• 1991 - BP was cited as the most polluting company in the US based on EPA toxic release data.
• Between January 1997 and March 1998, BP was responsible for 104 oil spills.
• September, 1999 - BP Exploration Alaska agreed to resolve charges of illegal dumping of hazardous waste for $22 million. The company illegally discharged toxic waste by injecting it down the outer rim of the Alaska North Slope, and management failed to report the illegal injections when they learned of the conduct.
• August, 2006 - BP shut down operations in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, due to leaking wells. The company had spilled over one million liters of oil.
• March, 2005 - BP’s Texas City, Texas refinery exploded, causing 15 deaths, injuring 180 people, and forcing thousands of nearby residents to remain sheltered. The incident came as the culmination of a series of less serious accidents at the refinery.
• April 20, 2010 - BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded, 11 people were killed, with a monumental environmental disaster requiring a starting fund of $20 billion to make restitution.

As a result of all this, BP has been vilified in various forms. Focusing on BP as an organization, however, gives us limited perspective on what is happening, what might go wrong in the future, or where any resolution of BP’s historic problems might reside. It is the thinking and action of the people, and especially the top leadership, of the organization that hold the key to the future success of the company (see our article on Anthropomorphizing Business).

Given this snapshot of BP over the past two decades, then, it was startling when the outgoing CEO, Tony Hayward, stridently announced that BP was “a model of social corporate responsibility.”

At last we have a clue to this gargantuan business’ stumbling around the globe, leaving a trail of misery. Tony Hayward appears to be a victim of his own certainty.

A Bit About the Science

Human beings are storytelling machines. This is one of our brain functions that is unique to humans - no other living thing on the planet can make up a story to explain the world around it. It served us from the beginnings of our brain evolution by providing a mechanism to make sense of the world and keep ourselves safe. Our storytelling is motivated by the part of our brain that functions to protect us from all manner of danger, and this happens at an unconscious level. By the time our stories reach our awareness, we have begun to believe them as true.

People typically do not intentionally lie or mislead when they tell their stories. It is a natural brain process for us to be build a feeling of rightness about our stories. The stronger our emotional reaction to a situation, the more likely we are to defend our stories as true. It may not be so surprising after all that Tony Hayward, after several months of fierce attack by the media, the public, and government, was soundly ensconced in his story of social responsibility. It is no surprise to have difficulty pulling back from a story that made us feel safe.

Certainty causes very specific problems. As a victim of certainty, we are blind to alternative thinking, actions and solutions. Even when people point out viable alternate approaches, our ability to hear it as viable suffers from our extreme certainty that our story is true. However, when alternatives are eliminated, we are no longer doing our best thinking, making our best decisions or taking optimal actions, and business can suffer.

Let us speculate about an organization that has a CEO who is stuck in certainty.

Recognizing Certainty

There are a couple of obvious clues to an organization suffering from leaders whose certainty has become unassailable.

• How likely is it that anyone working for Mr. Hayward would feel safe challenging his feeling of certainty about BP’s level of social responsibility? It is a reasonable story to imagine that BP is full of capable, well-intentioned people doing their jobs as best as they can.  If we can see clearly that something is going wrong but are reluctant to tell our story to our boss (or higher), this is a major clue that certainty has taken a victim. Here is how it works: an employee believes her boss’ certainty will preclude his hearing a new story about a situation. She will act to avoid being the one who attempts to break through the wall of certainty surrounding the boss. With this level of misinformation, mistakes in the business will increase. Assuming he is like everyone else in his victimhood, Mr. Hayward got to his level of certainty not only because of his own internal storytelling but because no one challenged him - a vicious circle if ever there was one.

• Even after the past 10 years of bad news, it may be safe to assume Mr. Hayward was surprised by the Deepwater Horizon explosion.

Another clue that certainty has taken squatters’ rights is when we are surprised. “What happened???!!!” is the natural response of someone who was certain everything was going to work out the way he expected.

Fantasy though it is, here is a potential story about BP and its’ leaders: moving fast, getting results, and meeting stockholder expectations have precluded thorough problem solving, sound decision making and the removal of blame from the system. How difficult it would be to continue, year after year, to find your company’s name in the front page headlines, disparaged again and again for damaging the environment or putting employees’ lives at risk. There are many ways to respond to each of these situations, but with a certainty that you are doing what you are “supposed to do,” how can you see options for change?

Reducing the Impact of Certainty in Your Business

If you were a leader in an organization that had fallen victim to certainty, what could you do, right now, to reduce its effects? The best way to overcome certainty is to play the “What if we are wrong” game. Here’s an example. You are in a meeting with the rest of the executive staff talking about the organization being “socially responsible.” Ask the question, “What if we are wrong about that?” The conversation might sound something like this:

“What if we are not socially responsible? I know we think we are, and we may well be, but let’s think for a few moments about what would be true if we were not socially responsible.”

“Well, it would be a disaster in today’s day and age! We’d be poised to have something terrible happen that could cost us dearly!”

“Good. So how would we become social responsible?”

“Well, define it first, I guess. Being socially responsible means, uh, well, making sure we are meeting all the requirements imposed on us regarding environmental impact.”

“And safety! We’d have a great safety program and everyone would be following all the safety rules that we know keep people safer.”

“Yes, even when they don’t want to - like wearing uncomfortable clothing or helmets, for example.”

And the conversation could continue, moving into questions like “how do we increase our attention to safety, then?” Eventually, even though you already feel your organization is socially responsible, you now have done some good thinking about it, may have decided to alter your approaches to some of your processes, and you have possibly increased your level of social responsibility that will save a life or a grassland.

Outside our “certain” view, alternatives become available that were not visible because of our reason being eclipsed by certainty.

Our language has supported this idea for a long time. We talk about how “the organization raised money for…” and “the corporation experienced higher than expected results.” We have been anthropomorphizing our businesses as a short-cut in our language that has now played out in our laws.

What is a corporation? There are two definitions important for this discussion.

• First, it is an aggregation of people working together to accomplish specific business objectives. Everything that a corporation “experiences” happens because one or more individuals in the business took some action. If “the corporation experienced higher than expected results,” it was the actions of individuals who made it so, and who, in fact, experienced the success. Credit given in the form of accolades to the corporation waters down the potential impact of that success. When a statement is made that a corporation took some action, implied is that every employee said “yes” to this action. This of course is often not the case.
• Second, a corporation is a social construction designed specifically to shield this aggregation of people from responsibility that could bring financial ruin and embarrassment if not shame to the owners. It plays out in the tax and legal arena but socially, it is an artificial barrier to responsibility and accountability for the corporate actors. To shield people from the consequences of their actions often leads to distortions in intentions and behaviors.

Whether you view corporations as shields against true responsibility or as a simplification of a complex social process, our gravitation to these types of thought models, resulting in the anthropomorphic company, happen as a result of very adaptive brain mechanisms.

• Our Old Brains simplify, and these are simple answers to complex questions. So, treating a corporation as a person simplifies, excessively, the complexity of the social effort involved in the business.
• Our Old Brains protect us from blame with vigor. Using language that implies that a corporation “believes” or “intends” is a way to reduce blame if the actions supporting beliefs and intentions don’t work out.

The net effect is sub-optimal business performance. Examine your own business. Do you accept and work with the existing complexity of the social enterprise? Do you enable true responsibility for actions and choices?

The missing ingredient is a credible voice for a hopeful future. Any references to a positive future are based in models that brought us the current disaster. “Don’t worry, the banks have learned their lessons” falls on deaf ears to those who feel powerless in these economic times. There is no clear line of sight to a new and better future on a national front.

Expanding on Stephen Covey’s Emotional Bank Account, there has been a huge withdrawal from the global emotional bank account. In order to increase confidence, the public is looking for deposits. The passage of the health care reform and the banking re-regulation are small deposits, because they promise greater results than can easily be predicted. What will be helpful going forward is not a Grand Program (although that would help), but rather a steady stream of small emotional deposits to restore the balance.

As leaders in businesses around the globe, it is difficult to see what specific action to take to influence this. Unfortunately, when we are in the midst of a heavy beating, it is difficult to do the right thing. Here, however, are some suggestions of what we can do to help ourselves and our employees receive the emotional bank account deposits that will restore balance.

• Avoid Blaming Anyone. It is a trap of the first order to blame anyone for what is happening in your business, no matter how clear it seems. When we blame the government (or anyone else), we distract ourselves with a feeling of “rightness” and reduce our ability to think problems through to solution. This makes it more difficult for your people to take action on the things they can control.
• Make Deposits on your Own. Focus on the successes and capabilities of your company, your team, your family, your community. There are always things going on that are good. Holding those events, actions, and efforts up as examples of how we thrive in bad times helps people see how to move forward.
• Encourage Local Efforts. It is unlikely that one huge deposit is going to set our economy, our political climate, or our business struggles straight. Success lies in local movements - the local community, your company, your niche market. Find something you can do locally to make a difference and encourage your employees to do the same.
• Imagine a Better Future. The doom-and-gloom surrounding us can be contagious in ways that are harmful to us. What will it take to see that you and your company will survive and thrive? If you are doing something that matters, the payoff may be longer term than desired but it resides in the future. Talk about the future in ways that people can envision so they can form ideas about how to influence it.

You can do small things now as a leader in your organization. They may not be big, dramatic gestures that will set the economy or your employees’ morale aright in one fell swoop, but done consistently, these little “deposits” will restore the balance required to get your organization back on a positive track.

]]> http://www.newbrainforbusiness.com/?feed=rss2&p=755 http://www.newbrainforbusiness.com/?p=745 http://www.newbrainforbusiness.com/?p=745#comments Tue, 17 Aug 2010 08:00:33 +0000 admin http://www.newbrainforbusiness.com/?p=745 Is trust in the workplace important, and if so, why? What is it, how can you tell if it exists or if it is missing? The concept of trust engages us in many different ways.

But first of all, how do you define trust? We like to say that trust is a willingness to expose yourself (or your resources) to risk. We often like to talk about the Trust Equation:

Trust = Predictability + Safety

This equation gives us some ideas about how to build and recognize trust. It stems from research about how our brains work, so it addresses trust at an unconscious level.

Predictability
Trust is enabled by predictability because when we accurately predict the future, even in very small ways, we are positively reinforced with a small jolt of “feel-good” chemicals. This happens physiologically, of course, and we have no or very limited actual awareness of it.

When our perception of another person’s behavior is that it is predictable, we feel we can accurately predict what he or she will do in certain situations. “You can count on Bob to get after a problem as soon as he sees it.” “Be careful of Becky, she’s always just on the edge of hysteria.” In both cases, we feel confident that we can predict behavior, which at an unconscious level we want to be able to do.

When we predict the future inaccurately - say, Bob ignores a problem or Becky is calm and gentle - our fear machine kicks in. When we are fearful, we are more protective, more careful, and more likely to begin predicting a bad future than a good one.

Remember, our brains are over-adapted for today’s environment. In addition, our fear machine (our “old brain”) takes hierarchical priority over the part of our brain that allows us to do our best problem solving, analysis, and decision making (our “new brain”). So if we have an old brain response, trust can easily be impacted.

Safety
Trust is enabled by safety because when the behavior of the other person allows us to feel safe, our old brain is not as active, and we are able to interact more effectively with each other. If the other person behaves in ways that reduce safety (or we perceive them to do so), the old brain takes over, and trust is reduced. Similar to predictability, when safety is low, trust diminishes.

What Trust in the Workplace Looks Like

• We self-monitor less (both words and actions)
• We are less likely to second guess our own actions or the actions of others.
• We disclose more about ourselves or information we have held in confidence.
• We are more immediate in our responses.
• We can endure being in a “one down” position longer, meaning we see the other person having more power or control than we have and accept that longer.
• We feel less afraid.

So what? Can we work okay without trust? Obviously we can, because our businesses are full of people who do not trust each other, and work gets done, money gets made. Then why do we care?

We believe that our organizations can have much higher levels of effectiveness when people have more new brain activity and less old brain activity. Sworn enemies can in fact sit across the table from each other and negotiate a truce, so trust is not required when a vested interest in a common outcome is at play.

But in the workplace, when we are dealing with people we don’t trust, we take more time, pay less attention, jump to quicker and less effective conclusions, make poorer decisions, and create fewer new ideas. Imagine what results could flow from a team that has intentionally worked to overcome this by consciously upscaling the Trust Equation.

What You Can Do
We are less predictable when our intentions are unclear. Humans are magnificent storytelling creatures, and we often include our understanding of the intention of others in our stories. To increase your predictability, explain your intentions. To increase the predictability of others, ask them their intentions. When you find you are responding to a situation that feels unpredictable, ask people their intentions. “What were you hoping happened just now?” “What are you ultimately looking to have happen?” or simply “Help me understand your intentions.” All good ways to surface intentions and therefore increase predictability.

In the workplace, safety is reduced in many, many ways (see our video, Fear in the Workplace). Some actions you can take to increase safety include helping people understand what is important about what they are doing and how it ties to a greater good; helping people understand their choices and not feel they have no choice; recognizing people’s emotional reactions and acknowledging them, even if behavior stemming from those emotions is not acceptable; and finally telling people what you want, not what you do not like.

Rich Trafton replies: There is no question that we are all fully embedded in our environment. To think about our behavior separate from our environment is futile. That is not to say that we can’t do a lot to shape our own environment. When we strive for an effective, integrated balance between old and new brain behavior, our lives get better, even if the environment doesn’t change.

Asking questions about what is most effective begs another question: most effective to accomplish what? From our perspective, sustainable levels of high performance where people feel good about what they are doing is one good target. So, from that perspective, what do you get when you take smart people and put them in sub-optimal organizations (for example, a poorly structured corporation)? Even if you get some good stuff for a while, it fades. People, even smart ones, can’t keep up consistently good work in a bad environment.

A smart, thoughtful balance of old and new brain behavior from leaders can produce a work environment where even moderately talented people (which includes a very large portion of the population) can produce results that make a difference. When you throw in some really smart people, you can get really outstanding results. When you have a lot of old brain-driven leadership in an organization, performance is simply not sustainable.

Question: Our human brain is arguably the most complex mystery yet discovered in our universe. It is capable of both the most basic and the most creative functions due to our developed neocortex. If our brain’s evolution is enabling greater creativity, why are our BEHAVIORS so slow to evolve and even destructive? Could the evolution of the brain itself give clues to the necessary evolution of our social systems? Could the brain itself yield insights into the kind of social structures that may have to rise and fall before a higher stability is achieved? C.W., Northeast Texas

Diane Marentette replies: You’re right. The brain has yielded many insights already into the kinds of social structures that can take us to a higher stability, as you aptly put it. For example: we pay people and “manage performance” in ways that manipulate and therefore produce fearful reactions instead of inviting people to be their best.

Organizations less bound up in old fear-based ways of motivating workers are surfacing, although it may seem very slowly. For example, allowing workers to choose their own hours to work in order to accommodate other aspects of their lives. This is a good example of new thinking. Unfortunately many of the new ideas continue to support the myths that (a) we can motivate others and (b) it is the managers job to do it.

Our “new brain” (where analysis, problem solving, and creativity take place) is overridden by our “old brain” (where emotion resides) when we are frightened. Many of our organizational systems and cultural elements are formed when we are using old brain energy.

Our behaviors as a society have, in fact, evolved - we no longer (typically) behead or crucify, for example. But it takes a good deal of work to intentionally behave in ways that are foreign when our old brain is fired up.

Rich talks about why fear isn’t our friend in the workplace. Obviously there is plenty to worry about at work, but it behooves us to reduce fear and fear-producing actions in the workplace at much as possible.

Read what people are saying about the book, A New Brain for Business!

I am already re-reading A New Brain for Business. I found it to be a useful business reference that provided logical approaches and solutions within context to each and every business issue outlined. I am outlining key points from the book for my own quick and easy referral. A New Brain for Business has a utility that I haven’t found as much in other business books. It was a very worthwhile read.

-Leslie Sullivan, Managing Director, Breast Health Global Initiative (BHGI), Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

I read your book and really enjoyed it. Very interesting and useful connection of leadership and behavior to the science behind the behavior. It was also a quick and easy read, and quite practical.

-Ian Ziskin, President, Executive Excellence Group

Congratulations on a terrific book! I thought it was very easy to read and it provided lots of good information that many business people don’t really know or if they do know, they don’t know what to do about it. I really like the “what to do about it” sections — very practical and in bite-sized pieces that make it possible for someone to actually do.

-Connie Henson, Author, Learning Partnerships, and Founder, Learning Quest

I’ve read the book (twice!). I found it very insightful and particularly liked your “real world” examples.  I am now more aware than ever of my old brain kicking in & just yesterday realized it was happening & was able to calm it down. I’m scanning this email right now to see if I’ve used any “old brain” language!! Reading the book also helped to understand some of the changes our firm is making so I can be more supportive.

-Sherri Hannaway, CPA, Bradley Consulting Group, Denver

Let’s drill into this a bit, however, and see what we are actually doing. If you pay attention to the situations in which you are “being nice,” you may see that you are actually taking responsibility for and control of the emotional state of the other person, without his or her permission or even participation! The other person does not get to say what he wants, and you are not fessing up to what you are doing. The impact on the relationship between you and the other guy is enormous.

If you think about it, it is patronizing at the very least to try to predict others’ emotional responses and behaviors so that you can “manage” them. While we portray this activity (superficially) as a beneficial behavior to the other person - “I don’t want to hurt his feelings,” or “I don’t want to make him mad” - we are actually at our self-serving best! We are masking our own genuine and authentic thoughts and feelings and avoiding theirs. We construe this action to be for their comfort, but in fact it is for our own. When we engage in “being nice,” we are making a judgment that the other person can’t handle his own emotional reactions (hurt feelings) or we can’t handle them (making him angry).

Here are a couple of typical workplace examples. An employee works hard on a job but doesn’t do it very well. The project deadline is looming, so you decide that you can fix it quickly yourself. When she asks about it later, you tell her it was “fine.” Even if she never hears more than that, you have “protected” her from learning how to do the job better next time. In addition, if she felt she worked hard, she may feel slighted when she receives no praise about the work, so you probably hurt her feelings after all!

Another example is when you have a co-worker who blows up when challenged. He thinks he has finished a project, but he forgot a critical step. You and others around him are spending time trying to decide how to handle the situation without having to deal with his blow up. Discussions range from making excuses for his blow ups (“he is under a lot of stress”) to cursing the fact that you have to deal with his “affliction.” Days pass. The company has now supported hours of discussion with no action, and someone finally tells him. He blows up, once again. It passes. What a waste of time and effort for everyone!

This behavior on our part is learned. From an early age, our parents, our teachers, our pastors, our friends all teach and reinforce the idea that people getting agitated is a bad thing. We don’t like to see emotional extremes from others - distress, crying, or even hysterical happiness - so we avoid them by “being nice.” The result is that we are judging others, manipulating them, and undermining a true sense of trust between us.

We are lucky, most of us, to find a handful of people in our lives with whom we can share our full spectrum of emotional reactions and have them actually be helpful in that moment. If and when we do find this high-trust relationship, we begin to find out more about ourselves - an incredibly worthwhile endeavor.

Next time you find yourself thinking you want to avoid hurting someone’s feelings or making someone mad, imagine what it would feel like if you knew they were about to control your emotional reactions.