Tag Archives: deception

All the world is but a stage

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All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely play­ers: They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts (Wil­liam Shakespeare, As you like it).

Pro­fes­sional social net­work site LinkedIn has con­duc­ted a sur­vey to ana­lyse buzzwords in user pro­files. It seems that almost every­body on LinkedIn is cre­at­ive and effect­ive. These are, how­ever, mean­ing­less state­ments as cre­ativ­ity and effect­ive­ness are not fixed states but vari­ables on a slid­ing scale.

The use of mean­ing­less buzzwords is pan­demic across the globe, although there are regional dif­fer­ences. Pro­fes­sion­als from coun­tries with a high level of indi­vidu­al­ism1. prefer to be cre­at­ive, i.e. have indi­vidual and ori­ginal ideas. While in Spain, a coun­try with a high tend­ency towards uncer­tainty avoid­ance, prefer to be per­ceived as ‘mana­gerial’. Most Itali­ans are prob­lem solv­ers, which is not sur­pris­ing given the eco­nomic situ­ation in this country.

Decep­tion and per­cep­tion man­age­ment is very com­mon in soci­ety and an integ­ral part of being human. Our self is not an innate prop­erty of the per­son, it is care­fully con­struc­ted. Soci­olo­gist Erving Goff­man uses a the­at­rical meta­phor, inspired by Shakespeare’s lines open­ing this post. We use scripts, buy props and cre­ate back­drops for the roles we lay in society.

Pro­fes­sional life is, how­ever, a spe­cial case as the selves we cre­ate in the work­place are mostly very dif­fer­ent from that which we are in per­sonal life. Goff­man once wrote that exec­ut­ives gen­er­ally are:2.

“… blind­ing them­selves and oth­ers to the fact that they hold their jobs partly because they look like exec­u­tives, not because they can work like executives.”

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Notes
  1. Hofs­tede, G. (2001). Culture’s con­sequences: Com­par­ing val­ues, beha­vi­ors, insti­tu­tions, and organ­iz­a­tions across nations. Thou­sand Oaks, CA: Sage. [↩]
  2. Erv­ing Goff­man (1959), The present­a­tion of self in every­day life, Anchor Books. [↩]

Women Do Not Make Good Executive Managers

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The title of this post is pat­ently absurd.

The pur­pose of a title like Women Do Not Make Good Exec­ut­ive Man­agers is to appeal to any­one who holds a strong view on the mat­ter (and wel­come to this blog — I hope the fol­low­ing thoughts don’t hurt too much!). Admit­tedly, I could have chosen the title, Men Do Not Make Good Exec­ut­ive Man­agers, but that was in a strange twist of polit­ical cor­rect­ness, less con­tro­ver­sial and atten­tion grabbing.

Key skill of a lucid man­ager is the abil­ity to chal­lenge your own beliefs and respond to evid­ence and data. In the words of Carl Sagan:

It is bet­ter by far to embrace the hard truth than a reas­sur­ing fable.”

I’ll lay my cards on the table here and let you know that I per­son­ally believe that the effect­ive­ness of an Exec­ut­ive Man­ager is a com­bin­a­tion of intel­li­gence, people skills, train­ing, innov­at­ive think­ing, tech­nical know­ledge, cor­por­ate and team cul­ture com­bined with myriad external factors. Gender, of its own accord, is unlikely to sig­ni­fic­antly change the Executive’s effectiveness. Regardless, a vast major­ity of Exec­ut­ive Man­agers in Aus­tralia (and other coun­tries) are males.1.

So, if more Exec­ut­ive Man­agers are male, does that imply that males are more pre­dis­posed to being Exec­ut­ives? The simple answer is, ‘No”. This type of reas­on­ing is a com­mon logical fal­lacy known as post hoc ergo prop­tor hoc, which is a pop­u­lar device among politi­cians. In this case the fal­lacy lies in the assump­tion that the fact that most Exec­ut­ive Man­agers are male (post hoc) is proof that they are exec­ut­ives because of their gender (ergo prop­tor hoc). While the absurdity of this extreme example may seem obvi­ous, less obvi­ous fal­la­cies go undetec­ted in the work­place. It seems that crit­ical think­ing is less likely to be engaged when encoun­ter­ing many of the pop­u­lar per­son­al­ity tests.2.

Many dif­fer­ent per­son­al­ity tests are used around the world to sep­ar­ate people into cat­egor­ies. The inten­tion is to sug­gest a beha­vi­oural or career pre­dis­pos­i­tion; an example being those cat­egor­ised as ENTJ — “The Exec­ut­ive”, the clear implic­a­tion being “ENTJs Make Bet­ter Exec­ut­ives”. In some cases research is claimed, but rarely cited, to demon­strate that par­tic­u­lar ‘types’ are found in par­tic­u­lar pro­fes­sions or roles imply­ing that people of a par­tic­u­lar per­son­al­ity pro­file are most appro­pri­ate for that type of role. This post hoc ergo prop­ter hoc ration­al­isa­tion is as unjus­ti­fi­able as the state­ment “Women Do Not Make Good Exec­ut­ive Man­agers”. It is this type of ration­al­isa­tion that can under­mine the decision-making pro­cess of any man­ager which, in turn, under­mines their effectiveness.

A lucid man­ager will be more effect­ive if aware of decision-making traps

On a daily basis man­agers are faced with many decisions and each manager’s effect­ive­ness is, in a large part, determ­ined by the effect­ive­ness of their decision-making abil­ity. A lucid man­ager will be more effect­ive if aware of decision-making traps such as post hoc jus­ti­fic­a­tions; par­tic­u­larly when the faced with the ques­tion, “Do you think we should use a per­son­al­ity test?”.

When con­fron­ted by this ques­tion it is far bet­ter for a man­ager to chal­lenge their own beliefs and to pos­sibly even embrace hard truths by ask­ing whether per­son­al­ity tests are merely a reas­sur­ing fable.

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Notes
  1. For fur­ther inform­a­tion check the 2008 EOWA Aus­tralian Census of Women in Lead­er­ship which reports that only 10.7% of ASX200 Exec­ut­ive Man­agers were women des­pite women com­pris­ing 44.9% of the Aus­tralian Labour Force. [↩]
  2. See also our pre­vi­ous post, The Lies we Tell and a reflect­ive essay on the use of per­son­al­ity tests, Know Thy­self. [↩]

The Shaman and the Consultant

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Consultants are like shamans

Ima­gine you are an anthro­po­lo­gist, pos­ted in a remote vil­lage in Papua New Guinea to study how people man­age problems.

The village’s yam crops have been reduced dra­mat­ic­ally and the vil­lage is on the brink of fam­ine. Nobody knows what has caused the crop fail­ures — the yams just refuse to grow. One vil­lage elder says he has heard about a power­ful shaman from a vil­lage far away and pro­poses to engage her to make sure they will not go hungry.

The shaman arrives and every­body rejoices. She walks around the vil­lage, mak­ing strange noises and sniff­ing everything and dan­cing strangely. She announces to have found the cause and organ­ises a large ritual that will remove the cause of the crop failures. All vil­la­gers gather and sing and dance all night. Every­body feels great and the next day go back to work­ing the fields, know­ing that the cause for the crop fail­ures has been neut­ral­ised. The fol­low­ing crop is plen­ti­ful and the fam­ine that was nearly upon them was magic­ally aver­ted. Some years later you return to the vil­lage. Most houses are gone and people have moved away — recent crops failed and every­body went to the city to look for work.

Now ima­gine you are a man­age­ment sci­ent­ist, pos­ted in a ran­dom cor­por­a­tion to study how they solve problems. The company’s rev­enue stream has been reduced dra­mat­ic­ally and the com­pany is on the brink insolv­ency. Nobody knows what has caused the reduc­tion in rev­enue — cus­tom­ers seem to simply ignore their products. One of the exec­ut­ives says she has heard about a man­age­ment con­sult­ant from Eng­land and pro­poses to engage him to make sure they avoid insolvency.

The con­sult­ant arrives and every­body is very pos­it­ive. He goes around the organ­isa­tion, ask­ing every­body ques­tions and stud­ies piles of doc­u­ments. He announces to have found the cause of the reduced rev­enue and organ­ises motiv­a­tional ses­sions that will make things better. All employ­ees gather and share many great ideas with each other. Every­body feels elated and the next day they go back to work, know­ing that the cause for poten­tial fin­an­cial dis­aster has been neut­ral­ised. Pretty soon, cash flow is pos­it­ive again and even a small profit is made. Some years later you return to the same build­ing only to find a great “For Rent” sign on the door. The com­pany recently went bank­rupt after all.

These stor­ies are based on what hap­pens in tri­bal soci­et­ies and cor­por­a­tions around the world — only the names have been changed to pro­tect the inno­cent.1. This is not a judge­ment about either sham­ans or man­age­ment con­sult­ants. They both per­form import­ant func­tions in their social universes.

we believe in a rational sci­entific approach

Med­ical anthro­po­lo­gists dis­tin­guish between sick­ness and dis­ease. Dis­ease is the phys­ical aspect of a prob­lem whereas sick­ness is a psy­cho­lo­gical dimen­sion.2. Both con­sult­ants and sham­ans are pos­sible very good at heal­ing sick­ness, but are in most cases not able to heal dis­ease. Just like sci­entific medi­cine is required to heal dis­ease, a sci­entific approach is required to heal companies.

Too many man­agers believe that chan­ging lines and boxes on an organ­isa­tion chart or organ­ising motiv­a­tional team build­ing ses­sions are suf­fi­cient to solve mana­gerial prob­lems. Employ­ees are on the receiv­ing end of a mul­ti­tude of man­age­ment fads and short lived pro­jects. At Hypo­thet­icorp we believe in a rational sci­entific approach, based on data, to solv­ing the hard issues. Good qual­ity data and good qual­ity stat­ist­ical ana­lysis are the only ways to find solu­tions to hard problems.

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Notes
  1. Schuyt, T. N. M., & Schuijt, J. J. M. (1998). Rituals and rules: about magic in con­sultancy. Journal of Organ­iz­a­tional Change Man­age­ment, 11(5), 399–406. [↩]
  2. Miller Van Blerkom, L. (1995). Clown Doc­tors: Shaman heal­ers of West­ern medi­cine. Med­ical Anthro­po­logy Quarterly, 9(4), 462–475. [↩]

The Lies We Tell

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Job interviewMatt was nervous. Most people are under the cir­cum­stances. Matt sat in front of the HR spe­cial­ist, hop­ing that he’d end up with the job that was on offer. It was a step up from what he had done in the past – in pay, respons­ib­il­ity and influence.

Daniel, the HR Man­ager, pushed a fol­ded piece of paper and a pen­cil across the table to Matt and then did some­thing appalling. He lied.

“Please answer the ques­tions for this per­son­al­ity test – there are no right or wrong answers”, Daniel reas­sured Matt.

There are no right or wrongs answers.

Mind you, Daniel had no inten­tion of lying nor did he even real­ise that he had, at the time. “There are no right or wrongs answers”, is a lie that many man­agers and human resources pro­fes­sion­als use from time to time. The per­son­al­ity tests that are con­duc­ted in work­places through­out the world in job inter­views have no answer that is intrins­ic­ally cor­rect — as you might find in a high school math­em­at­ics exam. How­ever, the pres­ence of a series of ques­tions that is included as part of the selec­tion pro­cess for an employ­ment role makes a lie of Daniel’s reassurance.

If a test of any kind is used as part of an employee selec­tion pro­cess, there is an inten­tion to use it to jus­tify the selec­tion of a par­tic­u­lar can­did­ate and to exclude oth­ers. It has already been decided by the inter­viewer, selec­tion panel or organ­isa­tion that a par­tic­u­lar per­son­al­ity is required for the role (or, con­versely, that par­tic­u­lar per­son­al­ity pro­files are to be avoided). This means that, for the organ­isa­tion, par­tic­u­lar responses on the per­son­al­ity test are, in fact, right or wrong.

Look­ing at per­son­al­ity tests from the point of view of the can­did­ate exper­i­en­cing the job inter­view pro­cess, there are also right and wrong answers. In our example, Matt des­per­ately wants the job but does not neces­sar­ily know what per­son­al­ity pro­file Daniel is look­ing for, nor does Matt know what responses he needs to give to present the ‘right’ per­son­al­ity pro­file for the job. Addi­tion­ally, he knows that he should be hon­est dur­ing a job inter­view. When nervous, the ten­sion cre­ated by the need to be hon­est and also the desire to meet the ‘needs’ of the inter­viewer is unlikely to help Matt through the selec­tion pro­cess nor help Daniel find the right candidate.

Set aside for now whether there is any valid­ity in using Myers-Briggs, Keir­sey, DISC or any other per­son­al­ity test or tem­pera­ment sorter in a job inter­view, the simple mes­sage is that there are lies in the work­place that we use to smooth the path or pla­cate people; but they are still lies. A lucid man­ager will make every effort to assist Matt through the inter­view pro­cess and would also be aware that, truth be told, there is a right or wrong answer to every ques­tion in a job inter­view — the answer that demon­strates suit­ab­il­ity for the job.

For more inform­a­tion and cri­tique of per­son­al­ity pro­files, con­firm­a­tion bias and the Forer effect check out Peter’s essay, Know Thy­self. Also check out Peter’s recruit­ment, arguing that every busi­ness gets the employ­ees they deserve.

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Generation-Y does not exist

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Inspir­a­tions about man­age­ment some­times arrive from unex­pec­ted sources.

In my spare time I occa­sion­ally per­form magic shows for chil­dren. Recently I was read­ing a book­let by David Kaye, who per­forms under the name Silly Billy.1.

“Through the so-called bene­fits of sci­ence — the impossible exploits of movie her­oes, blood-curdling action stor­ies in video games — the child is thrilled to such an extent that a magician’s bag of tricks becomes a poor sub­sti­tute. All this has brought about another more mali­cious change. Fif­teen or twenty years ago the aver­age child was well-mannered, quiet and attent­ive. The magi­cian had very little dif­fi­culty keep­ing them under con­trol. Today it appears that those few excep­tions have become the rule. Chil­dren are more ill-mannered. They have less respect for their eld­ers and the con­duct in pub­lic places is often far from commendable.”

This is an often heard com­plaint about the younger gen­er­a­tions. But there is more to this quote that meets the eye.

This para­graph was writ­ten by Eddie Clever in 1939! Kaye only changed “radio shows” to “video games” and all of a sud­den it looks as if it was writ­ten yes­ter­day. We can go even fur­ther back to find sim­ilar con­cerns about the younger gen­er­a­tions. There are records of Dutch priests in the 18th cen­tury that lament the lewd and drunken beha­viour of the young people in his par­ish. Have young people really changed? I think not — it is us our per­cep­tion that changes as we grow older.

This has dir­ect bear­ing on a concept that that is used fre­quently in our cul­tural land­scape and con­tem­por­ary man­age­ment: Baby Boomers, Generation-X, Generation-Y and other broad sweep­ing cat­egor­isa­tions. In much of the man­age­ment lit­er­at­ure on this topic it is made to believe that the young pro­fes­sion­als of today are dif­fer­ent to they way the authors them­selves once were and should thus be treated differently.

There are obvi­ously dif­fer­ence between age cohorts. As we go through the stages of life we mature and our pri­or­it­ies change. There are, how­ever, no psy­cho­lo­gical dif­fer­ences between age groups in the past, present or future. Our psy­cho­lo­gical make-up simply does not evolve fast enough for us to notice any differences.

Sure, there are people born between cer­tain years, but to think that they are in any way psy­cho­lo­gic­ally dif­fer­ent to the way Gen­er­a­tion X or Baby Boomers were when they were at the same age is not sup­por­ted by any evidence.

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Notes
  1. David Kaye, The First Cen­tury of Children’s Magic. [↩]