Daniel H. Pink's Blog, page 15

Poetry (and a life lesson!) from the pitcher's mound

Sports week continues here at the Pink Blog . . .

Last night, two of the Pinklettes and I were sitting in the stands as the Washington Nationals found themselves down 5-1 with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning. Then, over the next 10 minutes, the Nats made an astonishing comeback, won the game 6-5, and sent the Seattle Mariners walking shell-shocked off the field.

Today's Washington Post has a story about the game that ends with a quotation from pitcher Livan Hernandez. I just noticed that if you reformat Hernandez's words, the whole thing works as a poem.

And if you're in the right frame of mind, perhaps aided by an adult beverage, the resulting poem also conveys a deeper message about life itself.

Baseball is crazy.

You know, baseball is 27 outs.

Not too many believe that.

But baseball is 27 outs.

Seriously. Read it out loud and let me know what you think.

(Note: If you doubt my poetical aptitude, consider this. In college, I had a poetry professor who said he'd give me an A-minus in his class if I agreed to stop writing poems and concentrate on prose. Yes, dear reader, I took the offer.)

Emotionally intelligent signage in Little League

Keeping with our (inadvertent) sports theme this week, here's a nice piece of emotionally intelligent signage that a few folks on Twitter sent our way:

The 4 Most Overlooked Attributes of Successful Coaches

Back in my misspent youth, when I wasn't watching sitcoms or walking to the library, I spent a big chunk of my time playing teams sports — baseball and basketball especially.  I had coaches, of course, but none of their exhortations, encouragements, or demands made much of a difference or left an impression on my later life.

Maybe that's because I never had a coach like Garret Kramer.  Kramer, who's worked with athletes from high school to the pros in a variety of sports, takes an approach that might seem a bit odd to anyone who's not Phil Jackson.  He thinks goals thwart athletic achievement rather than enable it. He thinks that athletes perform better not when they hate their opponents, but when they love them. And he thinks willpower matters a lot less than what he calls "stillpower," which draws on internal motivation and aims for a sense of flow.

In honor of his new book, Stillpower: The Inner Source of Athletic Excellence (Buy it at Amazon, BN.com, or IndieBound.) I asked him to share with Pink Blog readers the four most overlooked attributes of successful coaches, as well as leaders of any kind.

Here's Garret:

1. They look to the state of mind of the athlete or individual in question, not his or her behavior.

Poor performances or behaviors are the result of an individual's low mindset. Nothing more, nothing less. Rather than holding players or employees accountable to their actions (judging behavior), the best leaders hold them—and themselves—accountable to recognizing the thoughts and feelings that accompany high states of mind, and only acting from this mental state. This type of coach distrusts his own thoughts from low moods and encourages his players to do the same.

2. They understand that the spoken word is far less important than the level of psychological functioning from which the word is spoken.

Here's a simple reminder. Words are merely an echo of a feeling. A coach might say to a player, "I was really proud of your effort tonight." But if there is no feeling or passion behind the words, they might actually have a negative impact. Successful coaches take notice of their own level of functioning moment to moment. They know that positive words only originate from positive states of mind.

3. They keep goal setting in perspective.

Successful coaches know that the more athletes focus on the 'prize," the more they thwart their own awareness, shrink their perceptual field, and limit the imaginative possibilities. These coaches understand that achieving goals does not elevate self-worth or happiness. Instead, they relish the journey—the relationships and experiences—as the path toward creating exactly what they want becomes clear.

4. When in doubt—they turn to love.

Great coaches set guidelines and expectations based on one overriding principle: love for their players. They know, above all else, that love will always provide the answers to helping others—and to success.

 

Office Hours: Ask David Allen anything you want

A few weeks ago, we launched our newest project – an experiment in broadcasting and community-building called Office Hours. About once a month, I'll open the phone lines for an hour. Then — accompanied by a special guest — I'll take questions from listeners around the world about work, life, and everything else. As we like to say, it's "Car Talk" for the human engine.

We premiered the show a few weeks ago with very special guest Seth Godin — and the result was a mostly informative, frequently hilarious, and occasionally inspiring hour of conversation.  (You can listen to the full program here.)

Now, I'm delighted to announce our next episode.

On June 14 at 11am eastern U.S. time, you can join us for Office Hours with David Allen. As most of you know, David is a legend — the originator of Getting Things Done and, hands down, the smartest productivity guru of our day. You'll have a chance to ask him (or me, if you'd like to slum it) anything you want during our hour.

Just go to our new Office Hours page to get the call-in number and to sign up for reminders of future programs. It's all free of charge and free of advertising.

And mark your calendars for next month when, on July 12 at 2pm eastern U.S. time, you can join us for Office Hours with Bob Sutton, the Stanford B-School professor, A-list blogger, and bestselling author.

Office Hours: If you've got questions, we've got answers. And when don't, we'll make something up.

Can signs help service workers coax a larger tip?

If you're one of those people who tosses your extra coins into the tip jar after you've purchased an overpriced cup of coffee, how do you make that decision?

Two photos that arrived here at Pink, Inc., world headquarters this week suggest that counter workers are deploying a variety of sign-based strategies to wangle your small change.

Reader VZ sends this funny (but not especially emotionally intelligent) example:

Meanwhile, Mike Brice sends this less funny (but more emotionally intelligent) specimen:

Which, if either, is more effective?

(UPDATE: In the Comments, Austin Kleon offers another brilliant example).

VIDEO: A Wisconsin town tries emotionally intelligent signage

Taking a page from the civic-minded folk in Needham, Massachusetts, city officials in Bayside, Wisconsin, are enlisting emotionally intelligent signage to encourage drivers to slow down.

Reader Scott Ehlke hipped us to this video:

Carrots and sticks: Procrastination fix?

Not long ago, a bank in Colombia found itself in a managerial thicket. Its loan officers were putting off a significant amount of their work until the last week of the month, just before their monthly bonuses were calculated.

Such behavior didn't make much sense. By procrastinating, the loan officers were creating cash flow problems for the bank, stressing themselves out every four weeks, and putting their bonuses — about 35% of their total salary — at risk. What's more, they were missing their weekly targets, which cost them a penalty of 5% of their commissions.

¡Qué problema!

Four researchers — Ximena Cadena, Antoinette Schoar, Alexandra Cristea, and Héber M. Delgado-Medrano — decided to see if they could motivate these bankers to do better. They divided the branches of the bank into an experimental group and a control group. Employees in the experimental group could win small prizes like movie tickets for meeting their goals during the first two weeks of every month. The bank also published a newsletter that featured the month's three top employees.

Later, the researchers added another benefit. Twice a month, "branch managers met with loan officers to talk about their performance and to remind them of their weekly targets and to encourage them to work harder to achieve them."

Nothing else about the bonus structure or employee compensation changed.

These interventions worked — big time. The loan officers became much better at distributing their workload evenly throughout the month. The quality of their portfolios stayed the same.  And "loan officer compensation – independent of program prizes – increased by 25% per month." (Full paper is here.)

¡Qué magica! Procrastination problem solved!

Except – all these lovely results disappeared when the incentive program was taken away. Or, as the researchers put it: "these effects did not survive after the intervention was stopped at the end of our experiment."

Motivation 2.0 says the way to keep the loan officers from lapsing back into bad procrastination habits is to keep the carrots and sticks coming. But that's rarely sustainable. And it often risks misdiagnosing the true problem and finding the most effective solution.

Maybe the deeper mistake was making the monthly bonuses the most salient aspect of these loan officers' jobs. And maybe, instead of devising tactical steps to preserve that salience, the bank should have worked to reduce it. They could have paid healthy base salaries – and awarded a modest year-end or semi-annual bonus based on how many loans each person closed, levels of satisfaction among bank customers, and the bank's overall performance. (Yes, I'm suggesting they tear a page from the Red Gate playbook.)

Once these controlling external rewards became less prominent and harder to game, the bank could have worked to raise the salience of other aspects of the job. Remember: Partway through the experiment, the researchers added a new tack. They asked the loan officers' managers were to meet with their employees a couple of times a month, discuss their goals, and generally encourage them. It was only after this intervention that the loan officers reported a significant decrease in job stress and a significant increase in job satisfaction. Besides, by their own report, what these loan officers craved was recognition and feedback (the newsletter) and community and connection (encouragement from their supervisors).

Make no mistake: I'm all for paying people what they're worth. And I'm opposed to schemes that compensate people the same regardless of their performance.  But whether you're at a bank in Bogota or a school in Schenectady, relying on "if-then" rewards to encourage great work is like guzzling six cups of coffee and downing three Snickers bars for lunch. It'll give you a burst of energy – but the effects won't last. For the long-term, human beings need a very different kind of nourishment.

Emotionally intelligent signage comes to Broadway (and other avenues)

The Big Apple is hauling out the Big Skeleton.

The NY Times City Room blog reported last week that Mayor Michael Bloomberg's Transportation Department seems to be taking a page from the emotionally intelligent signage playbook in an effort to reduce speeding. As explains, "This month, a new series of speed boards will be installed featuring digital displays of skeletons when drivers exceed the posted speed limit."

In other words, if you're going along within, say, the 30 m.p.h. speed limit, you'll see this:

But if your lead foot pushes the speed too high, you'll see this:

Is this idea shrewdly spooky or crudely kooky?

Bonus Singage! Tom Vanderbilt — whose book, Traffic, is utterly fascinating — shares another example (this one from London) of emotionally intelligent signage that aims to improve driver behavior.

The (slightly) surprising truth about family-friendly workplaces

Do family-friendly policies like childcare subsidies and job sharing increase productivity and profits? Or are they luxuries that hurt the bottom line?

A paper (pdf) by Nick Bloom, Tobias Kretschmer, and John van Reenen says the truth lies somewhere in the middle. In their study of more than 450 manufacturing firms in the US and Europe, they found that family-friendly workplace practices (FFWP) were associated with more productive companies — but that was because the companies were well-run in the first place. In addition, they found that "firms with a higher proportion of female managers and more skilled workers tend to implement more FFWP." These initiatives might not not earn money, but they pay for themselves, and can produce less-tangible benefits as well — such as attracting women to and retaining them in management positions.

So in the end, family-friendly workplaces don't make a company great. But great companies tend to make workplaces family-friendly.

What your business can learn from a 6th grade classroom

Josh Stumpenhorst, a teacher in the suburbs of Chicago, wrote to share his experience trying implement a FedEx Day, one of the stickiest ideas in the Motivation 3.0 repertoire, in his 6th grade classroom. He dubbed it Innovation Day 2011 and has a great description at his blog, Stump the Teacher. But I wanted to highlight some of his ideas that I thought were exceptional.

Josh's goal was to guide 250 students as they tackled self-selected learning projects — everything from building a model of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, to writing and performing a comedy act, to creating a documentary video of Innovation Day itself. What could have been full-bore chaos turned into a fantastic day of learning and sharing. In his blog, Josh reveals some of the secrets of the day's success:

Teachers, administrators, and students treated each other with mutual respect. The kids knew Josh would support them, and Josh knew the school administrators would support him in turn. According to Josh, "One of the hallmarks of the school I work in and the principal that leads us is innovation."
As a teacher, Josh was flexible, in touch, and resourceful. He kept an eye on his students' progress, knowing "when to step in and when to step back." And rather than pose as the expert, he used all the resources at his disposal to give the students "access to as many learning opportunities as possible."
Josh recognized the importance of asking his students to do worthwhile work. "You don't want students to waste your time turning in sub-par quality work, so don't waste their time and ask them to do sup-par quality activities."

So how did the project turn out? Josh reports that his students tackled their tasks with "an abundance of enthusiasm." They completed more than 20 projects. Discipline problems were nonexistent.  Students helped each other out. Administrators and Josh's fellow teachers dropped by the classroom and were caught up in the excitement. But perhaps this exchange between Josh and one of the sixth-graders best illustrates the power of Innovation Day:

As the students were walking out at the end of the day one student stopped me and asked, "Can we do this again tomorrow"?

I responded with, "Well, I would love to, but tomorrow is Saturday," in a half-joking manner.

This student looked me dead in the eyes and replied, "I would come back tomorrow to do this again."