Goals: transcending limits

Synopsis: [You might view the earlier post “Goals: the involvement with outcomes ” before this.] Choice depends on personal beliefs and not the status quo. ‘Social influence’ today, may be sourced from anywhere in the world.


The choices we make aren’t from a singular reference point, but develop from several that may even be mutually unrelated.

Homogeneity wiping out

Utilities that individuals or groups contemplate depends on their personal beliefs and not really on the status quo of the organization.

Globalization facilitates this drastic motivational change. Social homogeneity is wiping out everywhere, and so is predictability of behaviours.

Linked through technology

The outcomes anticipated make sense only to the actors. Today, social influence may be sourced from anywhere in the world. Organizations may have no idea what these might be!

Technology ushers in the age of information. Social influence is characteristic of this Internet-supported reality. No longer constrained by, or restricted to political borders or geographical boundaries, it now simply spans the globe.

Influence transformed

Hence cultural and technological change has forced into organizations and societies.

Common assumptions have been that ‘the input’ into any transaction, relationship or system is roughly equal to ‘the output’ in dimension and intensity.

But the reality today is something else. The ‘info link’ in social networking is ever increasing, ever varied. For example, developing social trends don’t change their proportions arithmetically; they expand in geometric progressions.

Consider this -

Q: If we have a series of numbers in the order 2, 4, 8, and so on, what will be the 10th term?
A: Not double digits, but in four figures – 1024.

Similarly, the nature and power of social influence too has transformed.

Global reference

The latest of generations to join the organizational workforce, the Millennials, appear to have a profound affinity for the Internet and for diversity.

They tend to think as global citizens, beyond limits of country, race or culture. Hence they are most responsive to rapid change. They carry forward the global reference.

For instance, they don’t seem to follow trends. They create them instead, finding obscure content on the ‘Net and popularizing them. Nodal interlinks over the network keeps the process churning worldwide.

Transcending

Perhaps ‘generation next’ are evolving a new need – the need to transcend the limits of homogeneity. They thrive on change, and architects it, in fact, enhancing roles within and outside the system.

Organizationally, it may be better to follow new generational leads and open our minds to global citizenship. Both employers and employees need greater flexibility of thought to accommodate multiple reference points.

Motivate involvement

Organizational members need to accept increasing diversity in their midst without prejudice. They also need to realize that rising attrition clearly indicates the lack of employee involvement with organizational decisions.

In the global workplace, the use of phrases like ‘your cultures’ or ‘your countries’ now appears limiting and archaic. It constrains generating collective involvements in new environments.

Unless the workforce motivations are carefully understood and addressed, productivity remains the unresolved concern.

Comments/opinions anyone??

Goals: the involvement with outcomes

Synopsis: Money isn’t the only motivator. Our involvement with several outcomes ultimately affects what we do. Much of the dilemma we go through relates to our personal desires vis-à-vis our social expectations.

Organizations around the world have traditionally used money incentives to motivate performance. But now, despite the tried and tested lure, they experience increasing attrition rates.

Not the only motivator

Employers are left wondering how exactly productivity can be encouraged, since the shelf life of money incentives appears short.

Besides, with social and organizational diversity increasing, behavioural motivations of different constituent groups seem complex, difficult to predict.

Over four decades ago, theorist Victor Vroom hypothesized the expectancy theory - that a worker tends to choose high productivity if they see it as the means of achieving one or more personal goals.

That means money isn’t the only motivator. Our degree of involvement with perceived outcomes ultimately determines what we do.

Fat or lean?

This works in every area of life, even in discriminating between package labels.

In a study, researchers asked target groups to decide between two packages of ground beef – one labelled “80 percent lean”, the other “20 percent fat”.

They found that although both essentially meant the same thing, most people predictably preferred the lean. Why is because ‘fat’ is connotative, often viewed as repulsive.

Although the package contents were identical, their labels still subtly biased thinking and motivated choice in the target groups - sometimes wishfully!

Personal and social

Advertising language thus attempts to influence consumer choices causing unconscious emotional reactions. Our motivations are linked to our social and cultural origins, and the orientations that we thereby learn or adopt.

Before acting on the environment people tend to think over four types of consequences:

• Self approval or disapproval
• Social approval or disapproval
• Gains or losses for self
• Gains or losses for significant others.
  

Fact is we’re an intensely social species. Much of the dilemma we go through relates to our personal desires vis-à-vis our social expectations.

Integrated response

Norms, beliefs and customs we carry in memory associate with our subjectivity, and sense of self. They contribute to our reasoning.

These considerations influence our life decisions. Consciously or unconsciously, we may be influenced by their dictates. In our action responses we integrate our behaviours with the goals we intend to achieve.

Know the context

In any department, or workgroup in the organization then, motivating factors relating to individual wants may differ from group preferences. Choices as a member of a social (or cultural) group may also be quite different to those in personal capacity.

Earlier the ‘personal’ and ‘social’ referents were a little more predictable because people came from similar backgrounds. Now in the global context, family, community, neighbourhood, etc., could mean different things to different people.

If productivity is to be encouraged, it becomes important to know about these differences of personal and social contexts that serve to motivate the behaviours of organizational members.

Cont’d 2…transcending limits

Behaviour: acting for the future

Synopsis: [You might view the earlier post “Behaviour: the power of the hunch” before this.] Emotions make thinking more intelligent. Our ability to intuit then depends on the unique mental wiring connecting our emotions and our general intelligence. Intuition makes us streetsmart savvy, thinking future.

Intuition drives the adaptability to changing environments, with immediate knowledge.

Inhibition and distress

The rationalistic mind blocks this fearing passion. But by inhibiting the emotional livewire, issues are grasped incompletely, choices biased, failures in following through or stereotypical mistakes doing so.

Incompetence with social skills raises anxiety and fear, shrinking working memory. The gut feelings in this case, simply signal organic distress when faced with the unknown!

Thinking intelligent

Our intuition combines experiential learning of the past with the present context. It also guides decisions on the ‘right’ options in problem solving, and regulates changes in behaviour.

The intuitive signals are carried by our emotions, both positive and negative. Emotions thus make thinking more intelligent.

The context

Emotions are of special value in the social context. There are five competencies that build on one another to develop social skills -

• Knowing one’s emotions
• Managing emotions
• Motivating oneself
• Recognizing emotions in others
• Handling relationships

They influence our use of language, the way we perceive others or ourselves and especially, how we confront environmental challenges and adapt to change.

Mental wiring

Utilized at a level below consciousness, intuition combines bits of learned information into new patterns - fast.

Our long evolutionary history makes intuitive thinking a deeply buried power of the mind. It develops spatial associations and helps our adjusting to the environment’s unpredictable changes.

Studies have identified a direct neural link from the centre of emotions (the limbic system) to the centres of reason (the frontal regions) of the brain.

Our ability to intuit then depends on the unique mental wiring connecting our emotions and our general intelligence. It predisposes us to think and act in certain ways.

Streetsmart – thinking future

The value of decision-making lies in the flow of adaptive behaviour - from rapid reading and evaluation of possibilities, to unerring selection of response, and performance suited to situation and context.

Decisions relate to the future and we need educated guesses to make them effective. Intuition makes us streetsmart savvy. We can think according to context, utilizing divergent thinking and non-rational logic to back our hunches.

With the clear inputs of emotions, it also facilitates universal empathy, and the building of positive relationships. We are able to change ourselves and encourage others also to change with us.

Extending power

This innate potential cannot be taught. In times gone by intuitive skills were critically responsible for the physical survival of human life or species. We need to understand and accept our right brain’s astute promptings to guide us through life.

And extend the power of our minds to our psychological and creative planes, so individual and organizational actions in the new global reality are unencumbered by hesitation and doubt.

Comments/opinions anyone??

Behaviour: power of the hunch

Synopsis: We assume that people decide to act only after they have a workable theory. But the emotional livewire may initiate action far sooner.

When exactly do people decide to act? Scientists at the University of Iowa experimented with a simple card game and a polygraph, and found some fascinating results.

The scientific tests

Researchers used two groups of people - “controls” (normal people), and “patients” (people with frontal brain damage).

…the players are given four decks of cards, a loan of $2000 facsimile U.S. bills, and asked to play so that they can lose the least amount of money and win the most. Turning each card carries an immediate reward ($100 in decks A and B and $50 in decks C and D). Unpredictably, however, the turning
of some cards also carries a penalty (which is large in decks A and B and small in decks C and D)...

By the process of turning the cards over, participants can build a concept about the decks, and adjust their play concomitantly.

Understanding

Researchers identified 4 stages in the game play:

1. Pre-punishment - Before encountering losses, both groups behave the same.
2. Pre-hunch – By card 10-20, after encountering losses, stress reaction occurs in ‘controls’. This causes a change in their behaviour.
3. Hunch - By card 50, all of the “controls” express ideas about the ‘wrong’ decks, but none of the “patients” can do so.
4. Conceptual period - By card 80, seven out of ten “controls”, and three out of six “patients” correctly explain the nature of the card game.
   

The two groups clearly show differences in behaviour responses. The controls could rapidly adapt to the game, but not so the patients.

The brain tracks

We use two routes in our brain while thinking –

• The rapid track is the intuitive route. It operates quickly to identify and understand patterns in new situations, which helps us quite unconsciously, to adapt to them.
• The rational route is slow track. Although comparatively delayed it allows a conscious, critical grasp of events through deliberate analysis of the data we receive.

From the findings, we might conclude that brain damage in the patients prevented activation of their unconscious reasoning, and hence their making adjustments to the game.

Change in behaviour

In any situation, our eventual decision-making is influenced by unconscious signals from memory of reward or punishment. This encourages us to change behaviour.

The researchers found that with their losses, all the controls showed stress reactions, like sweaty palms, to the riskier decks. Even before knowing exactly why they were reacting, they began to avoid those decks.

But none of the “patients” had such reactions. Even those who finally formed a correct concept of the game could only continue with their previous behaviour patterns.

Cont’d 2…acting for the future