mortgage, etc. But, the stock market looks better. Unemployment is down (8.8%). Businesses are hiring (a little bit). People are buying (a little more). Companies are getting ready to compete when things really start moving. Maybe! There’s an old folk tune that comes to mind that pretty much sums up how many companies deal with leadership training and development during tough economic times. If you remember the “Arkansas Traveler,” the lyrics go like this:
“Oh, once upon a time in Arkansas,
An old man sat in his little cabin door
And fiddled at a tune that he liked to hear,
A jolly old tune that he played by ear.
It was raining hard, but the fiddler didn’t care,
He sawed away at the popular air,
Tho’ his rooftree leaked like a waterfall,
That didn’t seem to bother the man at all.
A traveler was riding by that day,
And stopped to hear him a-practicing away;
The cabin was a-float and his feet were wet,
But still the old man didn’t seem to fret.
So the stranger said, now the way it seems to me,
You’d better mend your roof, said he.
But the old man said as he played away,
I couldn’t mend it now; it’s a rainy day.
The traveler replied, that’s all quite true,
But this, I think, is the thing to do;
Get busy on a day that is fair and bright,
Then patch the old roof till it’s good and tight.
But the old man kept on a-playing at his reel,
And tapped the ground with his leathery heel.
Get along, said he, for you give me a pain;
My cabin never leaks when it doesn’t rain.”
So, when is the right time to do your leadership training? What are your competitors doing right now?
This pattern is, I believe, often repeated in American companies. When times are good and there are lots and lots of orders coming in, good leadership is not so critical. What ever we do works O.K. Our people don’t need to be highly engaged or motivated. If the leaders make a few mistakes, are a little high handed, overuse their power, who cares? We have plenty of money and can compensate for their inadequacies. And besides, who has the time? On the other hand, when business is slow, who has the money to conduct training (or research, or invest in new equipment, etc.)? But it is inevitable that it will rain again. There will be down turns in your business cycle or in the economy or both. That is, of course, when you need good leadership (better products, modern equipment, improved processes) more than ever. Since we didn’t make those investments when we had a chance, the bad times are even worse and our future problems just get bigger.
The persistence of clearly unproductive management practices (Conducting performance reviews that have nothing to do with performance, patronage promotions, sycophancy, over-regimentation, etc.) looks a lot like the way we learn superstitious behavior. One of the important ways human beings learn is through a process called reinforcement. A person observes the outcomes of their behavior. If the outcomes are favorable, they tend to repeat the behavior under similar circumstances. Although an important part of the learning process, reinforcement also allows human beings to learn superstitious behavior. Superstitious behavior is behavior that is learned by accident. Even though one’s behavior may have no real bearing on the outcome (it is entirely coincidence), one may still believe they caused it. An example would be blowing on the dice to increase your luck at the craps table. Once learned, superstitious behavior is very hard to change. There is a species of wasp called a Sphex Wasp.
In the Spring when the female Sphex is ready to lay her eggs, she builds a mud nest. After she lays her eggs, she goes to find food. She will sting an insect, a cricket or other large insect, just enough to paralyze it. She then brings it back to the nest. The immobilized insect will provide sufficient food for the baby wasps until they are ready to leave the nest. Before she places the cricket into the nest, she places the insect on the threshold of the nest and performs an inspection to see if everything is in order. She then places the bug into the nest and flies away, her job complete. If, however, you change her world a bit and move the cricket while she is in the nest making her inspection, she will once again place the insect on the threshold and repeat the inspection. No matter how many times you move the cricket, she will continue to perform the inspection before putting the bug into the nest. It will never occur to the wasp that her world has changed and that today, it would make more sense to place the cricket directly into the nest without the inspection. (Who thinks of these things?) She is, of course, doomed to repeat that behavior. It is programmed in genetically. Human beings, on the other hand, learn these behaviors. We are not doomed. We can change.
This happened on a much larger scale to the U.S. just after the Second World War. All of our competitors and potential competitors were devastated by the war. We emerged with the most powerful manufacturing industry in the history of the world. No one was even close. In that sort of environment, you don’t have to do things well to make money. All of us have benefited from the prosperity of that era. But, there was a cost as well. Many of the management practices that are still employed today were learned during those decades and have persisted with little real examination. Many of those methods are completely unsuited to today’s realities. I am often puzzled by the fact that otherwise decent and intelligent human beings will sometimes behave like monsters when put into positions of authority in organizations. I am often stunned to finally meet the “horror” that has been described to me by employees during team building interviews and discover a bright, caring, and substantial human being. How can this be? Often, the manager believes that the abusive behavior is necessary and, indeed the only way to achieve the needed business objectives (“It’s my job to make the tough decisions.”).
Sadly, many leaders have been “taught” that he or she must behave in ways that would be unacceptable in any other social situation. This “teaching” and “learning” occur in subtle but powerful ways in organizations. Most of the patterns are set through observation and trial and error (modeling and reinforcement). The management paradigm has been passed on from generation to generation of managers and is learned at such a low level of awareness that it would seem absurd to many to even question it. In fact, in many cases, the idea of questioning the basic structure of our management system is totally outside the field of conscious awareness. It just simply would not come up.
So, every time there is a slow period in the economy, managers cut training, research, employee development, marketing, and so on. When times are good, no one has time, etc., etc., etc. How do you break the cycle? Someone in leadership has to have the courage to say, we are going to examine everything, including our own behavior, our own policies, our culture. Leadership training can be a vehicle to get that process started. Often, participants are surprised to learn that there is more than one way to manage. They are surprised to learn that some of their own behaviors get in the way of achieving their goals and the goals of the organization. They are shocked to learn that they have learned habits that will sabotage their own objectives for the future of the organization. Leadership training that encourages open discussions and self examination can do much to overcome the tendency to just keep going, repeating the same mistakes as before. As always, follow up is critically important. Going to leadership training, then putting the workbook on a shelf can become just another one of those oft-repeated habits (like the wasp) without some serious commitment to following through. Otherwise, the future will look just like today.
There may be a little sunshine peeking through this rainy old recession, but you never know when it will start raining again. And, when that happens, you will need for your leaders to be at their best.