Promises that don’t need to deliver, to have an affect!

Promises that don’t need to deliver, to have an affect!

The Hawthorne effect is a form of reactivity whereby people improve or modify an aspect of their behaviour simply in response to the fact that they know they are being studied and not in response to any particular experimental manipulation.

I have been in a number of organisations where great plans and bold promises are made but the implementation falters and the promises are not kept. The accepted wisdom is that to promise but fail to deliver will have more of a negative impact on the people than to have not made any promises in the first case, but is that true?

The mantra is under promise and over deliver, but sometimes the ‘hope value’ of change is enough to satisfy the immediate needs of many staff. It isn’t so important that anything has changed, but that it might or that people believe it might is sometimes enough.

I have seen this first hand in an organisation which following a survey promised to implement a series of initiatives to address the problems surfaced. There were lots of meetings. There were lots of notes. There were lots of promises. But six months later I could not list any significant product or outcome which had emerged from the process, except that the process itself (listing to people) had created a belief that things had changed!

This is not a recommended strategy, but rather like the story of the emperor having no clothes, it does tell us something about style over substance and the willingness of people to believe an idea without it having to be substantially true.

My advice would be as follows..

1.       Don’t do any survey unless you are prepared to act on the results.

2.       Don’t underestimate the importance of the process as well as the outcome.

3.       Notwithstanding the above, don’t rely on a good process to trump a poor outcome.

4.       Use structure (who, what, when, where, how, why) to communicate and monitor change.

5.       Be able to point to significant products or outcomes to encourage and demonstrate success.

                                                                                                                                                                                        

For more information

The Hawthorne effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect

The Emperor’s clothes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_emperor%27s_new_clothes

Tim Rogers

Founder ciChange

timrogers@ciChange.org

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/CI-Change-4301853

ciChange seminar and networking events for 2013 sponsored by Total Solutions Group http://www.tsgi.co/