6 - Over-Control and Manipulation in the Workplace
The chapter begins with a quote from Frederic Bastiat, who spoke about the manner in which regulators make bad decisions - even when they mean to do well, the immediate benefit is usually offset my side effects that are not immediately apparent, and which can be disastrous. And when this happens, their answer is always more legislation to address the problems created by the initial regulations - and it continues to snowball until the entire economy collapses.
The same is often true of regulators of any system or organization. Even when they mean to do well, they do harm, and are loath to admit to having to made a bad decision, and then implement more and more controls until they have established a massive bureaucracy that does far more harm than good.
The power of control
The present age is marked by control and monitoring. Most large organizations employ more people to supervise, oversee, monitor, and report than to actually perform the activities of the business. She calls it a "culture of monitoring" in which rules, regulations, procedures, policies, and the like are thoroughly gumming up the works.
For most people, regulations are an obstacle they wish to do avoid. Dealing with government agencies is seldom pleasant - and in the same way, workers find that dealing with management has many of the same qualities when internal policies and procedures are seen as restrictive and counterproductive.
The author does conceded that some people feel comfortable with regulations: so long as they follow the rules, they feel "safe" from being punished or criticized. Unfortunately, the demand to achieve high levels of performance or be innovative about solutions creates a great deal of stress: they are caught between the demand to conform and the demand to perform.
She goes back to the opening quote from Bastiat - it takes high-level thinking in order to perceive the broader consequences of a decision, and that is also a significant problem in today's organizations. Managers are fragmented and there is little communication between silos: the manager in accounting who makes a decision that is beneficial to his department doesn't recognize the trouble it is causing in the shipping department - or if he is aware, he has no motivation to consider it because he is under orders to achieve objectives for his own group.
Then, a consideration of Herbert Marcuse, who reasoned that when rules are not documented, people make up their own. Particularly in environments where there is a high level of scrutiny and monitoring, people are aware that they are "being watched" and do not have a clear idea what the watchers are looking for - so they tend to make assumptions of what is expected, often very pessimistically.
(EN: I find this common among the lower ranks of organizations. A low-level employee who cautions others about what the boss wants is sometimes attempting to manipulate them for his own purposes, but he may in fact be going on honest but mistaken assumptions with no agenda of his own.)
Control and order
Another common misconception is that control and order are the same thing - but this is only true if those who exercise control over others are competent. And this is not always the case. There are instances in which everyone is following orders, and the result is chaos and catastrophe.
The need for there to be control arises from excessive narcissism and a pessimistic opinion of others. The controller believes that other people would not know what to do, or would be driven by base motives, if it weren't for himself who, being a better species of person, knows better than they do what they ought to be doing.
However, control is merely a method for changing behavior that is only necessary in instances where behavior needs to be changed. Some of the best and most productive organizations are those in which management seems to be doing hardly anything at all - because the people are competent to carry on tasks and do not need constant correction.
Consider the analogy of a conductor of a symphony: it is necessary for him to coordinate the musicians, but he does not need to supervise. If the musicians are sufficiently talented and trained, the conductor can walk off the stage after starting the performance and it will continue. His officious baton-waving is entirely unnecessary.
However, this analogy is more applicable to a traditional firm, whose business activities are perpetuated: the symphony is performed the same way every show for the entire season. In fast-moving contemporary organizations, there are constant changes to the plan, so much so that it hardly seems worth having a plan at all. Management is necessary to keep people apprised of changes in external factors and to facilitate tactical adjustments - and in this instance control is counterproductive. People who mindlessly follow orders are ill-equipped to improvise when necessary.
The unintended consequences of target-driven culture
Setting performance goals leads a culture to be target-driven: any level of success less than the demanded target is considered to be a failure, and the target must be achieved by any means possible. Having a goal to attain is not necessarily bad, but very often a target is used as a substitute for leadership: poor managers often will place a demand on a team without providing any support in achieving it, or without considering whether the demand itself is necessary or reasonable.
Such poorly considered targets create "toxic and sometimes lethal" organizational cultures - and this is no exaggeration. A team that is pressed to achieve a certain level of outcome may ignore safety procedures in order to achieve the goal. Very often, workplace injuries and even deaths are the result of workers frantically attempting to make a quota.
There's a bit in which the existence of quotas is described as being damaging to trustful and mutually respectful workplace relationships. To place a quota on someone is to indicate that you believe that they are purposefully slacking off and must be pressed to turn in a reasonable level of performance. If the quota is below capabilities, it actually causes workers to slack off - creating the sort of laziness the quota was intended to prevent. If the quota is above capabilities, it damages morale: workers sense they are not valued, and will not be valued by their employer. If the quota is tied to compensation, workers get the sense of being cheated - especially when they quota to receive the incentive is constantly increased.
Case Study: UK police service
The author presents some details about the use of quotas for the police service in the UK. The problem with placing quotas for arrests and tickets on police is that it gives them incentive to get the arrests and tickets they need by any means necessary, which encourages highly dysfunctional behavior.
One example of this was the manner in which drug squads went haywire, breaking down doors on very slim evidence to search for drugs, in hopes of making an arrest. The result is that they made their numbers, but many innocent civilians were disturbed by police kicking in their doors on scant evidence.
Another example is the policy on domestic disturbance calls. Very often a spouse will call during a passionate argument that has not become violent, and the dispute is resolved by the time the police arrive - but in order to provide better service (suspecting spouses who have been abused will recant), the department adopted a policy of making an arrest every time, resulting in unnecessary detainment and a criminal record for nothing more than a shouting match. Officers subjected to such a policy are unable to apply their judgment.
Another example points out the shallow thinking that is often evident. This incident involved a car dealership near an alley in which teenagers routinely hung out - and would often toss bricks over the wall to damage cars in the lot. The problem went on for months and several arrests were made, but teens were not deterred. A senior officer looked into the problem, and asked a simple question: why not just clear away all the discarded bricks lying about? This took care of the problem - as the teens were merely acting on impulse - but it took someone to stop and think, rather than following existing procedures.
Ultimately, it was found that meeting the targets didn't mean there was less crime, and a great deal more consternation from the public. The problem is that measurable targets are chosen to the exclusion of meaningful targets: having more people arrested simply does not result in less crime. They encourage police to engage in behavior that is not only pointless, but harmful - and coupled with the demand to follow procedures rather than use judgment, the situation degrades rapidly.
Judgment vs procedures
A common trap that is used in toxic companies is to expect employees to use their judgment in knowing when to follow orders. The two are entirely incompatible: the employee who follows orders is faulted for using his judgment, and the employee who uses his judgment is faulted for failing to follow orders.
Procedures are simply a detailed set of orders, indicating exactly what an employee is expected to do in specific situations, often documenting various amendments and conditions. Having procedures is an attempt to prevent employees from exercising their judgment, because the organization does not trust their judgment.
Procedures are based on the notion that doing the same thing in the same situation will always achieve the same results - but they often ignore that the situation is not always the same, nor are the same results always desirable.
You can also consider procedures to be similar to instructions - they will continue to work so long as nothing else changes. But when technology changes, the market changes, the customer changes, and so on then the instructions quickly become irrelevant and outdated. But at the same time, the bureaucracy that creates procedures tend to defend them and to be very slow in changing them. Not only are outdated and inappropriate procedures demoralizing to the workers, they are detrimental to organizational performance.
Procedures also dehumanize and disempower workers. A person who is capable of achieving better results is forbidden to do so, and is constrained to following procedures that he knows are wrong. Moreover, when all employees are merely following the same procedures, there are no distinctions and people feel disconnected from their work: they are merely machines, replaced easily by others who can follow the same procedures.
More Problems with Targets
When meeting a target is more important than achieving the goal it was intended to accomplish, it has become dysfunctional. This is not the time to consider what can better be done to meet the quota, but to consider if the quota system ought to be done away with. In the same sense, procedures themselves become ritual behaviors that should be routinely questioned: what is the goal of the procedure? Is following the procedure achieving the goal? Might there be a better way?
Random bit: she refers to another author (Kohn) who suggested that people "actually do inferior work when they are enticed with money." This is from a study that examined incentive programs across an array of organizations. Speculation as to why this occurs varies: whether workers are insulted at the implicit premise that they are driven by greed, offended at the offer of a financial incentive (jobs that receive "tips" are usually low-status) or whether they do the math to recognize the diminishing marginal return on effort, etc.
She mentions another researcher who finds that people who are subjected to targets and quotas feel that they are less trusted by their employers, hence are less willing to trust in their employers. There is also the practice of constantly increasing quotas, which also feeds the sense of mistrust and exploitation, and gives employees the sense that working harder only results in a demand to work even harder. A sense of competition among employees also breeds disharmony among teammates who should be working together: employees feel resentful of person who is more productive (individual incentive) or less productive (group incentive) because they reason that this is harming their own income.
Then, a bit of consideration of how targets are set: it's often quite arbitrary, which creates argument and resentment. Also, targets are often quantitative, such that quality often suffers in order to meet an arbitrary number. There's also a reiteration of the problem that targets are applied to things that are easiest to quantify, which tend to be overly simplistic and are not necessarily the things that are most relevant to creating customer value.
An example is given of a roadside assistance service who placed on its employees a goal of reducing the time a customer must wait for service to arrive. This goal was met by dispatching any available service person to a scene - e.g., a mechanic on a motorbike might be sent to a customer whose vehicle needed to be towed to a garage so that, technically, someone arrived quickly even though it was the wrong person for the job. Meanwhile a customer who could have been served by a mobile mechanic was being met by a tow truck because it was the nearest vehicle. So time to arrive was much improved, but time to complete the required service suffered significantly.
The many problems with targets leads to the false assumption that all targets and quotas are bad - which is not true. They can be a good tool if used properly, but the problem is that they are often poorly conceived and applied.
How did this situation come about?
A more dramatic example is provided of a healthcare program in the UK - there's a description of appalling care, and over 400 deaths were attributed to the problems caused by the demand for hospital staff to meet various targets for treating patients quickly rather than sufficiently. While it was clear to staff that the targets were ill-conceived and harmful, there was at the same time the sense of fear that prevented them from speaking up.
Various psychological explanations are provided: the assumption that those in authority are correct, the fear of challenging authority, groupthink, and even mass hysteria. The common factor in all of these is that the individual feels disempowered and expects there to be negative consequences for suggesting that the system is flawed.
There's also the assertion that standards effectively disconnect all common sense. When employees are in a situation where there are multiple conflicting targets (such as working faster while avoiding mistakes), they completely break down. There is the sense that the authority who sets such ridiculous targets is obviously impervious to being reasoned with.
For the healthcare example, specifically, it becomes obvious that targets are based on statistical norms that do not bear out in reality. The conditions in an emergency room differ from one hour to the next, and performance standards based on the "average" amount of work are inapplicable to times when work is slack or overabundant.
Ultimately, it goes back to the notion that people who are managed "by the numbers" turn off their logical minds and begin doing only those things that improve the measures to which they are subjected - neglecting what really matters, ignoring serious and obvious problems, and even gaming the system to deliver what is demanded.