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1.415.644.5795 Most of us agree with the African proverb that “it takes a village to raise a child”. I experienced it growing up in a small village in Ireland called Ballygowan. Everyone knew everyone and it was quite common to get a “cuff” on the ear from someone else’s mother when getting up to no good. I got confused later in life when I discovered half of the people I called “aunt” or “uncle” had no relation whatsoever, family is extended in a village.
Village living is interesting as everyone emerges with a few interesting roles and contributions that make it all work. No-one is every sat down and told what their role in the community is, it just sort of happens over time. There were the gossipers who helped ensure everyone was up to speed. There were the farmers who made sure all the underage workforce got something productive to do on the weekend and earn pocket money. I could list many more but I am sure you get the gist.
Systems are fascinating entities. Quite often we think we know how they work and then we change something only to have it all break down around us. Nothing is as straight forward as we assume and the consultants/leaders who propose the simplicity of business 101 or simple fixes to save money normally are not around anymore when the repercussions surface later. There is always something we did not see or could not forsee when acting.
Meri Gruber found a very interesting article by David Sloan Wilson on her recent post about Enterprise 2.0 and chickens:
William Muir, an animal breeder at Purdue University, wanted to increase egg production by selective breeding, and he tried to do it in two ways. Both involved housing hens in cages (groups), which is standard practice in the poultry industry. The first method involved selecting the most productive hen within each cage to breed the next generation of hens. The second method involved selecting the most productive cages and using all the hens from those cages to breed the next generation of hens. You might think that the difference between the two methods is slight and that the first method should work better. After all, it is individuals who lay eggs, so selecting the best individuals directly should be more efficient than selecting the best groups, which might include some individual duds.
The results told a completely different story. When Bill presented his results at a scientific conference, he showed a slide of hens selected by the first method after six generations. The audience gasped. Inside the cage were only three hens, not nine, because the other six hens had been murdered. The three survivors had plucked each other during their incessant attacks and were now nearly featherless… What happened? The most productive individuals had achieved their success by suppressing the productivity of their cage mates.
The first method caused egg productivity to perversely decline, even though the most productive hens were chosen each and every generation. The second method caused egg productivity to increase 160 percent in six generations, an astonishing response as artificial selection experiments go.
Excerpt from Evolution for Everyone by David Sloan Wilson
Like the village, this “community” of chickens have a system that is not visible to many on the outside. Their productivity hinges on the things unseen or not considered. I suppose it is just like ours as human beings at work. Our productivity hinges on how happy we feel, how alert we are, how much we are respected, how much trust we have for leaders and co-workers, and how connected we are within the system.
To address the list above one of the best strategies to implement to enhance productivity would be health and fitness plans, reduction of caffeine, siesta’s, and open communication. Instead the smarter guys who crunch numbers and are only influenced by the measurable (instead of common sense) typically respond to enhancing productivity by rewards and recognition plans and requiring more reporting.
I am not suggesting that we go all fluffy at work but rather that we actually get more strategic, thoughtful, and sensitive to the complexity of the system. Instead of taking the low road of assessing individual productivity we need to stand back and ask what is missing within the system to bring the collaboration, sharing, and camaraderie that makes things sing and make small changes at the macro level that can nudge things in the right direction across the company.
