Ed Batista

When Christmas Bites, Bite Back

Much of my work as a coach involves helping people grapple with the belief that their life should be different in some way because it fails to conform to a set of expectations--their own or those of other people--or that they should (or shouldn't) pursue a particular course of action because it's demanded (or forbidden) by some preconceived narrative that they're supposed to follow.

These mental models are hard to overcome even when they're outdated and counterproductive [1], as I'm all too aware from my doing battle with my own. For example, when I stepped into my first leadership role after business school I still thought leaders succeeded by having the best ideas and seeing them prevail, which led me into a series of unhelpful conflicts with my board of directors. I became much more effective after Vince Stehle, a member of my board, encouraged me to invest in myself and begin working with an executive coach--some great advice that had far-reaching implications.

Our mental models aren't restricted to our professional lives, of course, and I have a set of tenacious ones associated with Christmas. I have a generally positive relationship with the holiday--I'm not religious, but I appreciate the seasonal encouragement to be more charitable and open-hearted, and I'm not particularly materialistic, but I like to give Amy some nice jewelry and get a few bottles of good liquor. I have plenty of warm Christmas memories from childhood, and I enjoy the handful of traditions that have survived into my adulthood, from putting up a tree to baking kugel, a traditional Jewish dish that a neighbor taught my Mom and which she handed down to me.

But Christmas can still stir up a number of unhappy feelings, typically related to a desire for things to be "perfect" in some way and the disappointment when they inevitably fall short. Most of the year I find my life very fulfilling, but at Christmas I can find myself ruminating over alternative versions in which I have closer relationships with my family, or a richer social network, or something. I've worked on letting go of my perfectionism [3], and while there's room for improvement, most of the year I feel good about the progress I've made. And yet at Christmas I'm often frustrated when something doesn't live up to my expectations or go according to plan.

That started to happen to me this past weekend. I had procrastinated and was unable to get a gift to my family back East in time for the holiday. I fell into a funk and spent Saturday afternoon feeling irritable and sorry for myself. Then Amy said something that stuck with me: "What are you always saying to people? Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, right?" [4] I realized that I was letting my mental models about Christmas and perfection bite me in the ass, and it was time to bite back. As I wrote last summer,

Perfection is worse than boring; it's stagnation. Perfection rarely motivates, and it often demotivates. It keeps us from accepting "good enough" and making it better. Coaching is about rejecting ideal visions of the perfect--the perfect day, the perfect job, the perfect life, the perfect self--and seeing "the perfect" for what it really is: the enemy of the good. [5]

So what did it mean to bite back? I thought about what I'd do on an ordinary Sunday at any other time of year. I went to the gym and had a great workout. I came home and cooked Catalan stew with picada (although I used pork shoulder instead of short ribs). I put on Sean Hayes, Alabama Shakes and Elmore James. I tried a new cocktail, the Triborough, from Jim Meehan and Chris Gall's extraordinary book. And I had an amazing dinner with Amy. In short, I enjoyed all the gifts that surround me every day of the year, at least right now: great health, great music, great food and drink, a great partner to share it all with.

I'll wake up tomorrow and will be glad it's Christmas--the seasonal spirit, the gifts, the traditions all have value and meaning to me. But I'm not worrying about whether this particular holiday turns out to be some idealized form of "CHRISTMAS!!!", and I'm newly attuned to how that unreal vision influences my perspective on life in general. Our mental models may have teeth, but I'm biting back.

 

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Footnotes

[1] Corn Mazes and Mental Models

[2] Taming My Perfectionism

[3] Voltaire and Patton on Perfection

[4] Coaching and the Cult of Done

Photo by Andres Rodriguez.

Babies, Bathwater and Goal-Setting

When do goals support our growth and development? When do they get in the way? And how can we tell the difference?

In a recent post on goal-setting, I noted that "goals encourage us to work harder and longer, and when they're difficult to achieve they push us even more"--a proposition supported by decades of research, much of it by Edwin Locke of the University of Maryland and Gary Latham of the University of Toronto. [1,2] But goals aren't always a good thing. As Locke and Latham acknowledge, when learning is more important than performance goals can be counter-productive, and goals actually contribute to lower performance when they're so daunting that we perceive them as threats rather than challenges. [3]

Subsequent research on goals continues to highlight their complex impact on behavior. Discussing work by Ayelet Fishbach of the Booth School of Business and Jinhee Choi of the Korea University Business School [4], psychology journalist Christian Jarrett urges us to be mindful of the unintended consequences of goal-setting:

Focusing on goals fires up your intentions to engage in the activities that will help you achieve those goals. But there's a major downside. Stay focused on your goals and you spoil your experience of the activities you'll need to pursue. In turn, that makes it far more likely that you'll drop out early and fail to achieve the very goals that you're so focused on...

[T]he lessons from this research seem clear. By all means visualize your goals to help get yourself started in the first place, but once you're underway, try to let your long-term mission fade a little into the background. Revel in the process and you're more likely to make it to the finish line. [5]

The New York Times' Alina Tugend recently asked a number of researchers to reflect on the benefits and disadvantages of goals. [6] One of Tugend's sources, University of Arizona professor Lisa Ordóñez, has co-authored a paper that highlights the potency of goals' influence as well as their undesirable side effects:

The beneficial effects of goal setting have been overstated and...systematic harm caused by goal setting has been largely ignored. We identify specific side effects associated with goal setting, including...distorted risk preferences, a rise in unethical behavior, inhibited learning, corrosion of organizational culture, and reduced intrinsic motivation. Rather than dispensing goal setting as a benign, over-the-counter treatment for motivation, managers and scholars need to conceptualize goal setting as a prescription-strength medication that requires careful dosing, consideration of harmful side effects, and close supervision. [7]

It's clear that we need to integrate these findings into our understanding of goals and modify their use accordingly. But this research is causing some to "throw the baby out with the bathwater" and abandon goals entirely. A few years ago productivity writer Leo Babauta proclaimed that "the best goal is no goal" [8], and more recently he took the "pro" position in a debate with author and investor Tim Ferriss "on whether goals suck." [9] In the Harvard Business Review leadership consultant Peter Bregman has urged readers to "consider not setting goals," and he cites the work by Ordóñez and her co-authors as well as Tugend's New York Times article to support this stance. [10]

Jarrett, Babauta and Bregman make excellent points about the complexity of goals and their unintended consequences, but the headlines and tweets summarizing their positions over-simplify the research. In Tugend's article, Ordóñez stresses the importance of being thoughtful about how we use goals: "It's not that goals are bad...We’re just saying be careful." And Latham makes a nearly-identical point: "It’s not that goals are bad, [Latham] said, but that problems arise when the values that underlie them and the process to achieve them are skewed." [11]

I've found this research on goals' undesirable side effects compelling, and I've changed how I use them in my coaching practice and my personal life. I continue to find goals a helpful source of motivation when getting started, while watching carefully for signs of their counter-productivity. I've come to think of a goal as a powerful tow rope--it can give me a boost and jump-start a stalled effort, but it can also drag me off course or even out of control. So it's essential to hold on to it lightly and let go of it readily.

 

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Footnotes

[1] Aim High...Enough (Self-Coaching and Goal-Setting)

[2] Goal setting and task performance: 1969-1980 (Edwin Locke, et al, Psychological Bulletin, 1981)

[3] New Directions in Goal-Setting Theory (Edwin Locke and Gary Lathan, Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2006)

[4] When thinking about goals undermines goal pursuit (Ayelet Fishbach and Jinhee Choi, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2012)

[5] How Goals and Good Intentions Can Hold Us Back (Christian Jarrett, 99u, 2012)

[6] Experts' Advice to the Goal-Oriented: Don't Overdo It (Alina Tugend, The New York Times, 2012)

[7] Goals Gone Wild: The Systematic Side Effects of Overprescribing Goal Setting (Lisa D. Ordóñez, Maurice E. Schweitzer, Adam D. Galinsky and Max H. Bazerman, Academy of Management Perspectives, 2009)

[8] The Best Goal Is No Goal (Leo Babauta, 2010)

[9] Tim Ferriss vs. Leo Babauta Showdown: On Whether Goals Suck (Leo Babauta, 2012)

[10] Consider Not Setting Goals in 2013 (Peter Bregman, Harvard Business Review, 2012)

[11] Experts' Advice to the Goal-Oriented: Don't Overdo It (Alina Tugend, The New York Times, 2012)

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Revised March 2019.

Thanks to my colleague Collins Dobbs for the pointer to Bregman's post.

Photo by Gail Foss.

The Accumulation of Cultural Debt

Invest in the culture you want, or get the culture you deserve. And if you think your organization doesn't have a culture, don't fool yourself--you have one--and the accumulated cultural debt will eventually come due. [1]

For the last two years I've done quarterly workshops on interpersonal feedback with employees at a San Francisco technology company. The workshop is a half-day event, similar to the session on communication skills that I did with the MIT/Stanford Venture Lab in January [2], and it represents a significant commitment of company resources. I estimate that they've dedicated more than 500 person-hours to this training alone.

I end every workshop by asking each person to say something to the group, and at the conclusion of the most recent session last week a number of people referenced the company's culture and its positive effect on their work experience. They talked about the sense of trust that exists among employees, and about how they've grown from the feedback they've received from their colleagues. They also talked about how much less stressful it is to work there than at other companies and about the feeling they have of being valued by management.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting that this company is some sort of magical fairy-land; it's a business, and they pay people to do their jobs like everyplace else. Nor am I suggesting that my workshops are the primary factor supporting their culture; I think I've played a helpful role, but far more important are all the interactions employees have with each other on the 361 days of the year I'm not there.

After last week's session had ended I was talking with two of the participants about their experiences at the company, and one of them, a technical manager, noted the cumulative impact of management's investments in their organizational culture using a metaphor that was new to me: "It's like the 'accumulation of technical debt' in software development. With these trainings and everything else we're doing, we're avoiding the accumulation of cultural debt."

The concept of "technical debt" was originated by Ward Cunningham, who developed the first wiki. Cunningham realized that compromises in the software development process have implications that build up over time, and failing to address those compromises is like steadily accumulating debt while making no payments on the principal. As Cunningham noted,

[P]eople would rush software out the door and learn things but never put that learning back into the program, and that by analogy was borrowing money thinking that you never had to pay it back. Of course, if you do that...with your credit card, eventually all your income goes to interest and your purchasing power goes to zero. [3]

In 2007 Steve McConnell expanded on the metaphor in a post about the two primary types of technical debt:

The first kind of technical debt is the kind that is incurred unintentionally. For example, a design approach just turns out to be error-prone or a junior programmer just writes bad code. This technical debt is the non-strategic result of doing a poor job...

The second kind of technical debt is the kind that is incurred intentionally. This commonly occurs when an organization makes a conscious decision to optimize for the present rather than for the future. [4]

McConnell's perspective on "technical debt" clarifies the concept of "cultural debt" for me, and I see so many parallels in the process of building an organizational culture. Cultural debt can be incurred unintentionally when we simply do a poor job of implementation; for example, we can deliver critical feedback to a colleague in a way that leaves them feeling defensive or demotivated. Mistakes like this have consequences, to be sure, but even failed attempts suggest that 1) we're trying, 2) we'll learn from our mistakes, and 3) we'll get it right eventually. 

What's more troubling is the cultural debt that we incur intentionally when we decide to "optimize for the present rather than for the future." We hire the "B" candidate who's not a great fit because we're understaffed and we need someone now. We don't take the time to connect personally with colleagues because our to-do list is just too pressing. Our meeting agendas are always jam-packed, so it's impossible to step back and reflect on what actually happened in any given meeting. And we assume that smart people will figure out how to work together effectively, so we don't invest in soft-skills training and other culture-building efforts whose ROI is unclear at best.

But while we're taking these expedient measures the cultural debt accumulates, and eventually the bill comes due. That "B" hire isn't bad enough to fire, but they're just bad enough to slow down the rest of the team. Our colleagues are engaged and motivated when things are going well, but when the shit hits the fan we find ourselves alone. We sprint through our meeting agendas while everyone multi-tasks furiously, and at the end no one's really sure what was discussed--or why they needed to be there in the first place. And all around us well-meaning people make the same interpersonal mistakes over and over again, wasting countless hours because A) they're too blunt, and they leave a trail of hurt and angry colleagues in their wake, or B) they're too meek or indirect, and they fail to exert influence and effect real change when it's needed.

At times we have to act expediently in organizational life, just as software developers sometimes ship code they know will need to be cleaned up later. But let's be mindful of the cultural debt we're accumulating when we take these shortcuts and look for opportunities to pay it down as soon as we can.

 

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Footnotes

[1] Joel Peterson on Organizational Culture

[2] High-Performance Communication

[3] Ward Explains Debt Metaphor

[4] "Technical Debt" (Steve McConnell, 2007. This post is no longer available, but McConnell's work on the topic can be explored further here: Managing Technical Debt.)

Photo by walknboston.

The Illusion of Effectiveness (Doing vs. Leading)

In my work with MBA students at Stanford and with many of my coaching clients, an issue that comes up regularly is the importance of making the transition from doing--being a stellar individual performer--to leading--motivating others to perform at their best. The challenge is that throughout our education and in most, if not all, of our early professional roles, we're rewarded for our effectiveness as doers, and when we achieve a more senior position we often assume that our effectiveness as leaders will rely upon the same skills and characteristics that have fueled our success up to that point.

But this can result in the illusion of effectiveness as a leader. We may believe that by working longer, harder, smarter--pick your superlative--than our team on a given set of tasks, we'll inspire by example. We just need to keep doing what we've been doing, albeit at a higher level. And sometimes this has the desired effect--as Daniel Goleman writes in his classic HBR article, Leadership that Gets Results, this "pacesetting" leadership style "works well when all employees are self-motivated, highly competent, and need little direction or coordination." That said, the pacesetting style imposes a high cost--Goleman also notes that it "destroys climate [and] many employees feel overwhelmed by the pacesetter's demands."

Even if we don't feel obligated to outpace our team in a leadership role, we can still undermine our effectiveness simply by continuing to take responsibility for specific tasks--by doing--when we could have a much greater impact by raising our sights and expanding our scope--by leading. And this may involve letting go of work that we find personally rewarding. One of my clients last year was the founder of an online retailer, and he personally built the company's website. Given his familiarity with the code, it was very efficient for him to make changes to the site, and he found this work deeply fulfilling. It was also a total waste of his time and a net drag on the company's performance. He realized this long before we began working together and had been able to compel himself to keep his hands off the code and let his technical team take responsibility for the site.

The challenge he still faced, however, was getting out of the weeds of inventory reports and other quantitative minutia, and the problem wasn't that he disliked this work but that he loved it. "I'm an Excel junkie," he told me. But just as coding had become a waste of his time, poring over spreadsheets was keeping him from spending time with his senior managers and helping them do their jobs more effectively. He eventually concluded that any time spent at his desk, working alone, was an indulgence--he enjoyed it and needed a little of it, but too much of it would hurt the company. His solution was to schedule some "Excel time" each day to clear his head and recharge his batteries, while also recognizing that his most meaningful contributions as a leader were made when he was spending time with his team.

Someone who's gone in a different direction is Theresa Christy, a researcher at Otis Elevator who was recently profiled in the Wall Street Journal by Kate Linebaugh. Christy apparently loves her job and by all indications is terrific at it, and a key to her success is revealed in the piece's final lines:

One part of Ms. Christy's career didn't go as planned. With aspirations of getting into management, Ms. Christy got her M.B.A. from Babson College, but the role didn't suit her. "I thought I wanted to be a manager," she said. "But I really like solving the puzzles myself. I didn't like assigning them to other people. I was a little jealous."

Given the importance our business culture places on leadership--and the high status enjoyed by leaders--it's essential that we be candid with ourselves about whether we truly want to lead. Christy recognized that she's most effective and fulfilled as a doer, not a leader, and shifted her career goals accordingly. At the same time, we may be able to tailor our approach in order to find the right balance between doing and leading. My client recognized that the fulfillment he found in doing was getting in the way of his effectiveness at leading, and he was able to adjust how he spent his time in response. There's no cookie-cutter solution, of course--but it may be worth asking: Am I doing when I should be leading?

Photo by Juhan Sonin. Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

Hit the Brakes or Step on the Gas? (Resistance and Motivation)

Some recent work with clients and students and several personal experiences have me thinking about the opposing forces of resistance and motivation that we feel when we're on the brink of a meaningful decision. The tension between these forces can result in uncertainly and paralysis--we don't know whether to heed our resistance and hit the brakes or tap into our motivation and step on the gas, so we drift along and let things happen.

When we're stuck this way, it can be helpful to explore the underlying sources of our resistance and motivation and assess their utility: Are these factors useful to us or not? And in this process it's critical to recognize that resistance and motivation both have "shadow sides," unhelpful dimensions that are likely to lead us astray and need to be challenged.

Useful sources of resistance include healthy prudence, trusted intuition, satisfaction with our present situation and a need for rest or calm. Unhelpful sources of resistance include simple lethargy or inertia, a lack of confidence or resilience, and excessive caution or risk-aversion. All these factors tend to slow us down and encourage us to opt out and say no.

Useful sources of motivation include healthy ambition, aspirational goals, a drive to overcome obstacles and a sense of determined "grit." (For more on grit, see research by Penn's Angela Duckworth.) Unhelpful sources of motivation include unchecked drives, unchallenged beliefs that tell us we "must" do something, compulsions and social pressure. All these factors tend to speed us up and encourage us to opt in and say yes.

I'm not suggesting that there's a simple or foolproof way to locate the "utility threshold" and readily distinguish between the helpful and unhelpful forms of resistance and motivation; it's a complex and subjective process. But a good starting point is simply stepping back and reminding ourselves that these forces come in both flavors, and sometimes we need to tap into and unleash our motivation--step on the gas--while at other times we need to respect and heed our resistance--hit the brakes.

Self-Coaching Session at Flixster

Yesterday I had the chance to give a talk on self-coaching to a group at Flixster, and a modified version of my slide deck is above. Thanks to the awesome Hannah Knapp and her colleagues for a great experience--I really enjoyed it.