Chapter 7
Creating a Positive Work Environment

One of the most important responsibilities of a leader is to help create a positive work environment. This may be the most critical factor in succeeding and, at the same time, one of the most neglected factors in productivity. It's also one of the most vital determinates of performance outcome, and it's a factor that leaders can influence immediately.

How many times have poorly performing athletes been traded to different teams only to become high-level performers? Several cases of this worst-to-first scenario have occurred every year in professional baseball as well as in other sports over the past 10 to 15 years. Baseball players struggling with offense have gone to another team and raised their battling average as much as 50 or 60 points. There may be some influence from different managers, coaches, and stadiums, but the determining factor is probably the change in environment.

The same thing happens in the corporate environment, where some people perform at a very average level and then, when they're moved to a different office, city, or region on the same team, they become much better performers. This is an environmental factor without question.

Look at almost any new sports stadium, and you'll find a tremendous difference in the environment provided for the home team as opposed to the one provided for the visiting team. If you've never been in the belly of a stadium, you probably don't realize this, but in most stadiums, regardless of the sport, the visiting team is afforded very poor environmental conditions as opposed to the home team. It's always been that way and probably always will be. The differences range from the color of the walls to the size of the space to the amenities—all environmental factors. And the same holds true in the business environment, in schools, and even in the home.

It's most evident, I think, in the educational environment when you go into different schools and even different classrooms. It's very revealing how cold some classrooms are and how warm others are. I remember going into my second grader's classroom on Parents' Night, looking around, and telling the teacher, “I don't blame my son for not wanting to be here because this is the coldest, stalest environment I think I've ever been in. It's not motivating, it's not exciting, and so the brighter kids especially are not going to perform well here.”

The environment is fascinating because it is present every day, and it encompasses not only the physical surroundings but also the psychological components and the people who are part of it. A lot of money and time are spent motivating people, only to send them back into the same negative environment. (In Chapter 10 we will talk about motivation and the environment.)

How do you create a motivating environment? How do you enhance the environment in such a way that motivated people want to be there?

You need to be able to read the environment. How do you read it? How do you walk in and determine if the environment is positive, neutral, or negative? How do you evaluate the physical properties in the environment? Psychology students are taught to look at the furniture, the wall colors, the pictures, decor, and other things when they go into an office. They read the environment and learn something about the people in it. They look for psychological noise.

What is psychological noise? It is a critical factor in the environment, especially in the corporate setting, and there are various ways that noise can play a role. For example, baseball fans made much of the physical environment in the Minneapolis Metrodome with regard to the outcome of the World Series between the Minnesota Twins and the Atlanta Braves in 1991. The environmental factors at play were the noise; the white hankies every person in every seat was waving the whole time; the dome's white ceiling, which made it hard for fielders to see fly balls; and the very closed-in nature of the stadium. And there were rumors that when the Braves were hitting, the air conditioning was blowing in and when the Twins were up, the air conditioning was turned off. I don't know that that's true; it's just a rumor. Even so, the environment obviously constituted a tremendous home-field advantage for Minnesota, but it posed a serious disadvantage to the visiting team. All the distractions might well have influenced the outcome of the series, which the Twins won.

To look at an entirely different industry, restaurants may use fast music to turn tables faster if they depend on a high table turn. A high-ticket restaurant with low table turn ratio may play slower music so people can sit and relax. Bars that depend on a high percentage of alcohol sales will play faster music, which means people tend to drink faster. Piano bars where selling a lot of alcohol is not a priority will play slower music. These are all forms of psychological noise.

Other examples are evident in the sporting events that we attend. Cameras flashing can cause distraction. In fact, one click of a camera can throw a golfer's swing out of sync, which will cause bad shots and even bad tournaments. I've never understood this. I've always thought that if you're focused, then you don't hear that noise, but it's a matter of what you're used to. If you have watched a World Series game, you know that with every pitch and every swing of the bat, there are camera flashes all over the stadium. Unless players are conditioned so the disruptions blend into the background, cameras and flashes constitute psychological noise in the environment.

I feel very strongly that a positive environment equals record productivity. One of my corporate clients makes over 300 million pounds of french fries a year. They asked me to come in to talk to their employees at a plant located in a small town in a desert area in the Northwest. Once a month I visited the plant and worked with the people there trying to create teamwork and to develop management. I wanted to get a feel for what they did, so I went into the plant and worked two 12-hour shifts back to back. That told me what I wanted to know about the environment. It was not stimulating. It was depressing and extremely monotonous. Over a year's time, making monthly evaluations, I saw no real change, and I learned that the employees had become so conditioned to the environment that it did not rate as a concern to them. When new people came in, they did not perform well and were not very productive. But the people who lived in the town, most of whom worked in the plant, were conditioned to it. From the outside, I saw a deadening environment, but the perception from the inside was that the job was a way to make a living; it was what they needed to do to survive.

The executives of the company did not live in the town but rather in a large city a considerable distance away. Clearly they were not tuned in to the culture of the plant. They didn't understand the issues and therefore felt no need to make changes so long as production remained at an acceptable level. Yet production could have been maintained and, at the same time, the employees could have enjoyed their work and had more fulfilling personal lives if the company had embraced the changes that were proposed in my program.

I had suggested that they start recognizing good performance in the workforce with rewards such as time off, gift certificates to the one restaurant in the town, or some pretty cool gifts; it should be the winner's choice. I also wanted to get a jogging track around the plant with some recreational equipment to be used during break time. In addition, I felt that someone in the workforce should be on the management council. I suggested a process evaluation similar to the one that I had conducted at a hazardous waste plant (Chapter 4). The program wouldn't have been magic. It followed common sense to signal that ownership cared about the people in the plant, but the changes were never made.

You see, when things are tough, we try to get creative and we try to do these nifty hot-shot programs, but what we should be following is common sense. It's common sense that the leaders need to take control in this environment and pass the word along to management. It's common sense that they need to observe every single day that there are some things that can make the environment better. So 300 million pounds of french fries a month is good, but what if they could do 325 or 350 or 400 million pounds per month. Would that not be better? And with some minor adjustments to the environment, they could have more fun and spend less energy doing the same work, which would show that the company cared about its people.

If you're going to influence the environment in the workplace, you need to do something more than a short-term motivational session and a once-a-month visit as those executives did. You need to be a part of the environment so you can feel it, you can experience it, and you can understand what people go through on a daily basis. Only then are you prepared to make productive changes. When management is thousands of miles away from the work environment, the primary local leader has much more influence on what goes on inside. Leaders need to take advantage of that.

Not too long ago, corporations went through a phase of having employees take ownership of their respective jobs. The term became overused and went the way of quality and excellence and those other buzzwords. I was called in to give guidance for a company that asked its employees to take ownership in a plant environment that was not clean, lacked areas for employees to take a break, and had no restrooms.

When I met with the administrator, I suggested we try something different. Instead of trying to motivate the employees to take ownership of something that I certainly would not want to take ownership of, why not try to create an environment that they would enjoy being in?

People are not likely to buy into something that is not appealing to them. I think the most valuable investment that a company or a team or a parent can make is to provide an attractive environment so the key players want to be there. Again, a tremendous amount of money is spent on motivation and motivational speakers when that money could be spent more effectively in creating a positive environment. It's self-defeating to motivate people and send them back into a negative environment. Motivational sessions can be effective over the short term, for a number of hours, but if you're looking long term, the environmental issues will probably shape the productivity curve in most endeavors, personal or professional.

As I mentioned before, I've been in educational environments that were incredibly cold, uninviting, and demotivating, but the teachers can't understand why the children don't learn. If a school environment is cold and not family oriented—for example, an environment that resents family members visiting their children at school or joining them for lunch—then you've got a formula for failure.

Compare that to another school that invites family participation. The administrators prefer a social atmosphere for the learning process. The teachers are involved with the students and welcome input and feedback from the parents. Doesn't that sound like a much healthier environment for children? It's an incentive to learn. It's the kind of place that may make you wonder why there wasn't any place like it when you were in school.

At least some companies in the business world are learning the lesson. I know a sports marketing company that owes much of its success to a minor but extremely important practice. When an employee is not performing well, the owner of the business does everything possible to put that person in an environment where he or she can succeed. Instead of just firing the employee in whom the company has already made an investment, the owner first tries to solve the problem by modifying the worker's environment. It makes good business sense, and it's also humane.

Enjoying your work and seeking to please customers rank as the top priorities when creating or modifying the environment for positive results. This fact struck me when I worked with another restaurant company. Again, as a way of preparing for the challenge, I worked in the restaurant for a week trying to get a feel for how people felt about their jobs. It was fascinating. I worked in the kitchen, where I discovered that those employees were very proud of what they did. Surprisingly, they became very protective of their specific jobs. If I tried to help them do something at first, I was rejected because the employees took a great deal of pride in what they did. It was their job, they wanted it done right, and they didn't want to give up any part of it. Several days went by before any of them let me do anything other than sweep the floor. That business proved to be very successful because the management promoted an environment that encouraged people to enjoy their work, which resulted in the customers enjoying their dining experiences and returning again and again.

While working with one university fast-pitch softball team, I noticed that before and after every game every player had an assignment to help maintain the quality of the field, such as dragging the infield, raking the pitcher's mound, or cutting the grass. Everyone had a specific job they did before the game, and they would do it again after the game. When I asked the coach why he did this, he told me that players take more pride in the field and the game when they're responsible for taking care of the environment. That made a lot of sense. It also makes a ton of sense for a corporate environment, and leaders are the people who need to recognize this and make little changes to the environment so workers are more productive.

People tend to neglect so many aspects that are environmentally related, but it's something everyone should spend some time thinking about. It's amazing that so many people look around their environment but don't even notice what's important. Consequently, they don't learn anything. When you're in an environment, whether it's at home or school, or in a business or a sports setting, you should be able to look around and learn how to manipulate the environment, if necessary, in order to facilitate the enterprise and move to the next level.

I've always recommended that we need to spend time looking at peripheral things in order to learn what's best about our environment. When did you last go to a playground and watch children play? They create games. They make up rules. Then they play the game. They reach an outcome and they go home. Remember some of the creative things you did when you were 8 or 10 years old? Most of these were facilitated or even determined by the environment. Perhaps a lack of resources or equipment caused you to be creative with your environment. The results may have been off the wall in a grown-up's world but now you see them as creative.

For example, did you ever play sock ball using a broom handle as a bat? Our rule was that if you hit the sock over the house it was a home run. If the sock stayed on the roof, the game was over. And if the sock got worn out, some more folks took their socks off, made another sock ball, and kept playing.

A favorite question of mine at every convention is how many of you here today are as creative as you were when you were children. Many times no hands are raised. Yet the truth is that everyone is as creative today as when they were children. It's just that when we become adults, the size of the box gets smaller, we get more reserved, and we don't want to say creative things because people around us might think that we're strange. Stop and think how many millions of dollars have been made on such goofy, childlike ideas as Hula-Hoops and Beanie Babies and Pet Rocks, yet people as a general rule tend to be more and more content to survive on the traditional way of doing things. In fact, we surround ourselves with things in the environment, whether it's personally or professionally, that basically curtail our creativity, things that make it so easy that all we have to do is push a button to get something done. We don't have to do creative things to be successful, so we stifle any ideas we might have that would make us more visible, make us more accountable, and make us obviously a lot better at what we do.

It seems to me that creativity is nothing more than unused common sense. It's just sitting in there waiting to jump out. Commonsense things that kids do, for example, are often very creative ways to negotiate better, settle arguments, deal with conflict, engage in wholesome competition, play to win, and recover from adversity. If you have ever seen children get in a fight on a playground, you know that unless an adult steps in and messes up the whole deal, the kids get over it and go get a sandwich. But if adult gets involved, it's a prolonged issue for days; it gets to the teacher level and then even to the parent level.

The creativity and positive impact of children on the environment struck me once on a trip with the family to our beach house on the Gulf Coast of Florida. The house had been impacted by a storm and was rebuilt board by board. By the time we arrived, we had to do a lot of painting. I was upstairs painting when my six-year-old daughter came into the room and announced to me that we were going to play school.

“You're my student, and your name is Lloyd,” she told me.

I said, “Fine,” and went on with my painting. And she left the room and I thought it was over.

Well, a couple of minutes go by, the door flies open, and she runs in the room and says, “Okay, Lloyd, I've had enough of your lip. I'm going to call your mama. You're in time out.” There I was, 54 years old and sitting in a corner, painting a little spot, because I'm in time out and didn't want to get in any more trouble.

If you're a parent, you know what it's like to find yourself as a part of your children's environment creativity. It's great fun. We need to facilitate that more in children, but an even greater need is to facilitate this creativity in adults in the corporate environment and in the world around us.

If children are at one end of the environment spectrum, older folks are at the other end. They're an equally neglected learning resource. I don't know why when people get to be 60 or 65, corporations seem to think that they can kick them out without having a negative effect on the environment. It's not that businesses don't need young energy coming into the corporate environment—they do. But we have an invaluable resource in older people who have experience—maybe not in technology or related skills—but in the corporate culture. Their knowledge and experience are fundamental components of the corporate environment. And obviously, the longer they've been around, the more they have to contribute along these lines.

I recently attended a convention for a large retail industry when I asked the audience this question, “Wouldn't it be fun to have a panel of former retail people who had spent their whole careers in the retail industry? We could put people who were 85 and 90 on the panel and ask them questions about how they sold their products and how they did different things in the environment without the technology we have.” As I told these retailers, I think it would be a tremendous learning experience for young people. We just can't keep putting people out to pasture. I've learned most of life's important lessons from older people.

My grandfather was a good example of how an elderly person can contribute to the environment, broadly defined as the space in which we live and learn. I learned more from him about why I do what I do than I learned in 22 years of school. He was a welder on the railroad for 45 years and when he fixed the nicks on the rails, the train tracks were safer. You're probably wondering what would motivate a person to do this for 45 years, move from one nick in the rail to the next. The answer is dignity and work and pride in doing a job well. Because my grandfather constituted an essential part of my environment as I grew up, he communicated those important values to me.

I'm not sure you can teach that in seminars. I'm not sure you can learn it in school. I think it's there inside. You do something that's fulfilling and you understand the true reason why you do it, then you begin to have a level of pride, not only in what you do but maybe more importantly in who you are. These are the sorts of lessons that you absorb from a healthy environment. They don't need to be in the books you read. They're in the air you breathe.

If you know somebody 90 or 100 years old, you need to sit and talk with that person. I will guarantee that afterwards you will know something you didn't know before. You might even begin to know why you do what you do. We need to rethink the role that our older folks play creating and maintaining the environment around us. I'm not sure there's a better teaching tool in the world for learning how to deal with people and how to lead and follow.

My mom worked full time for most of her life, starting when she was 16 years old, and she always worked around young people. At 82, when she quit—or was asked to quit— I asked her why she left her job.

She said, “These young girls, all they talk about is computer, computer, computer.” My mom was a file kind of person and she just couldn't make that transition to computer files and digital information storage. But she was very popular in the workplace. When the younger workers had issues, whether on the job or personally, they went to my mom. And that made her feel very worthwhile and wanted and productive. And it was interesting that within six months of leaving her job, she developed the early signs of Alzheimer's disease. I think that happened because the wheels quit turning. Since I've been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS), after 30 minutes of FreeCell or solitaire on my computer in the morning, I can tell you what kind of day I'm going to have, whether or not the wheels are going to turn as they should.

Now, leaders are people who can recognize the cognitive factors that influence the different people in the work force. They are the people who can put you in an environment where you can get the wheels started and keep them turning and be productive and enjoy your life and use less energy doing it. The environment is without question a leadership tool that can be changed every day. If necessary, it can be altered in some way that makes it more conducive to having people be productive.

If you look back at older research in psychology, there are studies that indicate that when offices raise the lighting level, productivity goes up. In another study, a company painted the walls so each worker would be surrounded by his or her favorite color. Then, they put up pictures of things the workers had said they liked. When the office staff returned to the new space, productivity increased, without the workers noticing a difference in their effort level. In summary, what this means is that people want to feel appreciated and that the people at the executive level care about them. This change starts with the leader creating that environment, creating some psychological noise that's favorable to productivity.

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Final Thought

Create a positive environment for your team and let them play.

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Creating a Positive Environment

List the things you can do to enhance the work environment for your team.

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List the things you can do to enhance your personal environment.

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