In a famous experiment, researchers ran a lottery with a
twist. Half the participants were randomly assigned a lottery number. The
remaining half were given a blank piece of paper and a pen and asked to write
down any number they would like as their lottery number. Just before drawing
the winning number, the researchers offered to buy back the tickets. The
question researchers wanted to answer is, "How much more do you have to
pay someone who 'wrote their own number' versus someone who was handed a number
randomly?" The rational answer would be that there is no difference (given
that a lottery is pure chance and therefore every ticket number, chosen or
assigned, should have the same value). A more savvy answer would be that you
would have to pay less for the tickets where the participant chose the number,
given the possibility of duplicate numbers in the population who wrote their
own number. The real answer? No matter what location or demographic the
experiment has taken place in, researchers have always found that they have to
pay at least five times more to those who wrote their own number.
This result reveals an inconvenient truth about human
nature: When we choose for ourselves, we are far more committed to the outcome
— by a factor of five to one.
Conventional approaches to change management underestimate
this impact. The rational thinker sees it as a waste of time to let others
self-discover what he or she already knows — why not just tell them and be done
with it? Unfortunately this approach steals from others the energy needed to
drive change that comes through a sense of ownership of "the answer."
Consider another practical example: One retail bank's
personal financial services (PFS) CEO employed a fairly literal interpretation
of the above finding when he wrote his change story in full prose, in a way
that he found meaningful. He then shared it with his team, getting feedback on
what resonated and what needed further clarification. Then, he asked each of
his team members to "write their own lottery ticket:" What was the
change story for them, in their business, that supported the bigger PFS-wide
change story? His team members wrote their own change stories, again in full
prose, and shared it with their teams. Their teams gave feedback and then wrote
their own story for their area/department, and so the process continued all the
way to the frontline. It took twice as long as the traditional roadshow
approach, but for a five-fold return on commitment to the program, it was the
right investment to make.
Sam Palmisano, former CEO of IBM, in spearheading a change
effort to move IBM toward a values-based management system, enabled thousands
of employees to "write their own lottery ticket" regarding IBM's
values. During a three-day, online discussion forum (dubbed ValuesJam), more
than 50,000 employees were empowered — literally — to rewrite IBM's century-old
values.
Other applications need not be so literal. At a global
consumer goods company, the CEO brought together his top 300 for three two-day
"real work" sessions over the course of three months, where they
created the story together. Again, this required a significant investment of
time, but having the top 300 five-times more committed to the way forward was
considered well worth the investment. The story was then rolled out across the
organization via one- or two-day sessions in which small working groups
explored the implications for their particular parts of the business.
At a minimum, we advocate that leaders leverage the
"lottery ticket" insight by augmenting their telling of the story
with asking about the story. Consider David Farr, CEO of Emerson Electric, who
is noted for asking virtually everyone he encounters in his organization four
questions related to his company's story: 1.) How do you make a difference?
(testing for alignment on the company's direction); 2.) What improvement idea
are you working on? (emphasizing continuous improvement); 3.) When did you last
get coaching from your boss? (emphasizing the importance of employee development);
and 4.) Who is the enemy? (emphasizing the importance of "One
Emerson"/no silos, i.e., he wanted to emphasize that the "right"
answer was the competition and not some other department).
On a final note, many executives are surprised not only by
the ownership and drive for implementation that comes from high-involvement
approaches, but also by the improved quality of the answers that emerge. In
speaking to HBR in November 2008, John Chambers, chairman and CEO of networking
specialist Cisco Systems, described his experience in this regard, "It was
hard for me at first to learn to be collaborative. The minute I'd get into a
meeting, I'd listen for about 10 minutes while the team discussed a problem. I
knew what the answer was, and eventually I'd say, 'All right, here's what we're
going to do.' But when I learned to let go and give the team the time to come
to the right conclusion, I found they made just as good decisions, or even
better — and just as important, they were even more invested in the decision and
thus executed with greater speed and commitment."
What it comes down to, of course, is that when people make
their own decisions, they are more dedicated to everything that follows. If
your team wants what you want them to want, you are five times more likely to
get it.
Fonte: Blog da Harvard Business Review - http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/04/increase_your_teams_motivation.html
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