Is there a chance of a better ending? How can companies transform employee behavior when caught in this vicious cycle?
1) Change the standards
A major lesson from history is that no heroes are responsible for their success. Not entirely. The factor that governs what it means to be successful is the prevailing standards. The culture just follows suit. I wrote this poem a few months back.
The play of chance, the hand of times
Distracts our eyes from what it hides
Hunter in an Industrial Age
Writer facing the Dinosaur's rage
Flip the centuries, the Heroes fall
Yet the world is snared by illusion's trawl
All we know is the scale of standards
Pity what’s different, judge what threatens
Fear the outlaws or discredit with slanders
Worship the Heroes, scorn the strays
And continue till time tilts the scales
The crux is, the company is still in charge of introducing the variables into the experiment.
What happens if you introduce a new ladder and dangle a bunch of bananas on a rope? This will confuse the monkeys. When a monkey gets the courage to reach up, offer this monkey a new Reward too as a Bonus. Introduce multiple ropes with bananas so that there are enough Bananas for the monkeys to reach.
Lesson: Fine tune the standards of Rewards and enable people to set their own goals
2) Change the setting
The Organization is still in control of the environment
Grab 2 monkeys and place these monkeys in a different setting. Have a new trainer monkey to reinforce good behavior. Protect the trainer monkey and punish with ice water spray if the monkeys try to disrupt. Keep doing this for a week. After the monkeys learn this new behavior, put them back in their old setting. This time, place a barrier between the 3 monkeys that remained in the old setting and the 2 monkeys that learned new behavior. Repeat the experiment for a week.
Lesson: Train people and leverage them to influence others
3) Change the consequences
The pack of monkeys continues this behavior because they don’t see a negative consequence for their behavior. Bring a new monkey and introduce the ice water spray whenever they try to pull down the new one from climbing up the ladder. Continue the experiment till the monkeys learn about consequences. Go back to experiment 1 and change the standards. . When the standards change, culture follows.
Lesson: Evaluate people with the right goals and help them understand the concept of consequences to justify their potential.
