The psychological underpinnings of resilience

Why are OKRs red? is popular? Or the real way out?

Two years ago, in a training course for senior executives of a famous technology company, its president was very excited to share the concept of OKR. He believed that in the face of a sluggish market, but at the same time, it was an effective solution to the difficult dilemma of large organizational transformation. square. After that, I also saw that OKR has quickly become a prominent student in Taiwan. Not only are there many related books, but related courses and lectures are also very popular. However, what confuses me a bit is that when I ask my familiar friends if it is possible to provide some units that have implemented implementations, so that I can make some possible analyses, I often cannot get a very precise answer. Of course, this may be because my social network has not been able to reach these organizations, but it also makes me curious, whether it is necessary to more carefully explore the human relationship on which it is based for methods such as OKR to be successfully implemented. Suppose? And what kind of cultural soil does these assumptions need to nurture it so that it can truly thrive? Otherwise, why is a good method, but almost only a popular vocabulary, the success rate is relatively rare?

Why are people willing to contribute?

At four o'clock in the afternoon on Friday, no one in Atlas Software was in a hurry to get off work. In addition to beer, cake, and snacks, the entire office was full of excitement. In fact, many people didn't even go home last night, and each team wanted to showcase the creative designs they had stirred up from yesterday. Because the boss of this company has a "FedEx Day" every three months, which starts on Thursday and ends on Friday, and lets employees do whatever they want. The only rule is: "It must be outside the scope of daily work. Row". As a result, the enthusiasm of the employees and their final contribution to the company were so great that the boss even changed the company's strategy so that employees could spend 20% of their time on the topics they wanted to do every month.

This idea actually originated from 3M. McKnight, the president at the time, believed: "We put the responsibility on these men and women, and if they are good enough, they will naturally want to do things their own way." In his "experimental mash-up" policy, employees can devote 15 percent of their time to topics of interest to them. These measures are actually very risky for the company, because the cost is very high, and it may hinder the progress of the already very urgent work. To make matters worse, most of the employees didn't want to sign up at first because they didn't want to let go of the work they were doing.

However, this event is attracting more and more enthusiastic participation. Everyone not only does it by themselves, but also participates with colleagues from different departments. We look forward to presenting refreshing and amazing ideas on the day. "Some of our coolest product ideas come out of FedEx Day," said one engineer. And without this experimental mix-up, 3M wouldn't have produced the post-it notes that are changing the world today. These similar practices were later widely used by companies such as Google, because it not only increased job satisfaction, reduced turnover rates, but also greatly improved job innovation. And the core secrets are: "autonomy", "competence", and "connection".

Core Elements of Human Motivation

Edward Deci, the founder of this theory. In his earliest experiments, the subjects were divided into two groups. All of them were doing three-dimensional puzzles. Everyone played with great interest in the first participation, but one group was caught in the second participation. They were told that their performance would correspond to monetary rewards, while the other group did not. But in the third experiment, the group that had received the monetary reward was temporarily told that the monetary reward had been cancelled. What they looked at was how many people continued to play puzzles in their free time. The results of the study found that while people who were expected to be rewarded worked harder when they were being rewarded, they were less likely to continue playing puzzles in their free time after the reward was removed. However, people without reward experience will continue to play puzzles in free time because of the fun of the game itself.

External rewards, including money, performance appraisal, promotion, etc., are still the most commonly used means for companies to motivate employees. But nearly forty years of psychological research and various educational and corporate applications have supported the empowerment of people to explore, to feel competent to demonstrate their abilities, to collaborate with other teams, and to create purpose and meaning Feelings are the core factors driving performance and creativity. This theory is called self-determination theory (SDT)

Find the Heart of the Golden Circle

As a person from an academy background, I have the prejudice that "a good theory is the strongest tool", so I can't help but use this theory to look at the OKRs that have suddenly become popular in Taiwan in recent years, and some very core elements of them For example: strengthening bottom-up participation and decision-making power, setting motivating goals by oneself, and fully transparent mutual feedback design also correspond to the three factors of autonomy, competence, and connection. Even the Atomic Habits that have been selling steadily in the past two years also reflect this core design, such as: choosing the goal you really want to accomplish (self-selection), cutting it into actions that can be completed, and rewarding yourself (feeling competent), publicly proclaiming Working together (creating connections) has the same psychological basis. According to the "Ask Why" of Amazon's best-selling list, the author S. Sinek advocates that if employees or consumers can agree with your "why" and work with you or identify with your product, it will have the greatest power. This autonomous choice generated by identification makes followers willing to undertake challenging goals, and generates a sense of belonging to a group or brand, which is actually the application of the same principle. The same structure shares the same core in many other best-selling books, such as "deliberate practice", "the most productive year", "meaning", "flow", etc. Ask inward whether the "motivation and value setting" fits this principle. According to the logic of golden circle thinking, I would think that SDT is the Why as the core theory, and OKR or other propositions are the How, and finally the various specific action designs or expected behaviors that enterprises need at present are displayed. Is the outermost What. To be able to trigger the desired action, good design like OKR is needed, but a deeper understanding of its psychological background can give us a deeper understanding of why it touches people.

Why now?

Actually, I was quite surprised by this phenomenon. Thirty years ago, when I was studying at the University of Rochester in the United States, E. Deci was my teacher. At that time, this theory had already reached a considerable scale, but it was only a discussion in the college. Almost no one pays attention. So why did it take decades to become a "conspicuous learning" for commercial applications? My rough guess is that in the past, companies were in the golden age of relatively linear growth. Through the division of labor system of mass production and the structure of using efficiency to reduce costs, the reward design based on the behavioral school can indeed create the greatest benefits. However, as VUCA is now popular to describe the situation of enterprises, when the unpredictability of the future is getting higher and higher, staying in a stable comfort zone is likely to lose competitiveness quickly, and the innovation and transformation of the second curve is an inevitable choice. . At this time, the leader of the organization can no longer be the omniscient leader alone, but requires everyone in the organization to be more willing and able to contribute actively, from mastering the details, taking the initiative to take responsibility, and actively Innovation and suggestions, etc., can enable enterprises to meet various new challenges. But, as an employee, why would you want to do this? We need to go back and redesign the motivational foundation of the entire organization.

Change means that the original sense of security must be removed in the face of uncertainty and uncertainty, but how can people maintain sufficient flexibility and momentum in the face of an uncertain and changing environment? Organizations in Taiwan are accustomed to looking for solutions that can quickly achieve WHAT. HOW. However, if I locate the specific behavior of adapting to change in WHAT, and then review many reference books that talk about HOW, I find that these methods are almost all around SDT, the WHY of basic human motivation. I hope that after everyone has a clearer grasp of the "why", they can also check whether the HOW you use can effectively promote the WHAT you expect. I expect you to achieve the transformative capabilities that you most desire.