4

Behavior Is a Function of Its Consequences

People do what they do because of what
happens to them when they do it.

At the end of every working day, people leave work either more motivated to come back and do their jobs again tomorrow or less motivated as a result of what happened to them that day. Performance is about what happens every day.

Everything we do changes our environment in some way. When a behavior changes our environment in ways that we like, we repeat it. When our behavior changes the environment in ways we don’t like, we stop. Everything we do produces a consequence for us that changes our behavior.

Technically defined, behavioral consequences are those things and events that follow a behavior and change the probability that the behavior will be repeated in the future. This definition allows scientists to study and predict behavior through systematic observation. However, the concept is enormously useful to the nonscientist as well. Because we can observe the impact of a particular consequence on the rate or frequency of a behavior, we can begin to understand how to influence or change any behavior.

Consequences change the rate or frequency of a behavior. They cause a behavior to occur either more or less often in the future. There are only four behavioral consequences. Two increase behavior and two decrease it. The two that increase behavior are called positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement. The two that decrease behavior are called punishment and penalty (Figure 4-1).

Figure 4–1 Summary of the four behavioral consequences and their effects.

Let’s say that an employee engages in 1,000 behaviors per day at work. Each is followed by a consequence that will either strengthen or weaken that behavior. A large percentage of these consequences occur naturally, and the employee gives them little thought. For example, he or she turns the key in the door to the building, pulls on the knob, and the door opens. The employee flicks the switch and the lights come on. The door opening and the lights coming on are natural consequences for these behaviors. The fact that they work causes these behaviors to be repeated under the same conditions.

Another portion of the 1,000 behaviors is followed by consequences provided by the people with whom an employee works. She smiles, says “Good morning,” and receives a greeting in return. The employee shares a rumor and receives the smiles and attention of peers.

Yet another portion of the 1,000 behaviors is followed by consequences provided by supervisors and managers. The intent of many consequences provided by managers and supervisors is to do things that increase the behaviors that directly add value to the business and decrease those that interfere with value-added performance.

As a manager, could you explain to a visitor what you are doing to make sure that the right consequences are occurring every day for the right behaviors?

Think about your organization for a moment. Are only value-added behaviors being strengthened by consequences in the work environment? Or are off-task behaviors reinforced in some manner? Is it possible that some of the behaviors you don’t want to occur again are receiving consequences that actually increase the probability of those behaviors recurring?

I tell people that I can go into their organization and immediately see what is being reinforced. All I have to do is observe what people are doing. What they do during the workday is what is being reinforced.

Vic Dingus, former technical associate at Eastman Chemical Co., points out that a company is always perfectly designed to produce what it is producing. If it has quality problems, cost problems, productivity problems, or safety problems, then the behaviors associated with those undesirable outcomes are being reinforced. This is not conjecture. This is the hard, cold reality of human behavior.

This is good news because it means that all we have to do to get the performance we want is to identify the behaviors that will produce the desirable outcomes and arrange consequences that will positively reinforce those behaviors. In some cases where behavior is increasing risk to the performer or to colleagues, you also may need to identify consequences that will stop them. Often, by identifying behaviors we want and strengthening them, we make the use of punishment unnecessary or at least a rare event in the workplace.

Can we introduce and arrange consequences in such a way that tasks that are now difficult, dull, or boring become exciting, challenging, and rewarding? Is that possible? It most definitely is.

Every Consequence Every Day

In everyday affairs, all four of the behavioral consequences are at work. It is practically impossible to live a day without experiencing all of them. For example, you are talking on your cell phone and you lose your connection (penalty). When you tried to use a computer for the first time, you probably inadvertently deleted a document after working on it for hours (punishment). Now, you talk about how writing memos by hand for your assistant to type is still the best way for you to get your correspondence done. You stay late on Thursday night to revise a presentation because you know that if the first draft isn’t letter perfect, the boss will chew you out (negative reinforcement). You bought one of your staff members a cup of coffee while he was finishing a project three days before it was due. The next project was completed a week ahead of schedule (positive reinforcement).

Each type of consequence has a different influence on the behavior it follows. A significant part of every manager’s job is to identify the behaviors that are necessary and sufficient to accomplish the company’s objectives and then to arrange for consequences that support them.

Increasing Performance via Reinforcement

The two kinds of reinforcement, positive and negative, increase behavior. Positive reinforcement causes a behavior to increase when a desired, meaningful consequence follows it. Negative reinforcement causes a behavior to increase as a means of escaping or avoiding some unpleasant consequence. It is important to know the difference because the characteristics of the performance generated by each are very different.

Negative reinforcement generates enough behavior to escape or avoid punishment. The improvement is usually described as “doing just enough to get by.” Positive reinforcement generates more behavior than is minimally required. We call this discretionary effort, and its presence in the workplace is the only way an organization can maximize performance.

Because reinforcement is defined as any consequence that increases performance, it always works. If performance does not increase following the delivery of a consequence, then, by definition, the consequence was not a positive reinforcer. This means that an organization that uses reinforcement effectively will get improvement. Put another way, if performance is not improving, reinforcement is not occurring.

Consequences That Decrease Performance

As stated previously, just as there are two consequences that increase behavior, there are two consequences that decrease behavior: punishment and penalty. Because punishment, like positive reinforcement, is defined by its effect, we can say that a particular thing or event is punishing only when we see its effect on behavior. This is a very important principle for managers. This means that a “chewing out” for poor-quality work could be a positive reinforcer, rather than a punisher as intended, if it resulted in an increase in poor-quality performance. By the same token, a “pat on the back” is actually a punisher if it causes a decrease in performance, and it’s not unusual for this to be the case. For a pat on the back to be a positive reinforcer, the person has to care about what the supervisor thinks. If the employee does not like or respect the supervisor, that pat on the back is unlikely to increase performance.

Anyone in business who doesn’t understand how consequences operate and vary from person to person can accidentally create problems while trying to improve performance. Without doubt, most of the punishment that goes on in the average organization is unintentional.

Most managers think that intention determines effect. That is to say, most managers think that if they intend to positively reinforce someone for good performance, then that is what they are doing. Unfortunately, this is not true. The consequence is defined as positive or negative by the performer—the person who receives it. That is to say, by his or her response.

Doing Nothing Is Doing Something to Performance

If inadvertent punishment is common, inadvertent extinction is epidemic. Extinction is technically defined as the withdrawal of positive reinforcement from a behavior, but it may be easier to understand this way: the performer does something, and nothing happens. Ignoring is probably the most common example of extinction. We know extinction is occurring when we hear people say such things as, “Nobody appreciates anything I do around here.”

Most managers feel that doing nothing has no effect on performance, as in the remark, “I didn’t do anything.” The fact is that when managers do nothing following employee performance, they may change that performance in one of two ways: (1) they put desired effort on extinction, and (2) they open the door for some inappropriate behavior to be positively reinforced. And managers do this all the time!

If people are taking the initiative to go above and beyond what is required, then those behaviors, if they lack a favorable consequence, will stop at some point. If people are taking shortcuts in areas such as safety and quality, the naturally occurring positive consequences (saving time and effort) will cause those behaviors and activities to continue.

Management changes behavior by its action and its inaction. Let’s say that you have 30 people reporting to you. How many would be problem performers? Two, maybe three? Now look at how you spend your time. Is it possible that you might spend as much or more time with the three problem performers as you do with the other 27? It happens. This indicates that you are ignoring the good performance that makes your company successful while giving your full attention to poor performance. The extinction of good performance is a common complaint of business. It sounds something like this: “People just don’t have that old-fashioned work ethic anymore.”

Decades of ignoring good performance have taken their toll. We have put the “work ethic” on extinction not by what we did so much as what we didn’t do.

A Change of Focus

A retired maintenance superintendent was called back to a Chrysler plant to train new employees involved in the startup manufacturing of a new car. He was one of several people who made a presentation to plant management about the new product and the production training process.

He introduced himself by saying, “I’m Don F. Many of you don’t know me, but I retired from this plant last year. Since I retired, I’ve had a lot of time to think about my career here. I started as a mechanic in the maintenance department and after many years became maintenance superintendent for the entire plant. As I thought about those days since retiring, something bothered me. Of the hundreds of employees that I supervised and managed during my career here, I can remember the names of about 30 that I would classify as ‘no good.’

“I can remember the names of about the same number who were ‘outstanding.’ That’s 15 to 20 percent of everyone I managed. What really bothers me is the remaining 80 to 85 percent who came in and did their jobs every day, who were the people primarily responsible for my success in the plant, and I can’t even remember their names. I hope when you retire you don’t bear that burden.”

Bringing out the best in people requires that all performers get the right consequences every day. Making this happen is in large part a supervisor’s job. We shouldn’t ignore poor performers, but if we are to have a high-performance organization, we can’t ignore the good performers either.

The More Immediate, the Better

All four types of consequences are subject to impact erosion. This means the shelf life of a consequence is limited. The more immediate the consequence, the more effective it is in changing behavior. Everyone who has ever tried to change a bad habit understands this. We want to lose weight, but we eat high-fat, high-calorie foods today, vowing to change tomorrow. We vowed to start an exercise program today, but we watch our favorite TV show instead. We want to quit smoking, but first we finish that last pack of cigarettes. The immediate consequences of smoking—taste, relaxation, and stress reduction—far outweigh the delayed and uncertain consequences of better health.

Consequences that are immediate and certain are very powerful in governing behavior. For example, if, when handling caustic chemicals, performers know that a small drop on the skin will produce an immediate and painful blister, it will not be a problem to get them to wear gloves. However, performers who handle lacquer products that may cause cancer and/or possible nerve damage with prolonged exposure may not consistently wear protective gloves. Many old-timers don’t wear them at all.

Reinforcers Are More Effective than Rewards

The immediacy factor explains the difference between a reinforcer and a reward. Although that difference will be examined in more detail later in this book, for now, you should remember that a small reinforcer provided immediately for a behavior has much more effect on that behavior than a larger but delayed reward.

Because a reward is usually in the future, there is always a degree of uncertainty associated with it. Those offering the reward may withdraw it or change the conditions necessary to get it. The performer might not be able to meet the conditions, could die, or otherwise may not qualify for the reward. People typically respond more predictably to small, immediate, certain consequences than they do to large, future, uncertain ones.

The consequences that cause people to do their best every day occur every day. Yet experience has shown that most organizations spend more time, energy, and money providing consequences that occur when employees get sick, retire, or die than on the ones that occur every day.

This has enormous implications for every firm. It means that bonuses, profit sharing, retirement benefits, and similar forms of compensation are future, uncertain consequences and, as such, do not bring out the best in people every day. These incentives are expected but not sufficient to maximize performance. Certain forms of compensation facilitate performance better than others. However, compensation alone will not do the job of maximizing performance. Only effective and frequent positive reinforcement can do that.

Management Myth: People Resist Change

Another important implication of the effect of consequences on behavior involves the critical element of change. We are continually bombarded with rhetoric about the urgency and acceleration of change in today’s “fast-paced business world.” We are told that people naturally resist change. This has become a major concern for most businesses, and many have invested millions learning how to “manage change.”

The fact is that people don’t resist change if the change provides immediate positive consequences for them. Nobody resists change when the immediate consequences favor it. “Do it this way, and you won’t hurt your fingers.” “Hold the light this way, and you will be able to see it better.” “Move your right hand this way, and you will be able to hit the golf ball straight.” If the correct behavior follows these instructions and positive consequences occur, we will not have a difficult time getting people to accept change in those situations. It is only in situations where the immediate consequences of change are punishing or where the new behavior is not immediately reinforced that we run into trouble.

Almost every corporate initiative affects performers negatively at first. While the performers may understand that there are long-term benefits to the company and to the performers personally, the immediate consequences of doing things differently are usually negative. New behaviors require extra effort to learn, result in increased mistakes, cause the performers to fall behind in their other work, and create stress because people fear they won’t be able to learn or perform as well under new conditions.

To make change a positive experience, we need to be less concerned with managing the change and much more attentive to managing the consequences associated with change.

Everybody’s Behavior Makes Sense to Them

As unbelievable as it may sometimes seem, every person’s behavior makes sense to him or her. This is so because everyone is reinforced in different ways. Initially, what is reinforcing to another person may not be obvious to us, but if we look a little deeper, we can discover the consequences that maintain almost any behavior.

One of my associates, Dick Cross, once witnessed some of this seemingly inexplicable behavior when a woman he was dating asked him for help after she received a promotion to department manager in a federal government office in North Carolina. She soon discovered that her job wouldn’t be an easy one. The office she had inherited had a statewide reputation for poor performance. When each office received monthly ratings on a variety of performance measures, her new department invariably ranked at or near the bottom. At this point she quickly asked Dick for help.

The two spent several weekends and evenings developing individual and group measures. Their implementation involved graphing individual and group performance and displaying office results daily, developing reinforcement plans, and celebrating improvement. In a short time, the office zoomed from near the bottom to close to the top in performance ratings.

Shortly after the dramatically improved ratings came out, the office manager’s boss called her and said, “I don’t know what it is you’re doing down there, but I want you to stop.” The woman was shocked. Expecting praise, she received punishment instead! “This man must be crazy!” she thought. “Didn’t he hire me to do the best possible job, to turn the office around?”

Not until several days later did she learn what had caused his unlikely reaction. Before she began her improvement efforts, her boss had spent considerable time trying to convince his boss that the only way to improve the situation in North Carolina was with more money and more people. She had accomplished the necessary improvement with neither of those organizational changes—changes that her boss anticipated would lead to his reinforcement and reward.

In retrospect, the reaction of the office manager’s boss was perfectly understandable when considering the embarrassment her success caused him. His behavior was even easier for her to understand when she discovered that his pay grade was, in part, determined by the number of people in his department and the size of his budget. This is an example of an organizational structure that provides positive consequences for the wrong behaviors and results!

No-Fault Performance: Change—Not Blame

When you understand how consequences influence performance, you realize that finding fault with people for their inappropriate performance is unproductive and unfair. They are simply behaving in a manner consistent with the consequences they are receiving now and have received in the past.

The role of leaders in every organization is not to find fault or place blame but to analyze why people are behaving as they are and modify the consequences to promote the behavior they need. As I mentioned earlier, this approach to management does not overlook poor performance. Nor does it seek to use only positive reinforcement to attempt to create some type of unrealistic, utopian organization. Quite the contrary.

The management system we should create employs all the consequences appropriately and skillfully to promote the behavior that supports the organization’s goals and to stop problem behaviors that interfere with accomplishing them. Managers and supervisors who can differentiate between and effectively provide all four types of consequences will quickly achieve levels of performance they may never have thought possible.