Bodies, Not Refrigerators

I heard once, about a king who convinced his people to use potatoes - by planting them in a field and posting guards, with the expectation that people would decide whatever they were guarding was valuable and sneak in to steal them.

I don't know if that's true or not (a quick internet search says the king was probably Frederick the Great, but that there's a debate over whether this is true or not) but I thought this said something interesting about what it takes to manage people.

I suppose I ought to clarify first - I'm not sure it's a great idea, mostly because it fits some of the concerns we have about 'nudging' people into doing what we think is the right thing. I'm torn between the acceptance that this is part of human nature, and yes it would be nice to make sure - for example - that people save for retirement... but it also smacks of paternalism, of deciding what's best for people without their input, and pushing them to make what you think is the 'right' choice. (Yes, if you make it 'opt out' rather than 'opt in' people who generally just stick with the default option will save for retirement, and anyone who feels strongly about it can always opt out... but is that really the right way of handling it?)

That said, it's an interesting illustration of how managing people is not at all like ordering a fleet of robots.

I was reminded of this because of Elon Musk's Twitter takeover. 

Actually, it was because I got into a discussion with someone about the mass layoffs, and mentioned my understanding that layoffs are actually pretty consistently a terrible thing for businesses. 

I've stumbled across studies to that effect off and on for years (though it's apparently not inevitable, as one article was all about how a company avoided most of those pitfalls), but if you think about human nature it's pretty easy to understand why.

When you're on a team, and someone gets fired, generally the people remaining feel scared... next time it might be them. 

They also tend not to trust their company as much. Layoffs are a stark reminder that companies think you're replaceable, are not loyal to you, and will fire you in a heartbeat.

Why put in a lot of hard work for a company that doesn't care for you? Why bust your butt if you might lost your job in another month?

Plus, while there may be a few egotistical maniacs who think they're somehow the elite 10% and that everyone else is dead weight (the social media discussion in question was partly because of a thread going around about 'whaling and culling') most people become friendly with their coworkers. 

Maybe not bosom buddies, and you may hate some of them, but in general the people you spend most of the week with are people in your circle. And people feel bad when bad things happen to those in their circle. (The company that avoided layoff pitfalls did so in part by giving their employees a chance to decide just who got laid off. Basically said 'we need to reduce by 10%, decide who those 10% are'. And even though decisions were made based on things like 'who has a kid and can't handle job hunting at this time', the people who remained felt respected and cared for by the company in a way that most companies completely fail to do).

This brought me to something my T'ai Chi instructor said, back when I was in college and trying out new things. He was talking about physical movement and not management, of course, but he would say we were 'bodies not refrigerators'.

By which he meant that people are almost always in motion. We're constantly shifting our balance - from one foot to another, forward and back. We walk basically by constantly falling and catching ourselves. We're not refrigerators, that just stand where they're put. We're constantly in motion, even if it's only slightly. (And in fact, we can get injured if we don't move. Like bed sores.)

I think this distinction is important on a different level - we're people, not robots.

We have good days and bad days. We get absent-minded and forgetful if stressed out about something else (that's part of why the military works so hard to take care of families back home. A soldier will have a hard time focusing on his work if they're worried about whatever is going on back there - which might include things like patrolling, sighting an enemy, or you know identifying a bomb before your team triggers it. Seriously, being aware when you're emotionally compromised is a skill well worth developing).

We don't actually do well with cramming or powering through. I noticed this especially since learning how to code, because there are times where forcing myself to step away from a project was the best decision I could make. Seriously. Sometimes stepping away will allow me to come back with a fresh perspective, and finally work through whatever it was that was causing trouble. Or sleep - the number of times I figured out what I needed to do just as I was falling asleep is ridiculous. (Another little anecdote floating around on social media somewhere - a developer commented about how he's paid even when he's at the office goofing off playing a game, but not paid when he's in the shower and suddenly figures out how to code something-or-other for work).

People are fascinating. They can be completely selfish and irresponsible, and also extremely giving and sensible. They can be petty and spiteful, gracious and kind... and motivated for all sorts of reasons. (It's part of why I love humanity, even while I'm also sometimes frustrated and annoyed with it).

We're glorious as we are - and we're not robots. We can't be managed like robots, and nobody should even be trying to.

There are all sorts of managerial tools, and they have their time and place... KPIs (key performance indicators), expected rates/hr, quality and delivery goals - all sorts of data that managers use to tell how they're business is doing.

But you have to know how and when to use them, and when to take them with a grain of salt. It's sort of like what my father said about predicting the weather (he has a master's in meteorology courtesy of the Air Force). He said you get all these measurements - temperature, barometric pressure, etc - and the computer makes a prediction...

And then you have to go outside. Look at the weather and see if it fits what's being predicted. Check the clouds (I don't really know the names for which ones, but some types of clouds indicate certain types of weather and if the computer is predicting one thing and the clouds don't look right for it, you may need to revise. Don't quote me on this, I'm not the one who actually studies these things.)

Businesses need data to track their performance, but a) we can only track the things we measure and b) people will game the system.

I suppose this is also like the relationship between qualitative and quantitative analysis, but I think this post has gone on long enough.

The main point was that we're people, not computers. And I see far too many managers who get so focused on data and metrics that they seem to forget that.