Short reflection, again, for the slow-down period of Daily Thoughts.
When intending to obtain A, how many times do we pause and think whether we would be obtaining B?
The intention may be perfect, the decision making process pristine, all pointing towards a rotund A. Why is it that sometimes B comes in unexpected?
I recently gave the example of a budget tightening aimed at installing more discipline in the allocation of resources, more critical thinking about using the budget (that is the A goal) that translates into people making less judgements and ‘stopping thinking’ (that’s B outcome) :we can’t to X, or Y, or Z; such and such are the only things possible, the budget cuts point to that, that’s what we do; done for us, decided for us. Sorry, it’s called ‘the budget’.
The halo effect of a budget cut: thinking postponed [1]
Since only behaviours that are reinforced are the ones that scale, the question to ask is: I think ‘I am reinforcing A, what could we possibly be reinforcing instead, something that we don’t want to promote?
We want to install 360 degree feed back in leadership programmes; could we be reinforcing unfair criticism and a culture of finger pointing?
We wanted budget critical thinking (as above); could we possibly promote un-critical automatic pilots instead?
We want teamwork but we reward individual contributions
We want entrepreneurship but we reward low risk and safe decisions
We want people to have a helicopter view but we tell hem to ‘focus’
We want quality of customer relationships but we reward sales people by number of calls.
Other?