People matter; we're not all the same!

Someone sent me a link to an Information Week commentary, titled Why Bully IT Bosses Lose the Game as seen here: http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/232500519?cid=nl_IW_btl_2012-01-27_html&elq=c9b9189a1545498186a21649d1a4e2a1

The author mentions the importance of recognizing individuals as distinct entities in groups and not being the kind of boss who applies labels to a group that marks everybody.

My response follows...

Good article! I have had a ton of exposure over the last 3 years to academic views/research on organizational & leadership behavior/psychology/theories that I can attest to what this guy writes. He is right on and there is research to prove it.

A bellwether case that has been studied in countless socio-organizational-psychological classes was that of a test conducted decades ago on how to increase factory production by improving shop floor lighting and other environmentals.

The premise was simple: if we improve lighting (humidity, temp, etc), we expect production to increase.

To test the premise, researchers devised an experiment to determine to what extent, if any, that better environmental conditions on the shop floor could positively affect production by workers. They worked with different shifts and make-up of people to ensure a cross-section of results. They increased lighting; they decreased it; they changed the humidity; they did this and that in a very scientific approach to determine which changes or combination of changes had the greatest effect on production yields. And with each change, the researchers consulted with workers to understand how those changes affected them, often tweaking the process based on worker feedback. The experiment went on for weeks with changes followed by interviews followed by more changes followed by more interviews.

You know what? They were right! Production figures showed a clear correlation to better environmental conditions… or so they thought. What they came to find out later – and this is why the case is mentioned in classes even today – is that the lighting & humidity made little to no difference on production yields.

What made all the difference in the world – the thing that raised production yields and the one thing that had been missing from the shop floor up until then was this: involving workers in the decision-making process + showing a genuine interest in workers and letting them participate in the process + treating workers as people whose input was valued and who could work alongside management to make a positive difference in an organization à all of which raised the self-esteem of workers à which caused them to work harder and find better way to do their jobs à which lead to increased production yields, fewer errors and so on.

The “problem”’ with the experiment as originally intended was that the workers knew they were being studied. The subsequent realization that is was the attention that management and the researchers showered on the workers that increased production went on to revolutionize shop floor processes. It was the first major step in the evolution of organizations that ultimately lead to the Zero-Defect model used in Japan’s burgeoning auto manufacturing business in the 1950’s to TQM in the 1980’s to HPO, Sixth Sigma, etc in the 1990’s and into today.

People are individuals. Groups are individuals who come together for a purpose. Yes, there are group mentalities, but the people are still individuals with individual needs, goals, contributions, etc. And they deserve to be treated and respected as contributing individuals and not lumped into a group that “Bully Bosses” can collectively and conveniently blame for their own failures.

Thanks,
Greg