Avert your eyes, something big is about to happen

Why do people who know one another, who work with one another, actively avoid eye contact, and what are the consequences of this?

One of the organisations that I work in has a long narrow corridor linking buildings. There are roughly 1500 people working there and, although I only work part-time, I reckon that I would recognise at least 2/3rd of them in context. The corridor is a main thoroughfare and it's almost impossible to walk along it without passing several people. Ever since I started working there I have noticed how people pass one another without making eye-contact. It's hard to describe but there is a palpable aversion to doing so. So what is going on?

Eye contact is a well recognised form of non-verbal communication which is known to have a huge impact on our social behaviour. It is quite well studied and we know that it has strong cultural significance. (Indeed, there are significant variations in patterns of eye contact across species!) We know that it begins to be effective in both directions from the age of three months.

In Europe, Australia and North America, eye contact plays a major role in establishing the emotional state of the other person, and we use it to convey our emotional state to the other person. Often, this is contextual. For example, extending the length of time that we hold someone in eye contact, can indicate challenge to authority, aggression generally, affection, and sexual interest all depending on the context.

Several studies have shown that eye contact has a strong positive impact on the retention and recall of information and on the efficiency of learning. That said, when asked questions, children who maintain eye contact with the interviewer give FEWER correct answers than those who look away once the question is asked.

There has been some interesting work performed lately in the area of eye aversion. No one was born eye averting. Eye aversion is not an uncontrollable movement of the body. It is a voluntary action programmed and conditioned unconsciously, provoked by a combination of cognitions (limiting thoughts) and limiting beliefs about the other person's reaction.

Most psychologists now believe that it is an acquired behaviour, often associated with feelings of guilt and shame, that stem from the negative responses to the individual from authority figures and peers when they were young. As adults, the aversion is an unconscious attempt to protect the individual from the reaction that they assume will come from the other person.

So what is going on in the organisation that I described?

Of course, we shall probably never know, because we're unlikely to conduct experiments there. However, we might hazard a hypothesis or two. A large proportion of the people in the organisation are scientists or technologists and highly skilled ones at that. It has been observed before that it is an organisation that is particularly low on EQ (emotional intelligence) and certainly there are a number of people who experience some discomfort in social interactions. I wonder whether these folks began to be stigmatised, alienated or bullied at school (and perhas even at home) for their apparent intellectual prowess and acquired the eye aversion behaviour as a way of avoiding this kind of response? The organisational consequences could be profound. One example would be the degree to which 'silos' form and how few people get to share and experience life in other parts of the organisation. Another is a general propensity to avoid change.

What could we do about this? For some time we have been offering a range of personal development programmes with attendance on a voluntary basis conducted by myself - a psychotherapist. I wonder if we should be considering ways of incorporating more of this material in mainstream leadership and management development programmes? Perhaps too, should we be incorporating far more psychological input into company-wide change processes? Another aspect would be to promote cross-functional relationships - perhaps, in this case, through technical seminars and other events?

In my experience, too many companies can be aware of a problem of this kind and yet lack the imagination or preparedness to do something tangible to address it. Perhaps this short article will stimulate a little more action.

Best wishes

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Helping people achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org

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It ain't what you do, nor is it necessarily how you do it...

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When you are trying to convey your business proposition to a potential customer or referrer, it often helps not to tell them what you do or how you do it. Instead focus on what differentiates you - what your brand is all about. Even if you are a micro-business, you should have invested both intellectual and emotional energy in establishing what that is, and it is this that any prospect needs to know in order to distinguish between you and the competition.

Sy Oliver and, subsequently, Bananarama, used to say it ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it. It's a useful way of remembering the difference between task focus and process focus. When I worked in consultancy we used to use this as an important distinction between ourselves and the competitors. There were two firms in particular that we often used to find ourselves pitching alongside. They both emphasised their technical credentials - one was a Professor and made much of his long list of publications and another was a hands-on engineer who emphasised his wide range of practical experience. Yet, we would often find ourselves engaged to support the management team and asked to 'oversee' the work that these guys were doing on the 'shopfloor'. They really didn't understand this and would often throw their toys out of the pram before we could get started leaving us with the whole assignment after all. The point we made when presenting (for which we usually used practical exercises rather than Powerpoint), was that unless the people at all levels had emotional buy-in then the project was doomed, so we focused on the emotional stuff. Our 'brand' was about emotion and we tried to draw on it in all we did..

The other day I was at a networking event and watched two guys give their 'elevator' pitch. They were in the same industry, doing roughly (as far as I could tell) the same thing and yet one commanded LOTS of attention and the other didn't. One spent his time trying to tell us what it was he did and why it worked. The other devoted his time to telling us what was going on in their industry, how exciting this was, and how it was changing the way in which the internet worked, and in turn how it was affecting our businesses - even those with the most basic of internet presences. He spoke clearly and a little animatedly, but with enthusiasm rather than anger, and I was certainly left with the impression that it didn't matter that I knew nothing of what he actually did for his customers, but that he was going to be someone who would know what to do to help me and that he would continue to do so even in the face of change. His brand is his enthusiasm and his depth of knowledge of the future of his industry - that's someone I want around!

He left me with a few nuggets of how I could improve my own internet presence and I hope to start work on these later today, but above all he left me wondering how I present my own pitch and how I should change the emphasis myself. I have the elevator statement, "I get a real kick out of helping people achieve things they never dreamt they could." But I need to rethink how I follow that up, and instead of listing the ways in which I do so, spend more time focusing on my passion for it and why it is so important to them.

Best wishes

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Helping people achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org

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Create a new window into your organisation

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Over the years I have written about quite a few organisations. Roughly half of these have been exceptional performers - ones that I feel should be heralded as exemplars to the rest of us. The other half have also been exemplars, but ones that I hope (no, make that desperately hope) none of us will emulate.

When you run a business you tend to focus on delivering something and certainly don't spend too long basking in the glory of knowing that you do it well or reflecting gloomily on your inability. Instead, you just get on with it, and when someone comes along who is upset or angry with you, the natural tendency is either to listen intently and take it all to heart, or to dismiss them as cranks, depending usually on your own state of mind.

I rarely come across organisations that can deal well with upset or angry customers. It seems to me that these customers, who are reduced to tears by your performance, deserve your concern and, in turn, you need to listen to them to find out whether their experience is unique or systemic. Not doing so, should be the recipe for a short-lived enterprise. Sadly, there are many more factors at play and there are organisations around who have successfully ripped off their customers year-in, year-out. Nevertheless, I keep on trying to point out the error of their ways in the hope that one day they'll be prepared to listen.

While some upset customers may simply be angry souls with no-one else to vent their feelings towards (and no-one helping them find its source), they nontheless provide a window into your organisation that it helps to look through from time-to-time.

Talking of windows on the organisation, many both in the for-profit and not-for-profit sectors these days, try to gather information about their customers' experiences of them. It's comparatively easy to set up surveys online or to employ call centres in far flung parts of the world to call and collect the numbers. But numbers have their limitations. If I was working in a supermarket, at an online insurance brokers, in a garage, or a coffee-shop, knowing that 79.1% of customers rated their experience on their last visit as 'expected or better than expected', it wouldn't really give me a warm glow of satisfaction!

Instead, I want to urge you to think of doing something radical - create your own window onto the organisation. I'd like to suggest that YOU (yes YOU the boss) go out and meet a handful of your customers. Be brave - go for a dozen. I'd like to suggest that you take a laptop and a webcam and point it at them when you talk to them. Find out what they like about the experience of working with your organisation. What they think of the people who serve them. Whether there have been any particularly positive encounters and what the story was behind it. Sure you can ask them for the disasters too, but it's the positives I'd like you to capture.

Then go back to the office and get someone to upload the highlights of those conversations to the company intranet. Not in some obscure place, but right there bang in the middle of the front of the intranet home page. And let your folks hear for themselves what GOOD looks like to your customers.

Now here's the rub... Once you have done this, I'm going to ask you to ask your direct reports (yes, that does mean those six digit salary Directors) to do exactly the same.

Of course, I realise that you don't often actually have to deal with customers yourself, but make a change for a day. Give it a go. You might be surprised at what you learn and you'll certainly improve the morale and motivation of your staff. And motivated staff perform better for no extra money!

Oh, and one other suggestion. Visit the customers in their own homes or offices. Don't send for them to come to you.

Enjoy. And do let me know how you get on!

Best wishes

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Helping people achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org

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The Brain Machine interface

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As some of you will know, I have a particular interest in the future of human/machine interaction. Not from an ergonomics perspective, but from the idea that eventually, our thoughts, our feelings and our sense of connection with others will influence more overtly the world around us. I won't go into the spiritual aspects of this right now, but a fascinating piece of work was published this week (Nature Physics, DOI: 10.1038/nphys1099) that heralds this kind of future.

For all its sophistication and power, our brain is built from unreliable components – one neuron can successfully provoke a signal in another only 40% of the time. This lack of efficiency frustrates neuro-engineers trying to build networks of brain cells to interface with electronics or repair damaged nervous systems. Our brains combine neurons into heavily connected groups to unite their 40% reliability into a much more reliable whole. Now human engineers working with neurons in the lab have achieved the same trick: building reliable digital logic gates that perform like those inside electronics.

Built from scratch

Elisha Moses at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, and his students, Ofer Feinerman and Assaf Rotem, have developed a way to control the growth pattern of neurons to build reliable circuits that use neurons rather than wires.
The starting point is a glass plate coated with cell-repellent material. The desired circuit pattern is scratched into this coating and then coated with a cell-friendly adhesive. Unable to gain purchase on most of the plate, the cells are forced to grow in the scratched areas. The scratched paths are thin enough to force the neurons to grow along them in one direction only, forming straight wire-like connections around the circuit. Using this method the researchers built a device that acts like an AND logic gate, producing an output only when it receives two inputs.

Better together

The gate is made from a network of neurons in a square shape approximately 900 micrometres on a side. Three of the sides form a "horseshoe" 150-micrometres wide, and packed with neurons. On the fourth side an isolated neuron island is linked to the other sides by two thinner bridges (see image, top right). Neurons send their wire-like extensions that carry signals – axons – across those narrow bridges to the neuron island. When stimulated with a small dose of a drug, the neurons send signals around the circuit. An ion blocker is used in the centre of the horseshoe to electrically isolate one side from the other.

By changing the width of the bridges, the researchers are able to control how many axons link to the neuron island, and tune their device to behave like an AND gate. The neurons on the island only produce an output after receiving signals through BOTH of the thin bridges. Like a natural system, the device transcends the performance of individual neurons – achieving 95% reliability from a collection of 40% reliable components.

Brain interface

Rotem thinks that this provides a useful model for real brain function. "The existence of a threshold level for activation plays a central role in neuronal computation," he says. In his logic gates and real brains alike, many neurons contribute to generate a signal strong enough to excite another group of neurons, he says.

Charles Stevens at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, is not so sure, pointing out that real brain "circuits" do not resemble logic gates. However, achieving reliable performance from lab-grown neurons is still impressive, he adds; "There is a sort of fascination with neural networks grown in culture, and this paper improves on the usual random networks."

Rotem says that brain-cell logic circuits could serve as intermediaries between computers and the nervous system; "It's difficult to physically interface [neural prosthetics] with live neurons." Brain implants can allow the paralysed to control robot arms or learn to talk again, but suffer a drop-off in performance when scar tissue coats their electrodes. "An intermediate layer of in vitro neurons interfacing between man and machine could be advantageous."

Best wishes

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Helping people achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org

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Insights on business from American Express

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Exceptional companies are based on four basic pillars - obsession with customers, empowerment of employees, inspirational leadership and extraordinary levels of innovation. American Express have recently been focusing on their customer service activities and have produced a smattering of videos on the subject, but they highlight how these things all overlap. You might find them interesting:

The leadership balance
Why we need to look harder at our promotional messages
The value (or otherwise) of social networking to business
The importance of DECENCY

Best wishes

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Helping people achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 |grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org

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Balfour Beatty, serious fraud and a culture of deception

This morning's news is that the construction company Balfour Beatty has been fined £2.25 million through the Serious Fraud Office's (SFO) new powers to recover property obtained by unlawful conduct.

After investigating internally, Balfour Beatty reported itself to the SFO. It seems that a subsidiary body had carried out unlawful conduct after agreeing a contract with an Egyptian company seven years ago. The subsequent SFO investigation found no evidence of financial benefit made by any individual employee and established that most of the people involved had left the firm some time ago.

It seems that the documents prepared in connection with the contract were inaccurate and a number of payment irregularities were discovered. The company reported the matter to the SFO and under the terms of a consent order before the High Court agreed to a settlement payment of £2.25 million along with a contribution towards the costs of the proceedings.

Far more important, in many ways, is what has been done to prevent the same thing happening again. Essentially, the firm undertook to tighten compliance systems and to conform to external monitoring.

The SFO praised Balfour Beatty's transparent and responsible approach in self-reporting the issue and said it was satisfied the current management had demonstrated its desire to address necessary issues. In a press statement this morning, a company spokesperson said; "Balfour Beatty's policy is that all of its business should be conducted ethically and the highest standards of integrity are explicitly required from all of its businesses and employees."

Now, this is all very well, but I have serious doubts as to the effectiveness of these measures, and simply saying that the current management wants to address the issues doesn't reassure us that it has done so, or that whatever it does will be effective. Essentially, a group of people, involved in this major contract, colluded with one another to benefit the company (but importantly not themselves). People do not usually put themselves at risk without a personal incentive. If it is not directly financial or material then it usually revolves around a perceived threat to their ongoing employment. In such cases, either an isolated bully is involved or the culture of the organisation encourages this kind of thinking.

This case had gone for several years (perhaps five or more) before it was investigated and reported. Even if there had been tighter compliance systems, they only ensure compliance to a system, they do nothing to prevent the behaviour in the first place.

If payment irregularities had happened that will be prevented in the future by 'external monitoring', then surely the same external financial controls are in place today as were in place five years ago? So how are they going to be more effective now?

I'm sorry, but this sounds far more like a need for a serious reexamination of the firm's culture, the relationship between the leadership team and the culture, and some fairly incisive action to inculcate a far more open, honest, and trust-based one.

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GRAHAM WILSON
London + Oxford - 07785 222380
Helping People Achieve Things They Never Dreamt Were Possible
grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org

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