LEADING THOUGHTS

You’ve been managing knowledge workers for a few years now and you’re still flummoxed about how to wring more productivity from these colleagues without wringing their necks. Do you get rid of the foosball table? Pay them extra to come into work on time? Spike their java with Red Bull?

How about starting by reducing the barriers that get in the way of productive interaction and collaboration with colleagues. Matson (McKinsey) and Prusak (Institute for Knowledge Management) advise organizations to look here for answers because knowledge workers spend a great deal of time interacting with other knowledge workers.

Matson’s and Prusak’s research shows that half of all interactions are constrained by one of five barriers.

1 and 2. Physical and technical barriers: geographic distance or lack of tools for locating the right people. Workaround — Communities of practice supported by online tools to help workers find colleagues with useful information.

3. Social/cultural barriers: rigid hierarchies that discourage sharing. Workaround — Organization-specific case studies discussed in small groups to promote a better understanding of company culture; incorporating knowledge sharing in performance reviews.

4. Contextual barriers: difficulty translating knowledge widely. Workaround — Rotate employees across teams and divisions; stage creative forums where specialists can learn about other specialists’ projects.

5. Time barriers: perceived lack of time to interact. Workaround — Identify employees that knowledge workers need to interact with and on what topics.

“Boosting the productivity of knowledge workers,” by Eric Matson and Laurence Prusak; McKinsey Quarterly (September 2010)

Buddy, better watch your back.

Parks (Washington State U) and Stone (Desert Research Institute) set out to study the tolerance of group members to those who abuse a “public good.” Perversely, what they found in their four controlled experiments is that unselfish group members — those who gave much toward the public good but took very little — were in fact quite unpopular. So unpopular that others wanted to kick them out of the group.

“Our data are pointing to an emerging notion that group members temper their desire for productivity with an equally strong, perhaps stronger, desire for equality of participation,” they write in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Why would removal of performance differences be so important that group members are willing to sacrifice collective output for it?

A couple of reasons. One, people feel driven to outdo the group member who is setting the standard. In this setting, Parks and Stone note, “the standard being set by the benevolent other is to give up a considerable amount of personal resources and receive only a small payoff in return. To compete with such a person means that one would need to give even more and take even less, not a very desirable prospect.”

And two, that generous dude is unwittingly breaking the social rules of the group. The norm within the group is to take in proportion to what you give, but our friend is giving way more than she is taking. A rule is a rule.

Moral of the story: Don’t mess with groupthink.

The Desire to Expel Unselfish Members From the Group, by Craig D. Parks and Asako B. Stone; Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (2010, Vol. 99, No. 2, 303–310)