JOE ANDERSON, PhD

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Sample

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1

BRAD

“Why in the hell

won’t these assholes do

what I tell them to do?”

If you have people reporting to you, you’ve probably said the same; maybe even a more colorful version of it.  I heard just such a rendition this morning from one of the best CEOs I know.  It was a thing of beauty, replete with the bluest prose and rambling flourishes of threat and invective.  It inspired me to start this book tonight. 

That, plus the fact that he had a stroke and died right in the middle of his performance.

It makes you wonder if authority is dangerous to your health. 

The facts tell us that the stress involved is gonna kill us, but first, it’s going to irritate everyone around us.  Seventeen thousand, three hundred executives died last year, from the stress of trying to be in control.  Seventeen thousand.  Add to that the 17,000 spouses and 35,000 kids suddenly orphaned and that’s 70,000 folks who had a very bad year because of work related stress.  But that’s small potatoes, compared to the following facts.

Before they died, those 17,300 executives crushed 86,500 employees.  You know --- crushed --- publicly attacked, humiliated and belittled in a manner that kills the urge to give their best effort.  Those folks had a bad year and probably a bad life as well.  Not much is worse than working for a fire-breathing, anal-retentive control freak.

But wait.  It gets even better.  Those 86,500 crushed individuals have 4 times more sick days than the non-crushed; plus, when they are there, they’re only about 57% as effective  as the non-crushed --- because they’re busy keeping a low profile, staying out of trouble and making sure that anything that goes wrong is someone else’s fault.  But that still doesn’t seem to help them, because their turnover rate is about 6 times higher than for the non-crushed. 

Just ponder that for a moment.  That’s a lot of transition costs, training costs and ramp-up expenses.  Not to mention, legal expenses.  Who do you think sues their employer?  Take your time.  Everybody already knows.  Yep.  It’s the ones you tried to crush.  Some of them fight back --- then you’ve got one heck of a mess on your hands --- and your stress goes up yet again, and you end up crushing another truck load of folks who just showed up for work today hoping for a fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work.

And the parade continues.  Those 86,500 folks who were crushed by the original 17,300 executives who are no longer among the living ---  they turned around and crushed 366,000 more --- because humans do not like to suffer alone.  We pass along our misfortunes so that we can have company in our misery.  If you’ve done the math, you can see that this means that stress grows by a factor of five, while most infections only grow by a factor of 2.  So I’m thinking that stress may just be the most infectious scourge known to man.

The contagion often goes on for another iteration or two, but let’s stop the process in its tracks and take stock of the situation.  There are 452,500 crushed employees, who emanated from the original 17,300 who died.. 

•  8,700 of them will die from stress within the next 3 years
•  61,500 will change jobs within 18 months
• 295,000 of them have 4 times more absences than normal
•  452,500 of them will be only 67% as productive as normal
•  And here’s the kicker – those 17,300 hyper-controlling bosses who started the whole process were only 70% as productive as other managers
•  We lose $13.6 Billion a year due to stressed-out, mismanaging bosses.
• And that’s just in New York.The actual cost of stress in America is in the Trillions.

Stress will kill you, my friend.  But is doesn’t have to be that way.  Despite strong evidence to the contrary, I cling to the belief that it is possible to be in charge (of a firm, division, department, or work crew) without killing yourself in the process.  In fact, I still think that it’s possible to have a successful career and a rich, meaningful - and long life, simultaneously.  That’s what this book is about.

I serve as Consigliere to America’s owners.  Business owners.  I am part business strategist, part shrink, part drill sergeant, and part pastor.  In some respects I play Alfred to their Batman.  I get them ready for battle, and sew them back together afterward.  We do it mostly via conversation. 

I was having one of those conversations this morning, when everything spun out of control.  His name was Brad.  He was a fine man, and one of the shrewdest entrepreneurs it has been my pleasure to know.  Chairman of his church.  Beautiful wife. Three great kids, two still in elementary school.  And I failed to save his life today. 

So instead, I’m gonna try to save yours. 

We’re going to do that by using “Drift Therapy”.  We’ll drift between fact, commentary and conversation without clear delineation. I’m going to converse with Brad off and on throughout this book.  Some of it will be actual conversations we’ve had, some of it will be conversations I’ve actually had with other CEOs, and some of it will be conversations I should have had with either one.  All of it will be a conversation I am having with you.

Here’s the thing about drift therapy, though.  It doesn’t actually pack itself into a nice neat 2-hour session.  Life isn’t that sweet.  Instead, the conversation reported here rolled itself out over many months during the first year of the Obama administration, when the world was in a massive recession and uncertainty lurked around every corner. 

It was a time of acute stress and anxiety, so the language here will be unfiltered and rough, because that is how life is lived, and talked about, in the stress-filled world.   About 10% of the CEOs I work with can’t speak without obscenities.  They put one in every sentence, just to keep their tongue in shape.  Another 30% will wax obscene, and creatively so, when they are under pressure.  The bulk of CEOs, however, right around 50%, use it sparingly, as an exclamation point, just to let you know when something is serious.  And 10% are verbal teetotalers.  They never swear.  So we know that their inherent obscenity works it’s way out in even more creative ways.

Obscenity is a language like any other, so when confronted with a native speaker I adopt the dialect myself so that I can be understood.  When you listen to its rhythm you’ll notice that it is actually a 3rd party in the conversation.

I’ve also left in the obscenity because I believe that folks say exactly what they mean.  However, it sounds cruder to the ear with repetition, so I’ve used euphemistic symbols (@%#$!) to soften the effect on you.

• Brad’s last words could have been, “How, in heaven’s name, do I get these ladies and gentlemen to help me in my quest?” 
• If so, they probably wouldn’t have been his last words; because a man who speaks like that doesn’t have the same level of stress as the guy who used Brad’s words.   And he wouldn’t have been struggling with that extreme level of stress for the past year or two, and he wouldn’t have had a massive stroke, and he wouldn’t have died. 

No.  Brad said exactly what he meant.  He didn’t care about HOW.  He cared about WHY.  He saw his employees as assholes out to screw him, not as ladies and gentlemen eager to help him.  And he wasn’t interested in their help; he just wanted their obedience.  He said what he meant, in the way that he meant it, and lived it, and ultimately died from it.  So as both a therapist and as a forensic linguist, it’s important to retain the words as Brad uttered them.

I apologize if the language offends you, but frankly, Brad’s death offends me more; and I’m trying to save a life here.  A very important one.  Yours.  So I hope you’ll cut me a little slack.

Finally, I should point out to you that I’m a fan of the Socratic method.  That is the debriefing method where each answer holds the seed of the next question, not the endpoint of a discussion.  I like it for its ability to drill down to the prime cause of a problem; cutting through the conscious and unconscious BS and buffers we place between ourselves and the truth.  And I like it for the strategic direction it gives us for pursuing any effort to help another.

“The answer is in the question. 
It is not in the response to the question.”

It amounts to the marching orders for the psychic detective. 
So when Brad blurted out his angry question …

“Why in hell won’t these assholes do what I tell them?”

… he gave us the road map for this book.  All we’re going to do is walk back through the question one word or phrase at a time.  Join me.     

_________________________________________________________________

2

WHY

“It’s not the opposable thumb,” I said.

“The what?”

“The thumb.  It’s not the thumb.”

“What’s not the thumb?” Brad asked.

“The thing that differentiates us from house plants.” 

“I see,” he chuckled.  “Ok.  I’ll bite.  What separates us from the lowly house plant?”

“A plant never asks why it ended up in a pot.  We do.  ‘Cogito. Ergo, sum.’  ‘I think.  Therefore, I am.’”

“Yeh, that may be so,” Brad said, “ but if you cogito your sum around here one more time I’m gonna stick you in a pot.”  

“I smiled.  I got an offer to play for the Chicago Bears & weigh in at over 270 pounds.  A guy built like me gets to smile.  A lot.  “The point is well taken, my friend.  No more Latin.  I promise.”

“Good”

“But the point is valid, none the less.  People think.  And they think a lot about why stuff happens.  And they think a lot about why they should or shouldn’t do something – from running a red light to falling in line with one of your edicts. People do things for a reason; which means what?”

“Which means that maybe I need to change my mind about caring why they do things?” hazarded Brad.  “Look, I’m not a psychologist.  That crap is just a bowl of oatmeal that wastes my time.”

I was stunned by the mixed metaphor.  The image of oatmeal clogging a clock overwhelmed me.  “Maybe you already know more than you think.”  I said.  How about a little quiz?   A bear jumps out of the bushes.  Quick, what are your options?”

“Run or fight.”

“You run?”

“Damn straight”

“You’re in the middle of nowhere, in winter, in your Bermuda shorts.  The bear has a heart attack and keels over.  What do you do?”

“Eat him and make a robe or shelter or some darn thing out of his fur.”

“And your favorite movie starlet walks by?”

“Ummm --- Oh!  I offer her a little food, shelter and horizontal mambo lessons.”

“Think you’ll tell her how you killed the bear?”

“It died of old age.”

“And that’s gonna score you a mambo lesson?”

“Oh, right.  I ripped off its jaw bone and beat him to death with it.”

“Not bad.  But why do you tell her such a whopper.”

“It makes me look good.  Improves my chances.”

“Spring comes.  You, the starlet and the mambo offspring are rescued.  You write a book.  Make millions.  You’re set for life.  What do you do?”

“Ah …I always wanted to do hang gliding.”

“Bingo!” I purr. “You should teach at Harvard.  You just did a complete rendition of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs --- considered by some to be the bedrock of motivational psychology. ”

1. Immediate Survival – fight or flight
2. Long term survival – food & shelter
3. Affiliation – getting laid, companionship, love
4. Esteem--- find a way to look (or be) worthy
5. Self actualization – the freedom to do whatever you wish

“Not bad” said Brad.  “So how do I use it?”

“You don’t” says I.  “It’s bull.”

“Bullshit?”

“Well, the academic term is Toro-pooh-pooh.  The point is that Maslow’s Theory might be a little complex.  For instance, where were you at the beginning of the story?”

“Wait a minute.” Said Brad. “Is this still Maslow’s thing – or are we doing something different?”

“Oh, this is very different I said.  “So where were you?”

“With the bear?  I was just walking around, apparently looking for an opportunity to play someone’s straight man.”

“Good” I laughed.  “Let’s call that place ‘POINT A’.  Then a bear appeared and you went to …?”

“Point B?”

“Yes!” I chortled.  “Point B!  Why’d you go to point B?”

“It seemed the functional thing to do,” said Brad.  “There was no bear at POINT B.”

“Bravooo,” I intoned.  “That is exceptional.  Sometimes we go from Point A to Point B simply because it’s the functional thing to do.  I’m thirsty, so I get a drink of water.  I’m tired, so I turn out the light.  We do hundreds of things each day, for no other reason than that we want to get from Point A to Point B.  If we over-analyze things we create a real mess.”

“Amen” said Brad.  He’s an old Lutheran.

“But as Ron Poppeil is fond of saying ‘But wait! There’s more.’ ”

“Of course there is” said Brad.  “There’s always more.”

“ Why’d you lie through your teeth about killing the bear? I asked.

“You told me to” Brad fired back.

“Never did,” said I.

“You did too”

“Nope.”

“You sure?”

“Yep”

“How so?”

“It’s my book.”

“Ah… you’re right,” said Brad.  “I made up that whopper on my own.”

“I thought so.  Why was that?”

“To get her under my bear skin.”

“Why would she be willing to do that?  You’re not all that good looking.”

His turn to laugh. He had been captain of the swim team at a Big Ten school and still looked the part – 6’2”, lean and long muscled.  Never, ever, make a joke at someone else’s expense.  He took my cue, though, “I told her the story so she’d know I could protect her.  By the way, is she in Bermuda shorts, too?”

“It’s your fantasy, Bubba.  If you want her in shorts, she’s in shorts.  Doesn’t matter to me.  But once again, you’ve hit a home run.  She crawled under your skin because she saw you as competent.  You were an alpha male.  You killed a frickin’ bear --- with your bare hands, for God sake.  If she wants to survive, she’s gonna exercise her expertise as a woman by sidling up to the man holding the jawbone.  She’s trading her competence for yours.  Competence.  Say it with me brethren.  The 2nd element in this new model is competence.  People do things either to exercise their competence, or to make up for NOT having it.”

“Wait a second’” mused Brad.  “That sounds like a perfect description of practical jokes.”

“Yep.  They’re a classic case of ‘I’m incompetent so I’ll make you look incompetent too.  That way, no one will notice my shortcomings.”

“Hmmm” said Brad.  “Are you saying that folks who truly feel competent, never pull practical jokes on others?”

“Never is a long time, Brad.  I’d feel better if you erased the word ‘never’ and replaced it with the word ‘don’t’ ”.

“Hmmm.  Competent people don’t pull practical jokes.  Better?”

“Perfect.”

“Ok” said Brad.  “I got it.  People do things to get from Point A to Point B --- or to enjoy the trip from A to B --- because of their competence.  Is that it?”

“Partially.  But we’re getting there.  Here’s the big question.  If a bear dies in the woods but there’s no one to listen to the stories you make up about it, is there glory?”

“No”

“Why not?”

“Glory needs an audience.”

“Yes!! Why?”

“I don’t know.  And I’m tired.  And my head hurts.”

“Come on Brad.  Buck up.  Here’s the $20,000 answer.  Glory occurs in YOUR head.  Not the audience’s.  All they give you is affirmation.  Your fertile little brain is what turns it into glory.  And what it is that turns the one into the other is beyond us.  We don’t know.  For some people, a private word or a quiet pat on the back are all they need for their glory fix.  Others need the roar of the grease paint and the smell of the crowd.  Anything less doesn’t cross the glory threshold.  And you know what that’s all about?” I asked.

“What’s the right answer here?”

“Acceptance.”

“Acceptance,” he said.  “It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about the roar of the crowd or the hum of a single friend, we’re all driven by the need for acceptance --- or, wait for it, I remember this --- or by the lack of acceptance in our lives.” 

“That’s it, kiddo.”

Brad perked up.  “So that’s it?”

“Yep”

 “So it’s a 3 part model as compared to Maslow’s 5 parter?”

“Yep”

1. “Function
2. Competence
3. Acceptance”

“Yep.”

“That’s shorter then.”

“By two points.  Count ‘em.”

“And whose theory is this?”

“Mine”

“Really?”

“Yep.  Journal articles.  The works.”

“No kidding?”

“Yep”

“So you’re a bona fide egghead?”

“Yeh.  That’s the word I was searching for.”

“I like that,” beamed Brad. “I got me a real live academician, here.  What else can you tell me?”

“It’s bullshit,” I said.

“I’m sorry.  The theory is bulls@#*?”

“Nah.  The model is perfectly good.  Better than most, in fact.”

“But ……?”

“Let me ask you a question.  A bear jumps out of the bushes.  Slobber everywhere.  You’ve got ‘Lunch’ tattooed on your forehead. At that precise point in time did you say to yourself ‘Quick.  Should I use Maslow’s model or Anderson’s to solve this dilemma?’ ”

“Nope.  I just ran like hell.”

“Exactly!  In the heat of battle, theories and models go out the window.  They are pure and utter bulls@#*.”

Brad stood up.  “Why in the hell did we spend all that time learning this crap then?  I knew it then.  It was an utter waste of time.  I wasted 16 years of my life in school, learning worthless s@#*.  I’ve been saying that all my life.”

“And you’ve been wrong your entire life.  Sit down, Brad.”

He plopped back in the chair.  “What?!  You just said they were bulls@#*.  I heard you.”

“In the heat of battle they’re bulls@#*.  In the heat of battle.  The rest of the time, they’re priceless.”

“I don’t get it.”

“I know.  A lot of people don’t get it.  That’s why we do such a crappy job of changing behavior. Let me give you a few bullet points on this.

1. It is absolutely crucial that you have a model in your head regarding what makes people tick.
2. That model creates the context in which all of your ‘heat of battle’ decisions occur
3. But, in the heat of battle you’re using gut instinct, not a model.  You’re just getting from point A to Point B.”

Dead pause for a moment, then Brad ventured “Something beats nothing every time, huh?”

“Yep.”

“That’s a bit shallow, don’t you think?”

“Why do you say that?’

“Because of Pastor Peterson” said Brad.  Then he grinned “Sin is everything in thought, word and deed that is contrary to the will of God… Geez, that’s from my 7th grade confirmation class.  Everything’s driven by the war between good and evil, between God and Satan.”

“Shoot, Brad.  That sure sounds like a model to me.”

“Yeh.”

“Think it’s had an impact on the decisions you make?”

“Yeh.”

“But I’ll bet you rarely think in terms of sin and virtue, especially when you’re in the heat of battle.”

“You’re right”

“But, take a moment to think about your last pressure decision.  Did you come down on the virtue side of the fence?”

“The McElhinney deal” said Brad.  “Lemme think.  Yeh, I guess I did.  I left a little extra on the table for him, just to smooth the closing.”

“That was good morals, maybe good ethics.”

“No,” said Brad.  “It was just good business”.

“Ahhhhh,” said I.  “Isn’t it interesting how those things seem to cluster together? Good morals, good ethics, good business?”

Brad didn’t say a word, but you could smell the wheels turning.

I had to ask; “You think the Anderson or Maslow model might have led you to the same decision?”

“I don’t know,” said Brad “Lemme think.  The extra profit was certainly an affirmation of his competence, which put him in the mood to close the deal quickly and smoothly.  Yeh – that’s your model.  And the extra money would certainly affect his self esteem, and it would also allow him to pursue hang gliding or whatever his heart’s desire is ... so yeh, Maslow’s Theory would have told me to do the same thing as well.”

“So would it have mattered which model you used?”

“Wait a minute” Brad said, “Did you notice that your model and Maslow’s are almost interchangeable?  I mean, your competence stuff is clearly imbedded in at least 4 of Maslow’s levels – probably all 5.  I think the same is true of your function and acceptance stuff too.”

“Yeh, now flip things around.  You’ll see good and evil imbedded in my model, and Maslow’s stuff as well.”

“Yeh” said Brad.  “What’s with that?”

“They’re all headed in the same direction.  Human’s all share a sense that there is a moral order to the universe.  It shows up in every religion, every philosophy and every scientific school of thought.  Even Entropy Theory says that ...”

“I know that one” interrupted Brad.  “That’s the one that says that if you run enough random numbers, even they start to take on a predictable pattern.”

“Pretty close.”  I said.  “And here’s the interesting point, regardless of how different the culture, moral order addresses the same issues to one group of folks that it does to another.  They all address fairness, opportunity, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 

“So then why do we have different schools of thought about why people do what they do?” asked Brad.

“Nuance.  Take a look at fairness.  Every single religious, philosophical and political system known to man is in favor of fairness.  But how do we know something is fair?  For instance - you work 8 hours a day.  So do I.  You sit in an air-conditioned cubicle.  I work out in the fresh air.  You are conscientious and careful in your work.  So am I.  You get paid 60% more than I do.  Is that fair?”

“Depends on your benchmark.” Said Brad.

“What benchmarks?” I asked.

“Well, are you looking at this from the standpoint of inputs or outputs?” said Brad.  “Or what about relative measures?  Things like equality or proportionality.”

“Humph!” I grunted.  “You just mapped the 20th century.   You built a 2x2 matrix. On one edge you have Equality and Proportionality.  On the other you have Inputs and outputs.”  I drew the matrix on his white board.  “Notice something interesting,” I said.  “No one, not a single model is built on the assumption of equal inputs from individuals.  In fact, everyone, every religion, philosophy and political doctrine acknowledges that some folks produce more value than others – i.e. – proportional inputs.  I find that fascinating.”

“Henh” said Brad.  He may have been clearing his sinuses rather than agreeing, but I continued anyway. 

“And Capitalism and Communism are in large measure simply arguing over the distribution of outcomes.  Should we all get the same, regardless of our inputs, or should the more talented folks get proportionately more.”

“And we spent 50 years threatening to blow each other up over that?  That’s a tad bit more than fascinating.” said Brad.

“Maybe even ‘Important?’ ”I asked

“Maybe even” he said.

“And here’s the part that stuns the ox” I said.  We almost blew up the world over that conceptual nuance. 

“Hmmm,” mused Brad.  “So this stuff does something more than give us specific behavioral guidelines. But what?”

“You, my friend are one sharp cookie.  Yes, it does a lot more.  The model we use is important, mostly, because it frames the situation for us.  It tells us what is good, what is bad.  It tells us what is fair and what is unfair, what is safe and what is dangerous.  So we suddenly find ourselves in the heat of battle, we know what to do --- not by figuring it out on the spot, but by gut reactions that are the product of years of viewing the world from one perspective.”

“Like my Uncle Joe” said Brad.

“Who?”  I asked

“Uncle Joe.  My mom’s brother.  He was enormous.  And hairy.  And loud.  Oh God, was he loud.   You could hear him bellow a mile away. In fact, he was a lot like the bear you conjured earlier.  But every time I saw Uncle Joe, I’d run toward him, full tilt.  Not away.  Toward.”

“So your model didn’t teach you that big, hairy and loud were dangerous,?”  I said.

“A thousand pardons my master,” said Brad reverently “The model didn’t teach me that big, hairy, loud and human were dangerous.  I still had the good sense to run from a bear.”

“Yes you did,” I grinned. “Nuances.”

“Very so,” said Brad with a gentle bow.

We hear a lot today about how crummy the American educational system is, as though the problem comes from the input.  The critics may have a point.  But I’ve read the textbooks myself.  I’ve looked at the assignments.  The content is all there.  Literally, we lay the secrets of the universe in front of our kids on a daily basis.  And the thing I’ve found is that most people are like Brad; the material all starts to roll back out of them, processed and surprisingly intact --- if you give it a green light to come back out and breathe the fresh air. Maybe the problem doesn’t exist in the system that puts the knowledge into folks.  Maybe the problem exists in how we get it back out of them as adults.

“Brad, I’d give you a college degree, just based on what you’ve told me today.  You have processed, and retained, all that material you were so eager to condemn as crap earlier today.  It was an incredible display.”

Brad was a bit embarrassed by the praise. “Yeh, well, thanks.  Who knew?”

“You did, Brad.  You did.  That’s the point.  So why did it come out so clearly today?”

“Well in all honesty, you kinda guided me down the primrose path, chief.”

“Yeh.  But I wasn’t putting words in your mouth.”

“No.  But you were asking a lot of leading questions.”

“Yeah.  But you were the one with the answers.  And if you recall, you asked some pretty good questions of your own.”

Brad thought a second. “Yeh, but ...”

“Waitwaitwait” I said, “Lean forward.”  He did, whereupon I thwacked him on the forehead with my bird finger.

“Ow.  What was that for?”

“That’s to remind you that you’re a lot smarter than you think you are.  Stop plugging your brain with your ‘but’ ”

“My but?”

“Your ‘yeh buts’.  You’ve got ‘yehbuts’ sticking out of every orifice in your head.  Stop being your own worst enemy.  Give yourself permission to be smart.  For some reason, America has adopted a culture of anti-intellectualism.  So much so that half the population goes nuts for any politician that puts on his aw shucks hat and makes a couple of dumb jokes about computer nerds.  I worry about us, sometimes.  I really do.”

“You sound like a Democrat.”

“No, I sound like an embarrassed Republican.”

“Okay” said Brad.  “I just gave myself permission to be smart.  So now what?”

“Nothing!” I said, “Because you’ve been smart all along.  The only thing that happens when you give yourself the green light is that thinking gets a lot easier, because …”

“Because I’ve pulled my butt out of my brain.”

“Yeh, something like that.”

“Heh, heh, heh.” Brad just sat there and chuckled for a moment.  “This is pretty interesting, Doc.”

“Yeh, it is.”

“It’s like I knew it, and didn’t know it all my life.”

“Yeh”

“And it all happened just ‘cause we took, what’s it been, an hour?   To shoot the breeze.”

“I think we’ve shot a little more than the breeze”, I said, “but yeh, it’s been about an hour.  Now why do you think you made such strides?”

“Well,” thought Brad “you’re easy to talk to.  You’re safe.  You assume I’m pretty bright.  At least I think you do. You do, don’t you?  What’re grinning about? What?”

“You think I care.”

“Yeh.”

“About what you think?”

“Yeh, I do.  Am I wrong?”

“No.  You’re absolutely right.  I do.”

“Then what?”

“You, my friend, have just discovered the first secret of getting people to do what you want.”

“They have to believe I care about them.”

“And?”

“…and … what they think.”

“Bingo.  And you do that by …”

“…by asking them.”

“… and …”

“… and then listening to their answer.”

“Listening.” I intoned like a sacred mantra.

“You are such a hambone,” he laughed.

“Yeh,” I admitted, “but it doesn’t change the facts.  Folks hate to be invisible.  Hate it.  With a passion.  Which leads to all sorts of bad behavior: sabotaging machines, dogging it at work, or grabbing a gun and going postal.  ‘Betcha see me now, don’t cha?’  Visibility is key.  Asking them what they think, feel, want --- and then listening to their response lets them know they’re visible.  And when they know that, their behavior gets good.”

“It can’t be that simple,” said Brad. But his body language said, “make me a believer.”

So I anointed him with the Hawthorne Effect.  “Back in the 1930’s, General Electric did an experiment to see how differences in lighting effected productivity in a factory setting.  They split their own big factory in Hawthorne Illinois in half.  One side got one type of lighting; the other side got a different type of lighting.  Researchers were everywhere, measuring activities, asking workers how they felt, what they thought etc.  The results?  Productivity went up on both sides of the factory.”

“That’s weird,” said Brad.

“Not just weird.  Downright spectacular.  Further research showed that workers were responding to the fact that someone cared what they thought.  GE had accidentally made its own employees visible.  And productivity took off like a rocket.  That’s the Hawthorne Effect, and it’s been replicated a hundred times.” 

Brad was impressed.  “That’s a pretty neat trick.”

“Yeh, it is.  But if that’s all it is, it does you more harm than good in the long run.  Workers will get really pissed.”

“So what am I supposed to do?”

“Well, you could try really caring what they think,” said I.  “Look, they need to know they’re visible when you’re making decisions, not just when you walk past them in the morning.  Ask them what they think.  Then ask them why they think that.  Then listen to what they say.  And don’t pooh-pooh or dismiss what they say.  Otherwise you just make them invisible again.”

“That’s it?”  asked Brad.

“Noooo,” I laughed.  “Far from it.  There are as many models about why folks do what they do as there are academics looking for research grants and tenure.  Everyone’s got a model.  You’ve got psychic, relational and functional bank account models.  You’ve got Gap Analysis and Cognitive Dissonance models.  You’ve got probability, instrumentality and payoff models. Perceptual and enactment models.Nephish and Gnostic models.  Attention and valence models.  Proactive and reactive, intrinsic and extrinsic, indoor and outdoor models.  They’ve even got revelatory models, and my favorite – the Evolutionary Psychology model.  I call it the caveman model, and it’s uncannily useful in making predictions.”

“Geeze” was all he could say.

“Yeh.  But here’s the interesting thing.  They all have one thing in common.  Every single one of them centers around one thing ----- meaning.  Turns out that mankind wants to know what it all means.  What is the meaning of life?  What is the meaning of my life?  What do all these things say about me and my place in the grand scheme of things?

“I don’t know, Doc.  This is getting’ pretty touchy-feely.”

I handed him his hat and coat. “Maybe.  But I’d suggest you think about it for a while.  And when you get a chance, you might want to read Viktor’s book”

“Who the hell is Viktor? Asked Brad.

“Frankl.  Viktor Frankl. The book is titled Man’s Search for Meaning.  Give it a try.”

“Yeh, maybe.  Thanks Doc.”