Compassion=incentives? ... RE: [Ailist] PsyBlog: DoYouBelieve inFree Will?

[Roger Davies]

Hi Andre,
 
I wholly agree. I have experience of working in a highly controlled
environment and also a much more entrepreneurial one, albeit in a larger
company. Neither works as effectively as one might imagine.
 
The highly controlled environment causes stagnation the more entrepreneurial
one is inefficient. An organization needs some guidance and leadership but
should also be free to pursue its goals in whatever manner it chooses
provided that it meets whatever systems are needed to ensure conformity of
the output and regulatory standards.
 
The purely top down approach becomes hindered by the need to feed
information upwards. Information that is rarely understood and rarely allows
for valid comparisons. Getting the balance of direction setting and freedom
to make effective choices at a local level is a difficult one to achieve.
It's so much easier to have a set of KPI's. 
 
Progress will rely on having enlightened leaders who understand the chaordic
nature of their organizations. It's a paradigm shift from seeing an
organizations as a means of disseminating power to its members to seeing it
as a means of harnessing the power of its members.
 
Roger
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Andre Ling [mailto:thelingus at gmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, January 27, 2009 9:24 AM
To: Lionel Boxer
Cc: stephanie at brainhygiene.com; bruce at bruceelkin.com;
rdavies at rtpcompany.com; ailist at lists.business.utah.edu
Subject: Re: Compassion=incentives? ... RE: [Ailist] PsyBlog: DoYouBelieve
inFree Will?



Hello,

I spend most of my time on this list just watching but I felt that this was
a topic worth piping up for. I am a bit of a skeptic when it comes to
incentives and even KPIs - especially if 'cascaded' from the top down. There
is a way in which creating alignment from the top-down can be quite
counter-productive.

The day-to-day reality faced by staff in multilevel organisations is messy
and complex. More often than not, policies and associated performance
indicators are not set by those at the front-line but rather by those higher
up in organisational hierachies who are distanced from these messy
realities. The simplified/idealised systems they create and roll-out or
cascade often serve their own information needs than those of the people
they are applied to.

Essentially this means that the front-line workers are viewed as little more
than cogs in a great big machine that operates in a neat, predictable,
linear kind of way. But insights from complexity theory challenges the
notion that social reality - and thus organisations - functions in such a
manner. Non-linearity, paradox, the entanglement of cause and effect
(especially in social contexts), emergence and cognitive limitations all
mean that trying to plan everything in advance and then enforce systems of
control from above can never really work very well. Still they are all the
rage.

Managers and leaders might do better by paying attention to the way that
power dynamics (including the ones that they are inevitably caught up in and
perpetuating) mediate learning and change within their organisations. Then
they might just realise that they are also co-producers of the patterns of
interaction that lead to the results that frustrate them so often. This is
not to argue against having any kind of vision, objectives or even ways of
measuring them. Rather it is to point out that it is not simply through
having and trying to apply an idealised system (with often invalid claims to
objectivity) on a complex and messy reality that the full potential of an
organisation to achieve valuable results can be unleashed.

Any thoughts???

Andre


2009/1/27 Lionel Boxer <lionel.boxer at rmit.edu.au>


Exactly.

I recently left one organisation that did the oposite to what you describe.
A few weeks ago I joined a ISO9001 certification authority as a
certification/registration auditor.  It is interesting to see the high
importance placed by current interpretation of ISO9001 on organisations
establishing objectives that are based on policy and then cascaded to all
levels within the organisation through various systems including KPIs.

Withouth this alignment throughout organisations, leaders cannot hope to
expect their people to perform as hoped for (by the leaders).  Otherwise,
planning can only be an exercise in wishful thinking.


Lionel Boxer CD PhD MBA BTech(IndEng) - 0411267256
Associate of RMIT University - lionel.boxer at rmit.edu.au
Graduate School of Business
my "Assessment of Quality Systems with Positioning Theory"
now in a googe book - see link at http://intergon.net

>>> "Roger Davies" <rdavies at rtpcompany.com> 27/01/09 10:12 AM >>>

Hi Lionel,

I think we are on similar wavelengths. This is an issue I have struggled
with and still do. There is a necessity for KPI's etc and to that extent a
necessary need to subjugate a degree of free will in most organizations.


...


It has to be in an environment that will benefit the organization.


...


For me there are many small things like encouraging open conversations, open
door policies, getting people's input into projects, asking them to set
their own goals etc.


Is it the use of free will that is some way generates compassion? In being
respected and having all our contributions valued do we subconsciously learn
to care about those who value us?

The rule of law and the right to liberty are not mutually exclusive. Either
on its own is not sustainable so we have to have the two in balance.

Roger


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