Author: Sanjeev Roy

In a research published on the 1^st of January, 2014, by the University of Scranton in the Journal of Clinical Psychology, it was found that only 8% of people making resolutions were able to keep them!

This is a very USA centric research and I ran my own little survey on social media to see whether India was any different.

Here is a quick comparison[1]:

• There is some serious congruence between the two. About 60% make  resolutions regularly or infrequently
• Just about 10% experience full success
• Nearly 40% never make any resolutions

[1] A caveat – my own research was conducted informally and will probably not stand the test of any statistical validity. It does, however, pass the common sense test.

Is it worth it?

Given the depressing figures of success the question is valid. Why go through all the ‘stress’ and why not just enjoy the New Year?

Here is another interesting finding from the same research that might help answer that question:

“….Of the total sample size of 3000, there were two sub groups who were tracked for a period of six months. Both sub groups were marked by their common desire to change something. One had taken a resolution on New Year’s Day (resolvers) and the other (non-resolvers) had left it for later. At the end of six months 10 times more resolvers reported continuous success than non-resolvers.”

This bears out our own experience in Executive Coaching and Change Management – those who resolve to change behaviour voluntarily are more likely to succeed than those who postpone or resist change.

6 secrets behind success

Those who succeed share a few things in common.

1. A short list, preferably with only one thing on it.  When you create a list with too many things, it is one surefire way of ensuring failure. Trying to loose weight, keep in touch with family/friends more frequently, quit smoking, buy a new car, make more time for yourself …all at the same time, is attempting too much. Change is difficult and you have to set yourself up for success. Pick the one you want to work on first and get some consistency in achieving that. Success will motivate you to try the next one.
2. Choose correctly.Pick the right thing to work on. I recommend a simple exercise to my coachees. Against each one of the things that you wish to change, list out the benefits. What would you gain if the change happened?  For instance, ‘Weight loss’. It could mean looking better, feeling better, being more confident, being more attractive to the opposite sex, fitting into many of those wonderful clothes, better relationship with spouse, less expense on food….This will help you identify the one that is most motivating for you. It also helps you stay on course when you find it really hard to keep the discipline.
3. Specific. Lets take the example of ‘Make time for self’. When expressed in that form it becomes difficult to see what you need to do, and whether you are getting any success. When translated into specific behaviours (or things to do) it becomes a lot easier.  For instance, ‘make sure to have at least two weekends away from office’ is more specific. It could also be, ‘go out with my friends at least once a week’ (I like that!), or whatever it is that you believe would mean making time for yourself.  Similarly, ‘cut sweets down to one a day’, or ‘stop having tea with sugar’, or ‘have dinner by 9 p.m. everyday’.  These are all better than ‘loose weight’. Just like ‘walk for 15 minutes at least every day in the evening after coming back from work’ is better than “exercise”.
4. Appoint stakeholders. In the Marshall Goldsmith Stakeholder Centered Coaching methodology there is conclusive evidence that when you involve your stakeholders, your chance of success increases dramatically. A stakeholder is someone who has visibility of your action, has some role to play and will benefit from the change. In the case of losing weight, it could be your spouse/significant other, some friends, parents, boss/business partner. Announce to them what you are planning to do and ask them for feedback at predetermined time intervals.  There is also some interesting research at Quirkology that supports this.
5. Any day could be New Year’s Day. If you know what you want to work on and are really just postponing your action, make a resolution to start today.  It is the first day of the year on your mission. If you have chosen correctly, not created too long a list, been specific and appointed stakeholders, you have increased your chance of success exponentially.
6. Resolving the paradox of ‘wanting’ but not being able to ‘do’.  Very often we may find that even though we have rationally and emotionally understood what we want to do differently and have the necessary discipline to implement, we are still unable to do it. This is often caused by a deeper belief that runs counter to what we want to do. Here is an example:

Shireen (name changed) believed that she needed to make more time for herself. She also had a clear action plan. However, every weekend she would be back in office either attending to her own work or, more often doing something that she had promised to help out with.  Her growing up years had distilled in her the belief that people needed to be helped whenever they asked for it. Not doing so was somehow wrong. It was only after she understood how she had created an ecosystem where everyone always turned to her and her own work and family life was suffering that she was able to deal with it. Her action plan changed to ‘informing people when they could expect feedback from her’ and ‘not attending phone calls on Sundays’.

The last one is of course more difficult to unearth and resolve. And here comes my plug – mail/call me or attend one of my programmes. You might find it useful 🙂 !

What about me – you ask?

Well, here is my resolution for the New Year, post at least 3 pieces on my blog, Bullzi FB page and twitter every month. Of these at least one will be an original article written by me. My New Year has started today, the 29^th of December.

Cheers!

I watched Yogeshwar Dutt  fighting his way through 3 rounds of brutal combat with a swollen eye.  All within 90 minutes.  He was fighting higher ranked, bigger opponents, one of them with a fearsome reputation. Yet Yogeshwar was like a man possessed, wrestling them to the ground and in his last fight reducing his ‘fearsome’ opponent over and over to submission. You could see that he was fighting for something much bigger than himself and way beyond any logical ‘capacity’.

Usain Bolt, after having been recently beaten by Yohan Blake, the ‘young pretender’, turned on the power performance to create a few more records. Michel Phelps beat off the challenge of Ryan Lochte and a host of others to officially end his Olympic career at an incredible 22 medals!! Both these men had already achieved almost everything that was there to be achieved – fame, wealth, power. Yet they were able to find within themselves the motivation to go even further.

Yogeshwar was motivated by the desire to win an Olympic medal to honour the memory of his late father. He probably felt this was his best chance and that super ordinate desire helped him cross the pain barrier and transcend his own belief of ability.

Bolt and Phelps want to be known as ‘legends’ and ‘the greatest ever’. It is this desire that motivates them to follow punishing training routines and enforce self-discipline in the face of many temptations and boredom.

These are all exceptionally talented human beings and I dare say that on that count very similar to many other athletes on display at the Olympics.  However, all of them were ‘inspired’ by a desire that helped them do extraordinary things. In one case the desire was external to oneself, in others totally centered on self. These stories are now known by millions and will get repeated many times over. What will probably be less known are the stories of the coaches; support staff, family members and mentors who helped these athletes find their inspiration and remain focused. To me, those are the acts of leadership that were integral to these successes.

As in sports, so in any other aspect of human endeavour, the key is to find that source of inspiration to move from 90% to a 120 %. That is what a great leader does.

Organisations are akin to team sports and it is the leaders’ task to find the super ordinate desire (vision, goal) that will motivate the largest number as well as find those self-centered goals for individual members.

An interesting and virtuous fallout of inspired performances is how it begets other inspired performances.  The silver from Rathore eight years ago has already resulted in 3 more medals. Yogeshwar, Sushil, Saina and their tribe will inspire the next generation in ways that is sure to see India’s medal kitty increase further in future Olympics.

It inspired me, after a long break, to write. Here is to more all-round inspiration.

The security guard at the main gate in my condominium rose smartly and said ‘Good Morning Sir!’ while dashing off a salute at the same time. I smiled back indulgently at him and nodded my head. I could not help thinking to myself – what a nice well-mannered chap! I stepped into the guardroom to use the intercom to call my apartment for something I had forgotten. On the other side was a queue of about 5 people standing to get the security’s nod to go inside. Their faces bore a sullen look and they were all watching the polite guard. One of them asked for his pass saying that he had been waiting for 10 mins. My polite guard snapped at him and told him to wait since he was ‘busy’! He then proceeded to talk to the other guard about something to do with the water supply in his village. He was deliberately harassing the people in the queue!

THE LITTLE HITLER EXPERIMENT

You may have encountered similar behaviour from a junior person at your office or a public utility/government office; an extreme case of this was witnessed in the way the common soldiers tortured their prisoners for fun in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

‘Little Hitler’ – a ‘menial functionary who employs what power he has to annoy and frustrate others for his own gratification’ exist in every walk of life. What creates them? In a research (recently published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology) led by Professor Nathanael Fast of the University of Southern California’s Marshall Business School , this phenomenon has been studied within a framework of power (on its own – not original) AND status (the combination makes it interesting).

The experiment involved randomly assigning each of the participants into one of four situations representing different combinations of power and status. For the full paper, read here.

The paper, titled ‘The destructive nature of power without status’ goes on to argue that it is first necessary to understand how power and status operate separately before studying their impact together (Fig 1.1 and Fig 1.2).

Fig 1.1 – Effect of Power on behaviour

Fig 1.2 – Effect of Status on behaviour

In the experiment, participants were split into the 4 combinations of High Power/High Status, High Power/Low Status, High Status/Low Power, and Low Status/Low Power. Participants were then asked to choose tasks (from a set with ‘demeaning’ and other tasks) to assign to other coworkers.

Statistically, the most significant observations were in the High Power/Low Status and Low Power/Low Status groups – Fig 2.1. Those with High Power (therefore the tendency to act aggressively) but Low Status (therefore the need to seek self worth) choose more ‘demeaning’ tasks for their co-workers than any other group. Those with Low Power (inhibited ability to act in self interest) and Low Status (seeking self worth) tended to choose the least demeaning tasks for their co workers.

Fig 2.1 – Effect of Power and Status on behaviour

Dr Fast then goes on to hypothesise that not all in a High Power/Low Status situation will react in the same way (there being different personality types) and that it is also observable that High Power/Low Status can be modified by the recipient by satisfying the self worth need of the person.

NOT A TRAIT BUT SITUATIONAL

From my observations of the security guard – the classical gatekeeper with low status, I have also seen it to be ‘situational’ – everyone could at some point of time or other be in a potential ‘Little Hitler’ situation as the perpetrator or recipient. Here is how I have seen it play out for the security guard:

Fig 2.2 – ‘Situational’ behaviour as a result of Power and Status

ARE YOU CREATING A LITTLE HITLER?

In organisations, when situations get created that reduce people to ‘gatekeepers with low status’, the environment is ripe for the birth of Little Hitlers.
By design there are gatekeeper jobs, sometimes at lower levels (the admin assistant, reimbursement officer…..) where we see the different facets of Power/Status behaviours. And we all know how a sweet word or a well placed ‘Sir’ gets the reimbursements cleared fast!

What is however more damaging is when leadership behaviour creates “Little Hitlers”., A boss, who is forever demeaning and deriding his juniors is creating the environment for the little Brown Shirts to grow.. As he strips his one downs of their ‘status’, they in turn demonstrate demeaning behaviour with those over whom they have power! The workplace could soon start resembling Abu Ghraib with one change – the prisoners may choose to leave.

So the next time your security guard rises to greet you, maybe you could surprise him and say ‘Good Morning’ first. It may well result in him extending a little courtesy to the plumber who has come to fix your bathroom pipes.

Good Intentions

This is what happened in the corporate headquarters of a very well known organisation based out of Mumbai.

The founder, a man with a genuine concern for his people and strong faith in the basic integrity of human beings had created a great staff welfare scheme. He wanted all his staff to have the benefit of good wholesome food available at the lowest possible price for breakfast and lunch. To make the model work, administrative costs (including staff required to service this need for the nearly 1000 people) had to be kept at a minimum. A very reasonable rate (approximately equal to the cost of ‘vada pao’) was fixed for both meals and the food was available in eating areas to be self served in fixed portions. The person availing this service was expected to drop the money in a box, serve himself and after eating, clear his plate and the table. There was no one to serve or check for payment (as this would have increased cost of the portion).

After struggling with it for many months, this service was shut down. It was draining the organisation on a daily basis. The number of portions consumed NEVER equaled the amount of money collected by a long margin. The difference between portions and money collected also increased over time.  What was observed was that many did not pay for the service and many others took more than one portion without paying for it. The founder preferred to shut it down rather than police it and run. The employees are clearly unhappy that this had to happen and today, everyone blames someone else for the fiasco.

Unshakeable Faith in Our Proclivity

I was attending a resident’s community meeting the other day and the group was discussing various measures that had to be undertaken to improve security, maintenance, environment and compliance to create an overall better community. The two most telling decisions taken were:

1. Not to form a residents association with financial and other empowerment as this was considered to be the beginning of the end. Office bearers would be looking for special status and rules for themselves, financial probity would become suspect, service levels would fall and groupism would start. It was agreed that the entire service of managing our condo would continue to be outsourced. This motion was accepted with near unanimity. Everyone of course felt that they were never going to be the wrong-doers but were convinced that someone else would be.
2. To get better security, maintenance etc., the group that had to be tackled was that of the residents themselves as they were the ones responsible for most transgressions.

Personal Accountability

Something else that is making news, albeit not as the banner headlines but in the inside pages, is the whitewash that Team India has just been subjected to in England. What is remarkable is the number of people who are being ‘blamed’ for this defeat – the BCCI is being lynched and the IPL (not long ago celebrated as the greatest thing in world cricket and a gift from India) is being flogged.

What we see, in all the anecdotes so far, are fingers that are being pointed at those that wield the power and have the authority.

The finger is rarely ever pointed to oneself.

We find this in our study of organisations quite often. People hardly ever consider themselves to be part of malaises like lack of collaboration or politicking or sycophancy. It is always someone else who indulges in it and most often, it is the leadership which is responsible!

Whenever we have encountered this, our recommendation has always been to encourage each individual to take responsibility for his own action in entirety – and not link it to anyone else’s action. We posit that a unilateral act like that is a mark of true leadership. This is based on our belief that pointing fingers indirectly encourages the individual to abdicate the responsibility of any self-action; usually that does not end up in a successful ‘change’ initiative. The behaviour change that is today required is at individual levels – whatever the behaviour may be (the behaviours to be changed will usually be different at different levels in the organization).

There is enough written and many views available on what makes corruption so endemic in our society. You can read Being Indian or this blog for some opinions.

In the context of the present agitation that we see, it would be truly refreshing to see it move towards fingers pointing back at self. I am glad to see some tentative first steps in that direction (‘I will not pay bribe’ group). There needs to be a lot more of this. Otherwise we will slip back as we allow those with the right ‘connections’ to get into Ramlilla Ground ahead of those in the queue and still point fingers at others who do the same.