Chad’s Blog-O-Rama

I first stumbled on to LinkedIn two years ago when asked to find a creative way to fill a difficult opening.

It didn’t work, but it was moderately addicting to use so I continued to update my profile and add connections.

Linkedin is an important part of my strategy to maintain a neatly manicured internet identity. It’s the only real front page result from a google of “Chad A. Hanson”

I have had some positive experience with this site.

I have connected to some old classmates, but frankly I talk to them just as little now as I did before LinkedIn.

I recently found a speaker for our company retreat by spamming my LinkedIn contacts.

Useful, but not more so than my outlook contacts.

Before the SIOP conference I created a semi-official SIOP group. Which holds some promising networking potential. But due to the poorly designed functionality of LinkedIn groups all I really get is five emails a week and an excuse to check my profile.

Linkedin does have some real value for maintaining and building a network and promoting your “googleability.” However, be careful not to over connect. As a general rule you should have at least spoke on the phone with your connections.

I plan on purging some of my connections those I never met or no longer remember.

No offense.

I have noticed an odd trend in employee recognition.

People would rather have nothing then something small. Or so they say.

Most of the complaints I get are when the “gift” was meant to be just something extra i.e. Pens, logo items, small gift cards, ring tones and other “swag.”

I have gotten some surprisingly angry complaints and once even had someone throw the item back at me.

I think that this high standard for employee recognition comes from two sources.

First I think company culture has spawned this. Historically employee recognition programs have been “winner take all” with bonuses for the winner (employee of the month, year etc.) This sets the expectation that when you win the payout will be large.

The second reason for this has to do more with good old fashioned behaviorism.

Skinner and Pavlov teach us that the route to desired behavior includes variable reinforcement.
Suggesting that giving out “stuff” to randomly reinforce desired behavior should get you more of that behavior.

The trouble here is extinction. I am eventually going to stop salivating when I hear the bell if there is no food.

The trigger will only work so many times on its own without a reward to back it up.
In this situation the “stuff” is not seen as a valuable reward and the trigger has faded.
Alright, what do we do about this?

I’ve got 4 ideas.

1. Don’t set high expectations for rewards. For example don’t suggest there will be prizes then give out pens.

2. When possible don’t give out junk.

3. Avoid public winner take all rewards. If you have a large population don’t give out 1 employee of the year, spread the wealth.

4. Wait for the system to work. Don’t give up these things take time.

These won’t work in every situation, it’s still ok to give out candy or swag in training and employee of the month may work in small organizations.

As with training it is important to understand the needs, in this case the wants, of your target group.

I picked up some interesting statics at SIOP.

Most interesting, I thought, was that 50% of managers fail regardless of intervention.

The speaker who followed this quote suggested, based on real data, that personality of team members had a stronger correlation with task completion than any of the leaders KSA’s.

Could someday we all work in leaderless teams, selected by a personality test without even an interview?

Maybe…..

Maybe I’ll be able to drive my flying car to work by then.

When the subject of education comes up I often find myself explaining what exactly it is that my MA degree is in: Industrial Organizational Psychology or I/O Psych for short.

Some times I say its the Psychology version of an MBA (a bit of a stretch), other times I say its workplace psychology, or maybe I say its applying the principles of Psychology to the workplace, then give some B.F. Skinner based examples.

The Society for Industrial Organizational Psychology (SIOP - pronounced “syop”) gives its members brochures to hand out when asked what I/O is. http://www.siop.org/visibilitybrochure/siopbrochure.aspx  My favorite explanation below:

Industrial-organizational (I-O) psychologists contribute to an organizations success by improving the performance and well-being of its people. An I-O psychologist researches and identifies how behaviors and attitudes can be improved through hiring practices, training programs, and feedback systems.

I am embarrassed to say that it took until my senior year of college to realize that the “I” and the “O” doesn’t just mean that we will work for Industries and Organizations but have much deeper meanings.

Industrial Psychology loosely defined is the hard numbers side that is selection, productivity, statistics, and things like that.

On the other hand…

Organization Psychology is the mushy stuff. Motivation, teambuilding, change management, that sort of thing.

The idea is that a degree in I/O Psych gives you a well rounded view that will provide that tools needed to change the world…. or at least improve performance in an organization.

I am going to the SIOP conference next week and to be honest I am looking forward to being around people who will not respond to my explanation of what by saying “well you should come to my work there are lots of crazy people!”