At the European Association of Change
Management Professionals (ACMP) conference in London earlier this week, a speaker introduced us to Neuroscience, a clearly complex topic and
definitely not something one can claim to be an expert on after a 45 minute
session! I did, however, learn 3 key things which I hope will stick with me for
more than the duration of the conference, and I would love to share them with
you now.
- Threat is bigger than reward.
- The brain searches for threats every 5 seconds.
- The “SCARF” Model.
The first two factors are self-explanatory but are significant because when
the brain responds to threats there is a part of it that can apparently shut
down very swiftly and thereby reduce our capability to respond appropriately. (The
primary cortex if my memory serves me correctly, but I am afraid I did not make
a note of the technical bits!)
This is what makes the SCARF model so important, because this is what helps
you to become more “resilient” and therefore reduce the effects of threats and
thus this part of the brain “shutting down” or freezing. As you might suspect
SCARF is a mnemonic, used to identify things that are important to the way we
respond to signals. Thus:
S – Status
C – Certainty
A – Autonomy
R – Relatedness
F – Fairness
Of course because it is a mnemonic these elements are not necessarily in
order of importance. Yet there is one in particular that stands out for me –
autonomy. This one seems pretty obvious,
and would be for anyone who has watched a small child try to assert its
independence. And it is this one that I believe is one of the biggest factors
in the workplace, because it is a source of workplace tension.measuring,
This is because all humankind’s technical advances mean we are now capable of
measuring more than we ever have before. And because we can, we do. Thus we
identify more and more performance measures for our people which we are only
too happy to introduce, simply because we can. The can create a problem because
these performance measures then become objective is their own right and thus:
- Detract the focus away from the actions that
drive them. - Diminish autonomy
- Become threats in the way people perceive them.
Naturally this makes them counter-productive
rather than productive and has the effect of disengaging rather than engaging
your people. So here you are, introducing all types of initiatives to engage
your employees while the very systems and processes you are relying on to
monitor, measure and manage their performance are actually sabotaging both
performance and employee engagement. Hence the performance paradox.
So what do you do propose to do about it? How are
you going to create performance measures that promote autonomy rather than kill
it, and thus start getting the kind of performance that you are looking for?