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Quantum Emotive Therapy

by Charles H. Green on Thursday, April 5, 2007 (post #94)

Quantum physics feels paradoxical to us.

Is it a wave or a particle? Yes.

We’re accustomed to thinking paradoxes are uncommon. But they are not.

• The way out of a rip current is to go with the flow.
• The best way to sell someone is to stop trying to sell them.
• When your ski edges slip, lean downhill, not up.
• What you fear, you empower.

My brother in law Dick, a learned clinical psychologist, provides some paradoxical (or, at least, surprising) findings from the field of psychotherapy. I had asked him for insights about how people are influenced—here's his (abridged) response:

Meta-analyses of hundreds of psychotherapy outcome studies provide strong evidence that, overall, it works – it’s better than no treatment or placebo. That was big (and encouraging) news when it was first published in my field in the mid-70's after years of doubt …

The next question is—do some therapies work better than others?

The various therapeutic "schools" (Psychoanalytic, Gestalt, Jungian, Rogerian, Adlerian, Cognitive-Behavioral, Existential, Family Systems, and their myriad offspring) want to prove their "brand" works best. That interest was fueled by the insurance and managed care companies’ desire to apply the medical model to the delivery of psychological services—matching the right "treatment" to specific diagnoses.

Various types of psychotherapy have been compared to each other — and to controls—in an attempt to replicate the medical "clinical trials" method. The complication is consistency of treatment.  In drug tests, a pill is a pill.  But therapists’ “treatments,” however, are humanly applied and therefore vary infinitely.

Nonetheless, the research has resulted in one robust finding—the type of treatment doesn't significantly create differences in outcome.  Instead, ANY treatment seems better than none.

Can you say, “Hawthorne effect?”

Moreover, the strongest predictor of positive outcomes is—[CHG—hang on, wait for it]—the strength of the therapist-client "alliance"- i.e. the strength of the relationship… it is the therapist's personality and their ability to make rapid strong connection with clients which is most predictive of success.

So—Cognitive Therapy, or Landmark?  Yes.

There is some evidence that "allegiance" to one or another point of view correlates to positive outcome — i.e. strong belief in a school or model. That makes sense since that may play a part in projecting confidence and charisma. (That, by the way, has always been a challenge for me as a therapist since I am too philosophically inclined and broadly informed to be a true believer in any particular "brand" of therapy.)

(Dick and I both suffer from a predilection to subordinate belief to knowledge).

But back to Trust Matters.

One of this blog’s themes is that “business” is too often framed in terms like logical, deductive, behavioral, rational, self-serving, and trainable. Whereas people are often perverse, inductive, emotional, irrational (not the same as crazy), altruistic, and independent.

Result: loads of paradoxes.

What’s the best model for:

• Motivation—carrots or sticks?  Caring.
• Alignment—systems or credos?  Attention.
• Change management—people, or rewards?  Relationships.
• Leadership—reflection or inspiration?  Connection.
• Sales—SPIN or consultative?  Trust.

Whether on the therapist’s couch or in the conference room, a lot of apparent choices are just that—apparent.

The real key to personal change—in business as in life—is a matter of personal connection.  When we stand alone, we stay put.  When we touch others, and allow them to touch us, all things become possible.

I like it when commonsense and science coincide.

Make Money by Being Unselfish!

by Charles H. Green on Wednesday, April 4, 2007 (post #92)

Sounds ridiculous, right? Except in Sales.

David Hoffmeister, director of DePaul’s Sales Leadership Program, quoted in Management Issues blog
 has this to say about a recent study they conducted:

Most of the firms in the survey use the traditional base salary plus commission formula for compensation, but Hoffmeister argued that profound changes in the attitudes of today's savvier customers mean that they should consider alternative ways of rewarding sales staff.

"Customers are unhappy with sales people who are motivated by commissions to sell to them rather than serve them," he explained.

"Firms need to think about reshaping their compensation practices so that sales people are rewarded for partnering with customers rather than for sales volume alone."

Right on.

I recently heard of a major US company altering the incentive structure for major account managers.  Historically, the AM role was client-service-oriented.  Now they’ll be evaluated on sales volume.

Hmmm…let’s envision the results.

Anyone guess, more customer dissatisfaction?

How do companies make such seemingly (to me) wrong decisions?

For three reasons, I think.

1. Some really believe that since their product is the best, the customer is best-served by buying from them. Thus, customer satisfaction is a direct function of share of customer wallet. The potential for circular thinking is apparent.
2. More typically, the company is revenue-driven, and believes that revenue-based incentives—typically financial incentives—are a no-brainer. They are oblivious to the consequences Hoffman points out. Paying someone for selling you doesn’t make the customer feel cared about.
3. More deeply, there are a set of au courant beliefs—metrics, line-of-sight thinking, accountability— that link everything to short-term customer profitability. This flies in the face of the simple idea that the greatest short-term profitability comes from long-term customer focus—and precisely not from focusing on tweaking short-term metrics.

Some companies say, “We’re very customer-centric. Incenting our key customer relationship people on sales aligns their interests with the company’s, and they know that the company’s goals are to be customer-focused. It’s all a virtuous circle, and we’re aligning the compensation system to fit with it.”

In my experience, if you hear this, check your wallet.  They’re telling you that they’re paying the salespeople more money if they behave unselfishly.

That’s like paying a boy scout to escort the little old lady across the street.

Offering bribes to obey the ten commandments.

Paying people to go to church.

It’s telling them to be unselfish by appealing to their selfish interests.

Does it work? Sure—it works to create faux unselfishness, fake sincerity, conditional customer service. That’s the trouble with external rewards; they poison intrinsic motivation.

But don’t listen to me. Check out Jeffrey Gitomer, one of the more in-your-face personal sales cold-call sales gurus (who nonetheless gets the trust thing, by the way):

According to Gitomer—and he ought to know—the concept of the money-driven short-term shake-hands-count-your-fingers hustler salesman is not genetically encoded in the salesperson. It’s a direct consequence of the way executive management has treated sales over the years.

They got what they asked for: people who would hustle to move product. The majority of salespeople have never felt comfortable with that self-view, in my experience, and have suffered from not being able to articulate their way out of it.

Hoffmeister is right. Customers have nothing against alignment of rewards—they’d just like to see the alignment based on value to client, not on money extracted from client.

What’s amazing to me is that selling organizations, for the most part, have yet to figure out that this level of customer satisfaction is also in their best interest. 

Gitomer lays the blame at the feet of top management. But there’s plenty to go around.

The Top 5 Posts For March

by Charles H. Green (posted by Administrator) on Tuesday, April 3, 2007 (post #93)

These were the five most trafficed posts during March - a couple of which are actually older posts which bounced back to the top during March.  If you didn't have a chance to read them when they were originally posted, now's a good time to do so, and to join the conversation.

1. You Empower What You Fear
2. Trust and Social Networking
3. American Secret
4. Trust, Betrayal and the 9/11 Jumpers
5. Working and Feeling Good

The Sacred Cow of Retention

by Charles H. Green on Sunday, April 1, 2007 (post #91)

Lets take on a sacred cow. Or at least a venerated goat.

Let’s talk about employee retention.

Employee retention is one of those unexamined “obvious” goods. Here’s an excerpt from a typical article, this one from HR.com’s Trendwatcher newsletter, Issue 353, March 23, 2007.

Retention Before the Fact

By Carol Morrison

“Retention is always important because of the investment you make in people,” observes Gerald Shields, CIO of American Family Life Assurance Co.….experts agree that the costs of losing valued employees can be considerable. That is why some experts encourage companies to begin efforts to retain employees before their employment officially begins.

…the average cost to replace a worker in private industry is $13,996…Other sources have replacement costs ranging from nearly 29% of an employee’s annual wages to several times his/her yearly salary. 83% of HR professionals at U.S. companies express concern about both retention and recruitment

…taking care during the recruitment process can save organizations the far greater costs associated with replacing employees who leave and the resulting losses in productivity and morale of remaining workers.

Sounds reasonable until you look under the hood.

What’s happening with employee retention (I’ll deal with customer retention another time) is what happened with loyalty. A good concept has been doubly perverted, by:

• a. Justifying the concept solely in terms of profit to the company, and
• b. Mistaking the indicators for the originally intended object.

It starts with, “Retention is important because of the investment you make.”

Not because it’s good for the people themselves? For the customers? For the society at large?

Nope. Because of the level of company investment.

Not long ago, employee retention was positively correlated with a lot of good things—customer retention, for one thing. Knowledge and familiarity, better judgment, good relationships, motivation. And, yes, lower recruitment costs.

High retention rates meant you were growing and keeping things interesting for employees—an indicator of organizational health. The assumption was what’s good for the organization is what’s good for the employees—and, very much, it was. A virtuous circle.

Fast forward. Good employment advice now is keep your resume updated, keep looking around. Companies outsource and combine. Careers develop across companies. Keep your eyes and options open. Be flexible.

Don’t bemoan the loss of “loyalty” between company and employee—that’s so 20th century. Loyalty still has meaning—but it’s loyalty to teammates, friends, co-professionals, clients and customers, not so much to the one signing your paycheck. This is not bad: it simply means the corporate entity as a permanent source of identity and cohesion is kaput.

But we're stuck with the ideological residue of still thinking that company and employees both benefit by high retention.

In today’s world, “retention” often looks like “restraint.” Keeping people in cages is the most effective form of retention, but it’s not politically correct.

Instead, we have golden handcuffs. Vesting. Club memberships. Equity. Non-compete agreements. Whispers of disloyalty about those who leave. Signing up search firms to get on their non-raid list.

Is this consistent with “we care about our people?” Not any more. Yet many firms claim to pursue both.

But you can’t have it both ways, not anymore. When careers are developed across companies, then bolting the door is—very simply—not in the interests of your employees. Their interest is to develop. That may or may not happen by staying put.

Great firms don’t mistake restraint for retention. Their people stay because they are free to leave—and choose not to. And those who do choose to leave are celebrated as alumni, not shunned as disloyal.

Paradoxically, the firms who actually do care about their employees—up to and including celebrating them finding a better job outside—will continue to have the highest employee retention rate. By serving employees—not restraining them. By treating them as ends, not as means.

Trust, Privacy and Professionalism

by Charles H. Green on Friday, March 30, 2007 (post #88)

Carey Bertolet blogs on “Personal Isn’t Private: Advice for New Lawyers in the New Milennium” about increasing opportunities for personal behavior to become public—in the workplace.

Bertolet lists funny-as-long-as-it-isn’t me private emails gone public, ranging from dating behavior to employment disagreements. His message: “Everyone is entitled to a personal life, but it's important to be aware that your personal life isn't necessarily private…Big Brother isn’t necessarily watching—but he very possibly uses the same dry cleaner.”

Bertolet is certainly right—but it goes further. The personal is becoming less private—and professionalism must become more personal.

20 years ago I had a rolodex. It had maybe 400 names on it, many outdated. Half didn’t hear from me even once a year. I met maybe 200 new people per year as a consultant. I had published one article. I went to a couple association-type meetings per year.

My clients were stable organizations. Their issues were either strategic—competitive battles with other stable organizations—or managerial—the techniques of influencing others within their organization.

Fast-forward. I have 3000 names in my Outlook database, which I cull frequently. I can recall nearly every one. I communicate much more frequently. I send more holiday cards than I used to, and of course massively more emails. I blog. I publish articles on my site, and on others’ sites. I meet thousands of people per year. I now take cell-phone photos of clients to match up with names. At Iguazu Falls, Brazil a few weeks ago, my blackberry's data reception was as good as in Manhattan.

I am vastly more connected to vastly more people. As, no doubt, are you.

My clients are not stable organizations—they are in flux. People come and go more frequently—and more easily. “Disloyal employee” is becoming an oxymoron. One of my clients sells 95% of its product through partners who are also competitors. Every one of my clients is an outsourcer; several are insourcers of others. Corporations of one (like me) are increasing.

As business processes become more and more discrete, they become more and more plug-compatible (think object-oriented programming for an analogy). Transactions that used to happen internally now happen externally. The internal world of a fixed organization is becoming the outer world of inter-organizational commerce.

The world is becoming less about competitive production, and more about commercial collaboration. Less vertical, more horizontal. Les internal, more external. The atomic unit of business is no longer the corporation: it’s the individual. We move around. Our benefits and pensions are less tied to our employer. Ditto our personal lives.

The idea of “private” behaviors is becoming obsolete.

You can conclude, as Bertolet does, that you’d better watch your private behavior; assume whatever you say will end up on the cover of The Times, that every email will be circulated to everyone. True that, and good advice.

But there are two more conclusions.

I used to smoke. Then it became a private behavior in an increasingly public world. It was too hard to maintain, impossible to keep private. Being cautious is exhausting. It’s difficult to hide the real you in an increasingly public world!
I finally just quit smoking? Analogously, why not live your life in such a way that you’re not concerned about it being public?

What if you always behaved well toward others? Didn’t tell lies. Got over resentments. Lived a grateful and giving life. And so forth. Then you wouldn’t have to worry much about things being revealed.

The second conclusion has to do with professionalism. If private lives conflict with professionalism, then we need to focus on the real core of professionalism, not on outward manifestations.

I used to wear a tie. I stopped after most of my clients did. A tie is the height of symbolism-without-function. Yes, in a way it signifies respect. But a world that demands to be connected needs less symbolism, and more real connection.

Professional codes of conduct need revisiting to ensure they fit with an increasingly connected world. Stock brokers, software manufacturers, real estate agents, financial planners, lawyers, movie makers, book publishers—all these industries, and more, need to re-examine their concepts of professionalism to give greater weight to client and employee relationships. “Caveat emptor” sucks as a standard of professionalism. So does “sustainable competitive advantage.”

The debates about private property and copyrights are going to get resolved—in favor of the commons. In an increasingly interconnected world, we can’t afford to let an insistence on 18th century property rights dominate the collective good the way we did even just 20 years ago.

20 years ago I met a man in Vero Beach selling