The Compliance Conundrum; Praise and Punishment Compliance is counter-productive and motivation is short sighted

“If logic dictated the world, it would be men who rode sidesaddle.” Paul Harvey (1918 – 2009),  conservative American radio broadcaster.

You have likely heard of behavioral conditioning. There are two popular varieties of behavioral conditioning, Operant and Classical. Operant conditioningis a powerful form to affect behavioral change that was popularized by B.F. Skinner, a Harvard psychologist. Operant conditioning is recognized by a change in voluntary behaviorin relation to a stimulus. A pigeon will learn to peck at a red dot that dispenses food as opposed to a blue dot that doesn’t dispense anything. This is commonly seen as the carrot on a stick theme. On the other hand, Classical conditioning, popularized by Ivan Pavlov, is characterized by changes in involuntary behavior. If you ring a bell, then give a dog a treat, the dog will change and become conditioned to salivate when the bell is rung even when no treat is delivered. These two conditions are considered positive reinforcements but the same holds true of negative reinforcements.

How is this relevant to management? Isn’t this what we do at work? Don’t we as managers try to modify or direct behavior using these methods? You do a good job you get rewarded; you make a mistake you get punished, simple carrot and stick motivation, praise and punishment methodology – and the research and science, as shown above, supports that contention. You are doing exactly what the academic data says. How is that working out for you? It probably isn’t working out as well as you would have liked, and you can’t figure out why. Are you still constantly plagued with workers not following the rules or safety policies even though you have tried everything from training, rewards, punishment, etc.? I’ll give you a clue; we are not pigeons or dogs, we are reasoning human beings. When you deal with a human with emotions, senses and biases, linear logic falls apart.

Let me continue with this theme of destroying your conventional wisdom and say that compliance is labor intensive, counter-productive, motivates only for the short term and is not a sustaining activity. What? Say it isn’t so! All those years in school studying management flushed down the drain.

Let’s look at compliance. This sounds like a good thing; we want our employees to be complaint, follow the rules, adhere to the regulations, work safely, blah-blah-blah. Being compliant isn’t a bad thing but it’s not the best thing. Employees will be compliant when they have to be complaint. They will follow the rules when they are being supervised. They will skirt the safety policy to accomplish a task and meet production if there is no oversight. “Those darn employees, they have to be watched constantly to ensure they stay complaint.” Aren’t we as managers just as guilty? “Clean up the shop – the VP of Maintenance is coming to visit.” Why isn’t it clean all the time? Because we are compliant when we have to be. To have compliant employees, you need constant supervision. Then to ensure that the supervisors are compliant you need oversight from shift managers. To keep the shift managers compliant they need to be watched over by general managers and on and on. With so much oversight (which breeds micro-management) very little real management takes place.

Micro-management constricts the working environment and productivity. Workers can only produce within very narrow finite limits, which frustrates management who wants more production. The typical managerial response is to supply more oversight (aka more micro-management), which reduces the production levels even more.

Let’s look at this in detail and see how this can innocently get out of hand. The CEO will tell the area manager that resources are available to produce 10 widgets per day so that is what is expected. The area manager, to impress the CEO, will insist that the general manager produce 11 widgets per day with less resources to show he is not only more productive but frugal as well. “Do more with less” is the dictum. “I’ll be watching you.” To cover himself, the general manager will tell the shift manager to produce no less than 12 widgets per day and do it with fewer employees to show the general manager that he too can be more productive and spend less. The shift manager must pad the books to try to meet those production levels so insists that the supervisor produce 14 widgets per day and they have to do it with limited resources and available manpower. The employees are faced with an unattainable task that destroys incentive and production drops to 6 widgets per day. The CEO is furious with the area manager who vents to the general manager that punishes the shift manager who puts more restrictions and raises the production limits on the supervisor and the employees. Now employee turnover has increased losing experienced workers and places a strain on training with new hires and putting more inexperienced workers in production, absenteeism and safety issues are rising due to stress, further demoralizing the workforce which can now only produce 4 widgets per day.

The solution is simple, the employees are not compliant with the production quotas; they are abusing the absentee policy and ignoring clear safety policies as well. They need more supervision and punishment levels need to be increased to ensure compliance. “Those darn employees, they have to be watched constantly to ensure they stay complaint, and since they are not compliant they need more oversight. A happy worker is a productive worker. All unhappy workers will be taken out back and shot.” Let the managerial paranoia reign supreme. Hmmm, managerial thought process in action, “Resources might be the issue”. Management logic: “If it takes 9 months for a woman to have a baby, we can gather 9 women to produce a baby in one month, simple math 1 times 9 is the same as 9 times 1.” News flash – it doesn’t work. History tells us it doesn’t work. Your own reduced production levels should be telling you it doesn’t work. Throwing resources at a problem is not the fix. So why does management insist on pursuing that route? Because of fear to let go, fear to trust in others because their superiors do not place trust in them or they use the term, “trust but verify”. That is not trust; that is paranoia.

This is most prevalent with owner/founders. A business is their creation just as a child. As a parent you wouldn’t want to give up control in raising your child just as the owner/founder’s fear in giving up control in raising their business. It is difficult to let go, to trust others in raising the business. This is a protectionist reaction.

Others are insecure in their position. They don’t want to let go for fear that failure will reflect upon them and their career. So they strive to control all aspects of the business as they lack the trust in others. If failure occurs it will rest on their hands and not due to others. However, it is a strange anomaly in micro-management situations – when failures occur the manager rarely takes responsibility for the failure. There is a built in buffer. When the micro-manager experiences failure he or she turns the cause to employees’ failure to adhere to the instructions or follow procedures, lack employee support, insufficient resources, etc. Notice that the fault is usually directed down the food chain. It would be a career-limiting move to blame your superior for failure to supply support and resources. Accusatory fingers are always pointed down, never up. Rarely is the real source of the failure identified, therefore even robust root causes analysis is ineffective because it is diverted from the truth. If at first you don’t succeed, shift the blame, change the rules, redirect the focus of your critics, spin the media, redefine success, and there won’t be any need to try, try again!

So what should we seek from our employees other than compliance? Wouldn’t commitment to the rules, regulations, and policies be a better way to go? This doesn’t require oversight but peer pressure, cooperation and teamwork. Then when you hear, “This is the way we do it” it is in alignment with policy, procedures, instructions, rules, etc. Supervisors and managers can now focus their attention on supporting the workforce, managing resources and not babysitting employees. Functionality returns.

How nice – perfect harmony, right? Wrong! Like the Yin/Yang symbol there is a little dark in the light and a little light in the dark. Nothing is pure; nothing is perfect. So if given a choice of compliance or commitment, I hope I have convinced you that commitment is the better option. But blind commitment is also not good. When everyone is thinking alike, no one is thinking much. “All new hires must attend the brain washing employee orientation seminar to replace your personal thoughts with those of a committed employee of XYZ Corp.” As the Borg from Star Trek said, “You will be assimilated.” We are not robots; you really don’t want everyone running around like a bunch of clones. Even though you seek uniformity, you will not be innovative and progress without some chaos and diversity. You don’t make heat without friction. Don’t rock the boat? If you wish to avoid a collision or discover a new path, you need to nudge the boat a little – maybe a lot. Tranquility is nice but you will not get anywhere without wind.

What if we instilled a habit instead of compliance? That would also work, but habits require triggers to initiate, a commitment by the initiator and typically a reward for success. That’s a lot of work for management. If you want to go for a run every day in the morning you can set your running shoes out next to your bed. When you wake up the shoes are staring you in the face, time to run. This is the trigger. You go for your run and when you come back you have a nice relaxing cup of coffee or piece of chocolate. You treat yourself to a reward. The length of the run is immaterial at the moment. Concentrate on one item at a time, first is to get you out running. As time passes the reward is no longer required as the accomplishment of finishing a run turns into the reward. Lastly you can remove the trigger as it is engrained to run every morning. Without it, you feel something is missing. How many times have you gotten into your car then arrived at your destination but can’t recall the action of putting on your seatbelt. You know you did it but you can’t remember the act of buckling up. This is a habit. You would notice not doing it; rather the act of doing it.

I need to go back to the Yin/Yang thing again. The problem with habits is that you can establish bad habits as well. Practice makes permanent, not perfect, unless you practice perfection. Pursuing perfection is typically met with disastrous results. When things change you have to unchange your current habit and then reestablish a new habit. Getting harder isn’t it?

So compliance is good but not great; habits are problematic and commitment is better but flawed. What are we to do? Go for better but flawed and work on the flaws by allowing open mindedness and freedom to comment and bring up issues without fear of reprisal. Let those that are involved discover the flaws, work to resolve them and support their efforts.

“Mistakes are the portals of discovery.” James Joyce Irish author 1882-1941.

Now let’s see if I can do to your concept of motivation. How is management supposed to motivate without a carrot and cattle prod?

Whoops out of time, see you next time for “Demotivated Motivation” or “I hit my thumb with the hammer just like this. Ouch. Did it again.”

Patrick Kinane is an FAA-certificated A&P with IA and commercial pilot with instrument rating. He has 50 years of experience in aviation maintenance. He is an ASQ senior member with quality auditor and quality systems/organizational excellence manager certifications. He is an RABQSA-certified AS9100 and AS9110 aerospace industry experienced auditor and ISO9001 business improvement/quality management systems auditor. He earned a bachelor of science degree in aviation maintenance management, a master’s of science degree in education, and a Ph.D. in organizational psychology. Kinane is presently a senior quality management systems auditor for AAR CORP and a professor of organizational behavior at DeVry University.