The Unauthorized Truth About Stretch Targets Many management techniques are inconsistent with the science of human behavior. “Stretch Targets” are a great example. Managers give stretch targets to their staff to ensure that they work “really” hard. The science of human behavior tells us that stretch targets will likely have the exact opposite result. Let’s break it down. Managers are often fearful of giving achievable targets to their staff for a couple of reasons. Firstly, they assume that once the target is achieved, the staff member will stop trying. The whole idea of “my job is done, time to go home”. Second, if the target is achieved, the manager will wonder what they have left on the table. If only they had made the target just a bit higher, could they have captured those results as well? Let me illustrate why this thinking is wrong. This past weekend, my youngest son qualified for the provincial swim championships by swimming faster than the qualifying standard. This has been a target of his for 4 years. Conventional thinking (as laid out above) suggests that when he hit that target he would be satisfied in his achievement and stop trying. The opposite happened. Once he hit the target, his confidence and commitment to swimming went UP not DOWN. In each of the next 3 races he swam (different events), he hit the provincial qualifying standard. On Sunday night, after the meet was over and we were ‘celebrating’ (talking about) his success, he volunteered his next target. He told me that he thought he could get a western qualifying time in February and believes that he can get a national qualifying time by late spring. He even started mapping out a plan on how to get there which included diet and sleep. Now, I don’t know if he will get those results, but I do know that he is fired up, and the success he had in the pool this weekend is likely to carry him through the rest of the season. Now let’s pretend I subscribed to the “management theory” of stretch targets. I would have told him before the weekend that I expected him to qualify for nationals by spring. I would have had to give him that target in order to ‘ensure’ that he tried his hardest at this meet. I pay a lot for swimming and I don’t want him to leave anything on the table. Remember that he has been struggling to get the easier provincial time for 4 years, but my expectations would have been for nationals. If he failed to do well, I would expect him to give me an explanation as to his failure. It is unlikely that he would have made the breakthrough, or even if he did, he still would have felt like a loser and not a winner. On the way home from the meet, whatever the results he had, he would have told me all the reasons he CANNOT make Nationals. Why wouldn’t he manage expectations? After all, he doesn’t want to feel like a loser and expecting a national qualifying time was setting him up to lose. So how does this translate into the workplace? Our shared DNA does not change from the swimming pool to the factory floor, to the board room. If you want someone to demonstrate all the behaviors of a winner… make them a winner! Start with an achievable target. Let your staff pick the target but temper their excitement if they pick something too hard. When they hit their target… celebrate! It doesn’t have to be fancy or big… often an acknowledgment of the victory is good enough. This happened just a few years ago with a client I started working with. I was asked to work with a department who had been the bottleneck of their manufacturing process. It wasn’t long after I started with them that they had ramped up production so much that they were starved for work. We set it up so that every time they ran out of work, the Team Lead would shut down the lights in the department and send everyone into the coffee room for carrot cake. After a short celebration (break), they would make out a plan to get even better. They cleaned and calibrated their machines, taught each other tips and tricks, practiced difficult set-ups, worked on reducing scrap etc. They didn’t stop working, they started working smarter, faster, and better. In fact, by the time they were done, that department could produce 2X the product than they ever could before. It is amazing what happens when you set up people to win. They turn into winners.

The Making of a Leader The subtext of a lot of conversations that I have with executives is that their staff are fundamentally uninspired. While they know, and speak to the fact that their personal success is predicated on their staff, most executives have a nagging feeling that, on a whole, their organization is performing mediocre at best. Their fears are reasonable. In a recent white paper, it was identified that the average North American worker, works at about 1/3 their sustainable output. There is not an operations manager that wouldn’t go crazy knowing that their equipment was operating at 1/3 its capability. It is no wonder that the word of the day in the executive offices is to “engage” the staff. It is likely that nothing significant will change and the Operations Managers will continue to be frustrated by all that untapped discretionary effort. To pour salt on the wound, there are great organizations all around us. We have all seen hourly staff standing up in front of their peers and bragging about their workplace achievements. There are departments that continually find clever and unique solutions to solve systemic issues. There are crews that always seem to get the job done, have luck on their side, and manage to a quality that wows every one of their customers. We credit the leaders of those great businesses (or departments). Organizations and boards cherish those individuals and shudder in fear at their departure. Given the opportunity, peer competitive businesses see their individual value and quickly scoop them up. Such is the market for such a rare and valued commodity. Because of the considerable value of these stars, it is odd that so many organizations do almost nothing to create them. Most human resource departments are not equipped to provide effective leadership training. Often the HR department sends the highest potential candidate to a 2-3-day class but is frustrated because that seems to yield little or no recognizable results. If an organization has a leadership superstar, they are often asked to mentor those around them. While this frequently bears fruit, their capacity is limited. Ultimately operational pressures force them to focus on the issue of the day. There is a solution. It is possible to create great organizational leaders. The common perception that leadership is an art that cannot be taught is simply wrong. Leadership is a skill based on science. It can be taught, practiced, coached, and mastered. While this skill will not be mastered in a few days, it can be mastered if trained, practiced, and coached over a few months. The science of human behavior has been well understood for over 100 years. It just hasn’t been incorporated into business. Ironically, many organizations use outdated management practices that limit productivity. This is comical at best and criminal at worst. I’ve written extensively about common management practices that limit productivity in the past. As a result, while many organizations hope for efficiency improvements of 5-10% each budget year, they only realize 1-2% (net of capital expenditures). Executives, at a loss of how to improve the engagement of their people, by themselves improvement with capital investments. Meanwhile, their greatest opportunity (and often their greatest costs) stays underutilized and operating at about 32% of capacity. And what is the proof of this? 1. In the last few years, in an immature industry, I have seen 3 different companies able improve productivity by over 100%. That is correct. With the same equipment, the same people, and in the same environment, they completed more than twice the work than they had ever done before. 3 different unassociated companies. The folks that helped these companies did so without any industry experience. They did not provide technical support, no extra equipment was purchased, no existing staff was fired or changed out. This was done by coaching the front-line leadership in how to lead their people by using the science of human behavior. The skills deployed by our clients’ own people literally engaged their staff so that they “wanted” to work instead of “having” to work. It is the same difference in effort that you see in your kids between them “wanting” to play their video games and “having” to do their chores. In much more mature industries, while there have been 100% improvements in the past, numbers about 10-30% are much more common. 2. We can use a standard scientifically supported A-B A-B test. First baseline productivity data is compiled. Then the leadership group is trained in the science of human behavior and coached on how to implement the skills with their group. More productivity data is collected. The program is stopped and the leadership is asked to go back to their old ways. More productivity data is collected once again. We then restart the program. The data shows that the application of the leadership skills directly affects the productivity of the group. Effort increases in staff are often great than 100%. There are great leaders out there… but they are rare and tough to find. Organizations can create great leaders but are but currently ill-equipped to do so. Our group embeds a professional in your team with the explicit goal of developing your front-line leadership. This WILL (>95% probability) result in increased productivity. The proven science of human behavior guarantees the result. The whole initiative has a remarkably high ROI during the engagement even though the benefits of great leadership pay dividends for years to come. It still astounds me that, for the most part, leadership teams employ strategies that were developed 100 hundred years ago. ~Wouter d’Ailley

Will versus Skill Why is it that whenever there is a performance issue at work, the solution is to provide SKILL training? There seems to be an underlying assumption that if workers are properly skilled, that they will do a good job. Simple observation tells us otherwise. We see laziness all around us. We need to determine if a performance problem has to do with the WILL or SKILL of the employee. Just this morning I was in a production meeting with a client when a manager suggested we send an employee for SKILL training for the 3rd time. After some discussion, the group determined that the employee is both competent and lazy. There are simple ways to work on WILL. Heck, the video game developers have figured it out. Look at all the WILL they instill in their players. Just the other day, my son was complaining that a recent video game he was playing lasted only 100 hours! Google, Facebook and Instagram all employ behavioural scientists to make their applications more addictive. Organizations can improve the WILL of their frontline workforce by employing a few of the tools that the tech industry is using. Imagine a workplace where your frontline staff is actively seeking to WIN every day and to solve systemic problems. If you are interested in learning more, give us a call.

We Know Why In a study of nearly 300 manufacturers who were committed to Lean, The Aberdeen Group found that 80% of Lean initiatives fell short. Now we know why. Having reinvigourated, resussitated, and rescued many a Lean initiative over the years, it all boils down to this: We ignore the WILL of the people What do I mean by “the will?” If you’ve ever been on a winning team, you know what I mean. If you’ve ever achieved something even you didn’t think was possible, you know what I mean. If you’ve ever built something great with a group of committed individuals at work or at play…you know what I mean. Your heart and mind was engaged. You and your team were functioning at a high level. You were winners! You had the will. The team who brought home the astronauts on Apollo 13 didn’t break out a continuous improvement model. They didn’t have to. They had something way more powerful than that. They had the WILL to bring their friends home. Creating “the will” in your people is easier than you think. Most continuous improvement experts have “drank the cool-aid” about their particular model. Each expert has seen, sometime and somewhere, where their model delivered remarkable results. Many of these same experts fail to mention that 80% of the time the initiative failed to meet expectations. As long as the experts don’t talk about it, they don’t fix it. You see, most experts put all their energy into the tool itself. Almost all the Continuous Improvement models in the past couple of decades are good tools. MBO, MBWA, FAIR, Lean, Six Sigma, 5 S, KAIZAN, TQM, SL, SLII, Just In Time, Re-engineering, Time and Motion Studies, ISO 9000… the list goes on… just look at all the books on your business bookshelf. It doesn’t matter which model you use… they all can work. It is not the model that makes the change. It is the people using the tools that make the change. If the workers have the WILL to make the model succeed, remarkable results will happen. If the very same folks don’t have the WILL, then it will fail. No surprises here. So create the will! How? By shaping and rewarding the right behaviours in your crew members! Marry the Continuous Improvement model of the day with a very simple application of a scientifically proven and predictable model for human behavior change. Quite simply: Use the science of human behavior to create the will in your people. We understand why people do what they do. We know how to shape humans’ behaviours. Human behavior (believe it or not), is really not that complicated. Here’s a very quick snapshot. Humans do what’s rewarded. Humans stop doing what’s penalized. Humans stop doing what’s ignored. The problem in organizations is that we often inadvertently reward (and thereby, get more of) the wrong behaviors. My favorite common, classic example of this is when we give special (well-deserved?) recognition to the maintenance man for coming in at 2:00am to get a critical machine back up and running. Shouldn’t we be recognizing the maintenance man whose machine seems to always work… the same guy we DON’T have to pay overtime because his equipment never goes down? Now that’s well-deserved! I don’t know how often I have heard from COO’s/CEO’s that they are currently using (((insert model of the day here))), they don’t know if they have room for an additional model, but are ultimately disappointed that their current initiative is too slow or not delivering the results hoped for. If you want your Lean, CI, KAIZAN or whatever program to work… use the science of human behavior to create the WILL in your people. The truth is that when people have the WILL to do something…. almost anything can be done. The 20% of Continuous Improvement Initiatives that delivered the desired results didn’t succeed because of the model of the day. The remarkable success was because those involved wanted it to work… they had the will. I have yet to see a Continuous Improvement Program fail when the science of human behavior is working at the same time to shape the desired behaviours, in other words, to create the will.

Hardest Working Generation I am tired of hearing about how lazy the kids of today are. I honestly believe that they are the hardest working generation ever. If I were to let him, my 14-year-old son would spend 16 hours+ a day hunched over his computer, foregoing nutrition, singularly focused on his job. He even puts his work before his social life, jumping on the trampoline, and booting around the acreage on a quad. He gives his work preferential treatment above almost all other activities. When he fails at his work, he doesn’t give up, rather he immediately tries again. When he gets really stumped, he calls a friend for help. When he is prevented from working (internet goes down) he mopes around the house at loss of what else he could possibly do. There is, of course, one problem with his work. He doesn’t get paid to do it. His work doesn’t add any value to the community, any firm, or me. In fact, he pays to do it. By now you may have already deduced that my son plays video games. Anyone that has children sees the hold those games have over kids. What is it that game manufacture’s do that make the video games so darn compelling? I wonder if those same techniques could be employed in the workplace? Imagine what would your firm look like if your workforce worked at their job with the same commitment that teenagers worked their video games. So why is it… that we can captivate the interest of kids (and many adults) with video games, but find it hard to motivate employees to stay focused at work? What is it that makes video games so darn addictive? Can the characteristics of video games be incorporated into the workplace? While the game environment changes constantly, the activities associated with the game stay the same. Each player is operating a complex joystick with any number of controls and buttons on it. The games start relatively easy and continually progress in difficulty and complexity as game-play progresses. In fact, most players could not skip more than a few levels before the challenges of the game would overcome their ability to compete. However, that games forces them to complete each level before moving on. The player is given a steady diet of feedback (badges, awards, scores, visual and audio cues, levels, achievements). They are never seriously beat up, mocked, given derision, or made to feel like a loser. Most games work towards an overriding goal (even if the goal is meaningless) and continually gauges the player’s success against that goal. Each player is shown their progress and, most to the time, can monitor their status against their peer group. Peer comparison is not used to “beat up” poor performers but rather used and inspiration and motivation. (How they do this is the topic for another blog.) What is amazing is that nothing the games does is beyond what great leaders can do in their own organization. It doesn’t require special equipment, tools, programming or complex systems. Great organizations: Can create a work environment with regular increasing difficulty and complexity. Can create a work environment where failure is not punished and yet success is celebrated. Can provide regular feedback to employees (system or leader generated). Can provide an overarching goal and show individual progress towards that goal. Many people insist that the next generation is lazy and do not want to work. Maybe the problem can be solved, not by expecting them to change, but by changing how we lead them. Great organizations create great people. We only need to look at the video game developers to figure out how to do it. ~Wouter d’Ailly

The Relationship Between Productivity and Safety I was recently working in the field in the oil patch when a familiar concern was raised. Operators were (carefully) complaining about new safety protocols that had recently been put into place. While each of them understood that safety is still a major focus area for most oil companies, they believed that the new program would realize no discernable improvement in safety while there would be a reduction in productivity. They weren’t fighting the protocols per se. They were struggling with the changes and wanted to be able to justify the extra work to themselves.   None of us wants to do work that has a negative impact on output. If all you want from your staff is reluctant compliance, then mandating a safety program adequate. If you want your staff to be involved and put some effort into a safety program, you need to let them get their head around it first. This is not a new observation. Over 20 years ago, when I first started working with field staff, I had to deal with this issue. And yet, despite the persistence of these complaints, the data does not support the operators’ contention. The International Association of Oil and Gas producers shows a steady long term improvement in safety with a reduction in fatalities and total recordable incidents for the past 15 years. Clearly, in aggregate, safety programs work and improve safety. The other side of the equation is more difficult to address. Productivity in the oil patch has improved markedly in the last 15 years. The question is whether the productivity improvements came from better workplace practices or whether they came despite changes in workplace practices. When I talk about this to a blue-collar work force, I often ask those in attendance to think about the place where they have worked with the worst productivity, the most rework, the dirtiest of locations. At that location, did they have a great safety record or a lousy safety record. I then ask them to think about the most productive, least rework, cleanest shop they have worked at. Did that location have a great safety record or poor safety record? If you were to plot out many organizations, you would get a plot that looks like this. With some rare and few exceptions, there is a direct correlation between safety and productivity. It should not come as a surprise when you think it thru. The same skills it takes to be safe (plan for the job, right tools, right skills, right parts, do the job once and do it right) are the same skills it takes to be productive (plan for the job, right tools, right skills, right parts, do the job once and do it right). If you train your staff for safety, you are also training your staff to be productive. It is not a coincidence that this unsafe road is not very productive or that this safe road is. Years I ago I was engaged at a relatively new pulp mill. The mill was heavily unionized and in a brutal battle with management. Both the union and management team were poking at each other every opportunity that got.   I was concerned when I showed up there that the union would see me as another management initiative to poke them. To my surprise, my presence didn’t even cause the smallest of ripples in the pond. As it turned out, I was the ninth consultant to arrive in 10 years. The Union planned to just ignore me as they had every other group that preceded me. Most notably about the site was that it ran terribly for such a young facility. It was dirty, it stank, there were standing puddles of water/pulp everywhere. I started the project by spending time with the Union leadership. After I gained their trust I agreed that I would work with them solely on safety initiatives (no budget).   Management reluctantly agreed.   It wasn’t 3 months that the facility set a production record, and if I remember correctly, we set one each of the following 6 months. The process was clear. Let’s work safe, with the right preparation, using the right tools, using the right parts, and expect to do the job only once because we are going to do it right. It is not that safety is first or that productivity is first. The reality is that they truly go hand in hand.

How to Engage Employees Evidence suggests that people want to be involved and seek out new opportunities, and yet the average front line employee is working at 1/3 their capability. I’m in awe at the commitment teenagers put into their video games. Some kids play their games more than 14 hours a day with barely a break for meals. The other day I saw a gentleman walk straight into traffic on a busy street without looking up from his cell phone. That is a commitment to a cause. That gentleman owes his life to an attentive driver. If Google, Facebook, and EA can completely captivate the public at large, surely organizations can engage their employees at work. What are the characteristics of these devices/apps that make them so compelling? Video Games have an Addictive Quality to Them Let’s use video games as an example. While the game environment changes constantly, the activities associated with the game stay the same. The player operates a joystick with a number of controls and buttons on it. The games start relatively easy, requiring only the simplest of skills, but continually progresses in difficulty and complexity. The player gets a steady diet of feedback (virtual badges, awards, scores, visual and audio cues, levels, achievements). If a player fails to complete a task, they merely have to try again. They are rarely beaten up, mocked, given derision, or made to feel like a loser. Most games work towards an overriding goal (even if the goal is meaningless) and continually gauges the player’s success against that goal. Each player is shown their progress and most of the time can monitor their status against their peer group. Peer comparison is not used to belittle poor performers but rather used as inspiration and modelling. (How they do this is the topic for another blog.) It is the pursuit of the next WIN that gives the games their addictive quality. The game teases the player with how close they are to their next self administered shot of dopamine. We can Replicate the Game Experience in the Workplace What is amazing is that what the game does is not beyond what great leaders can do in their own organization. It doesn’t require special equipment, tools, programming or complex systems. Incorporating even some of these strategies in the workplace delivers remarkable results in regards to employee engagement. Let’s take a look at what can be done: Provide a steady stream of feedback including badges, awards, scores, video and audio cues. Create a work environment with regular increasing difficulty and complexity. Create a work environment where failure is not punished and yet success is celebrated. Provide an overarching goal and show individual progress towards that goal. This type of work environment does not come from applying soft skills. Companies need to follow a codified process supported by daily schedule controls. We have well-documented cases where an entire division literally doubled their output after their workplace employed just some of these strategies. A recent client has come to the realization that they now have 30% too much staff for the current work that needs to be completed, shortly after complaining that they didn’t have enough staff to meet current demand. As a bonus, existing staff are engaged, attentive, and loyal. The average North American worker works at about ⅓ their sustainable output. Think of the effort teenagers put into their video games vs the effort they put into their chores. Many people insist that the next generation is lazy and do not want to work. Maybe the problem can be solved, not by expecting them to change, but by changing how we lead them. Great organizations create great people. We can learn from video game developers to figure out how to do it.