Let’s have some fun this year by using this blog space to explore and discuss those things at work that annoy, frustrate, sadden, anger, and exasperate us. Specifically, let’s discuss dysfunctions in work organizations – what they are, why they are, and how we can fix or survive them. How is our misery fun? Well maybe it won’t be fun in a “Oh my God, how funny!” kind of way – although when given some perspective some of the things we put up with at work are indeed laughable – or in a “How exciting! We’re going to Hawaii!” way – although some of the stories we’ll share will get your blood boiling or enliven you kno...

What is dysfunctional anyway? Yesterday we talked about three sources of dysfunctions in organizations (People, Processes, and Strategy), but didn’t get into too much detail about what exactly do we mean by dysfunction. Merriam-Webster defines dysfunctional as either: 1 : impaired or abnormal functioning 2 : abnormal or unhealthy interpersonal behavior or interaction within a group So to put this in context of dysfunctional organizations we are dealing with something that doesn’t work correctly – be it impaired somehow (e.g., not complete) or irregular or deviant in some manner (e.g., just strange and not what one would normally expect). This describes processes and s...

I was speaking with a colleague the other day and she relayed the following story to me. A friend of hers, who works for a life insurance firm, confided that whenever her group is asked to complete an organization survey, they give everything high marks. The reason being that the one time they answered honestly, their manager essentially freaked out and made their lives miserable in trying to resolve the issues revealed by the survey. In short, the manager reacted poorly to honest feedback (dysfunction 1), and her employees rewarded this poor reaction by subsequently providing false feedback (dysfunction 2). The sad consequence in this situation is that everyone ultimately loses. The mana...

Yesterday we talked about the folly of rewarding one behavior while wanting another behavior to occur. When we talk about dysfunctions of any kind, most people understand that the behavior or processes are not effective in some manner. The question then becomes, if it’s broke, why don’t we fix it? The simple answer is because it is reinforcing in some way. Someone is getting something out of the dysfunction, and so it becomes sustained. (By the way, this is the same reason why your cousin Stella keeps going out with that jerk Stanley…) People tend to think of reinforcement as just rewarding positive behavior. When we talk about reinforcing behaviors in organizations, it...

Last week this blog discussed why dysfunctions persist in organizations. One key factor is that there is often something about the behavior or process that is reinforcing somehow. To help understand what is reinforcing a dysfunction, I suggested the use of ABC (Antecedent-Behavior-Consequence) Analysis. Today we will see ABC Analysis in action. What often gets overlooked when trying to reinforce a positive (desired) action or process is there may be stronger, more reinforcing consequences for the undesired action or process. ABC Analysis begins with listing the consequences for the person displaying the behavior for both the desired and undesired versions of the behavior. Let’s exami...