Break_the_Monotony

Break the Monotony By: Richard Bila, Kat Forst, Ahmed Gaafar and Vincent Morgan The business world is growing rapidly due to innovation and creativity in all markets, the old world view of climbing the corporate ladder by simply following the rules and making the boss happy are quickly dying. A new wave of non-conformity is upon us and as managers, employees and citizens it is in our best interest to break through the monotony and speak out with our instinctual creativity. Throughout this paper we will identify why not conforming to the norm can benefit not only the employee but the employer. We will also discuss how to motivate non-conformity and how non-conformists can be persuaded to work for your organization. Conformity, what is it' One dictionary definition of conformity is “action in accordance with some specified standard or authority” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). That doesn’t sound too bad now does it' Most of us are taught from a young age both at home and at school how to conform. For example a UCLA survey from a few years ago reported that the average one year old child hears the word, “No!” more than 400 times a day. (Need Citation') And haven’t we all heard going through our primary education years, “Don’t speak without raising your hand“, “Color inside the lines“, or “Walk, don‘t run“. While all of this helps children to grow up and join society as socially acceptable employees, the conformist mentality can restrict the creativity and independent thought which bring about progress. So what is wrong with being “go with the flow”, “don’t rock the boat” or “well that’s how we have always done it“' Are there any dangers to conformity' Throughout history there are many examples of how conforming lead to a pack mentality. Nazi Germany in the 1930’s and 1940’s for example. The vast majority of the German people were not evil, they just went along with the crowd until eventually their need to conform outweighed their ethics. In the 1960’s, psychologist Stanley Milgram performed an experiment on conformity to authority that seems to prove that the need to conform can override ethics. In this study, teachers were brought in as the test subjects and told by a researcher to administer increasing amounts of electrical shocks to another person in the next room when ever that person answered a question incorrectly. The “person” supposedly being shocked was actually an actor who would cry out as if in pain and beg for their tormentors to stop whenever the shocks were applied. Every single test subject, that is 100%, administered up to 300Volts to their “victim”. Sixty-five percent of these teachers applied up to the maximum 450V! Just because the researcher told them to do it and that they would not be held responsible. (Milgram,1965) We have seen that conforming to the wrong authority can be detrimental but this is not the only danger associated with conformity. There is also the need to fit into the group. The go along to get along idea of group think where members conform to the pack mentality. Everyone thinks and acts alike and out of the box thinking is frowned upon as disruptive. How a group can influence an individual was studied by a researcher named Solomon Asch. In his study he would put together a group of 4 people however there was only one test subject and the others were given answers predetermined by the researchers. The experiment showed the group a focal line and then three other lines of various lengths where only one matched the length of the focal line. What the study revealed was that the test subject would get the answer wrong 37% of the time when the other participants all named the same wrong answer. In example the test subject would go along with the group. When asked why, the subject said that they assumed the group had more information about the right answer than they did. (Asch, 1952) In business, conformity negatively impacts the creativity and innovation of the company. Group think and blind obedience to authority are two of the main reasons for this. Perhaps the best way to illustrate this is with an example of a business that was negatively impacted at least in part if not in whole by conformity issues. General Motors in 1984 partners with Toyota in a joint venture named New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. or NUMMI for short. In this venture, Toyota showed General Motors how they were able to make cars of much higher quality at a much lower cost than General Motors itself could build. In return, Toyota was able to build cars on United States soil which would protect them from potential limitations to auto imports which at the time were being considered in Congress. NUMMI was built and successful in establishing the Toyota way of operations and manufacturing in a United States auto plant. This system resulted in an incredible increase in the quality and productivity for General Motors at this plant. The idea for GM was to take the lessons learned at NUMMI and use it in their other plants across the country. The problem, however, was that this new system was so alien to the labor union employees and the plant managers that adoption of the NUMMI system at other GM plants became impossible. GM’s Union employees fought back because the new system threatened their sense of seniority and entitlement. GM’s managers fought against it as it would bring them down closer to the level of the employees, the program would require them to get their hands dirty and they feared they would lose privileges they felt entitled to. GM was unable to quickly break out of the conformity to the company culture that had built up over time. Over the next 20 years or so, GM slowly made changes to their other production plants but by the time they got close, it was too late. In June of 2009, GM files for bankruptcy and gets $50 Billion in a taxpayer bailout. (Citation NUMMI) Throughout the details of the above examples we can easily see that conforming to the norm not only in business but also through psychological experiments that it can be dangerous. Let us now look into what a non-conformist is and the advantages of being one are. We can argue that, depending on the context, nonconformists can be called many names, mavericks, rebels, misfits, creative people or even entrepreneurs. (Cheverton, 2000). It is well known that when people are in a group and they don’t know how to act, they almost always conform and follow the group norm. The desire to conform is very strong because most people want to protect their status within the group and within society as a whole. Groups not only have a tendency to discard nonconforming ideas, but also punish individuals who deviate from the norm even if that deviation is relatively minor (Bernheim, 1994). Nonconformists have a special set of personality traits and characteristics that motivates and pushes them to break the rules of conformity and disregard group norms. The scholarly definition of nonconformity is the extent to which individual behavior is driven by internal rather than external standards (Kohn, 1977). Nonconformists have very strong values and they regard them very highly. They are not likely to lose sight of their own values and adopt the group’s values, especially if they see the group values as inferior or immoral. Nonconformists demonstrate this trait in spite of the huge pressure that groups put on their members to comply and conform. Stanley Milgram’s research in the 1960s demonstrated how group and authority pressure to conform are so immense that they push people to disregard ethical and moral values and inflict severe bodily harm on others, without even questioning the reasoning or justification behind this punishment (Milgram,1965) Being a nonconformist implies a tendency to take high risks. If the nonconformist’s plans fail, the damage to his or her status and career are orders of magnitude larger than if they conformed and the group’s collective plans failed where responsibility for the failure gets diffused among group members. The nonconformists’ strong conviction and sense of self-worth is what drives them all the time. They put a very high value on the validity of their ideas and their chances of success. Nonconformists are also natural independent thinkers; always finding solutions and ideas that other group members don’t come up with neither individually or collectively. This emphasizes the conformist creativity and ability to innovate and think outside the box. Very small percentages in a society possess these characteristics. Nonconformists are rare, few and far between and this is why it is very important for organization to identify the nonconformists and have clear and well defined methods to utilize their potential for creativity and innovation and not let it go to waste or turn into negative energy that poisons the environment. Nonconformists are not your run of the mill employee types, their abilities have to be correctly channeled to fully realize their potential. The nonconformists’ placement within the organization’s hierarchy and within functional areas can either be largely positive for the organization or it can otherwise be destructive. Nonconformists can refresh the organization when strategies and ideas get stale or dated. They can see through the disadvantages of the traditional way of doing business and its shortcomings. A few nonconformists and mavericks can re-energize the whole organization and make a positive impact on its bottom line. Because bureaucracy annoys them and makes them feel tied down and restricted you can rely on them to keep bureaucracy from slowing down the organization and dragging it to inefficiency. Armed with appropriate authority nonconformists will chop off bureaucracy and help organizations run a more lean and dynamic operation. One area where nonconformists can make a great impact in this regard is the public sector; amid the calls for the public sector to transform itself by adopting decentralized decision making and empowering employees. Nonconformists can be the trailblazers and transformative figures that take it upon themselves to change the culture, systems and processes that are holding public sector organization back from being more dynamic, efficient and adaptive (DeHart-Davis, 2007). When nonconformists come up with ideas and get the chance to turn them into action, you can expect them to be fully invested in these ideas and willing to work very hard to realize it. They are fully invested because the high value they put on their way of thinking will motivate and push them to the finish line. The nonconformist also fears failure because it threatens his or her status in the organization more than anybody else. Mavericks like Steve Eisman and Michael Burry and a handful of other people were the only ones who saw the financial meltdown in the horizon, in an industry full of experts on forecasting economic conditions, assessing and managing risk. We might argue about the ethical implications of those few people’s decision to bet against the market to gain from it, but in the end they have been very successful in achieving huge profits for their organizations that no else saw (Lewis, 2010). As important as we think nonconformists are to any organization and its breaking away from traditional ways of doing business, there are precautions that are just as important for managing nonconformists. Known for their strong convictions, values and tendency to take high risk, it’s easy to see the kinds of conflicts a group will have if it has multiple nonconformists, the effect here can be destructive to the group productivity due to the intense clash that will take place between nonconformists. A nonconformist will not necessarily break away from group norms in the same way another nonconformist would. Again this shows how critical it is to strategically place nonconformists within the organization so as to minimize these conflicts. This task can be especially tricky in organizations that use you a matrix structure. Nonconformists rock the boat and that can make their peers feel anxious and nervous. The nonconformists’ managers need to step in at these times and act as stabilizing agents to reduce anxiety within the group and show that management is still at the helm. Additionally, evaluating nonconformists needs to take into consideration that conventional performance reviews are structured and measured against norms, making them less capable of capturing the performance of a nonconformist (Cheverton, 2000). That’s why performance evaluations should be flexible and take into consideration the overall value that nonconformists bring to the organization with their ideas and creativity, which is more difficult to quantify than conventional performance aspects. In essence, being a nonconformist workplace is of great significance and advantage to modern day organizations. First, however, one needs to know the tools and techniques necessary to gain just such a high performing organization. There are several ways a leader or manager can implement change in an organization. To begin with, there must be commitment to the new ideas, changes, and beliefs at all levels of the organization, especially top management. Humans are conservative by nature and tend to hold back until they see someone else step up and change first. Hence, this commitment must be communicated and demonstrated in earnest by upper level management in order to influence all constituents in the organization to be on board with a new organizational culture. Such a commitment by management, especially those that are highly recognized, communicates to employees that they can trust this change is not a passing fad and can devote their energy to fully embracing the changes and modeling the behaviors necessary for an open, more informal, democratic, and team-oriented organizational environment (Lloyd, 1994). Also, employees will be more likely to offer up new ideas and contribute when they have greater support from management and peers (Axtell, Holman, & Wall, 2006). Trust cannot be emphasized enough. Trust, encouragement, transparency, and teamwork are vital to influential, long-term, positive change (Lloyd, 1994). Now that there is commitment to the change, there are many ways a leader can alter a conformist organization. Heavy emphasis must be placed on the company’s culture, as it is the most important factor in breaking from the mold to a more creative, innovative, and nonconformist atmosphere. A culture of conformity will only generate “more of the same” from a firm and will almost certainly not lead an organization to a long-term competitive advantage in the market (Pech, 2001). The biggest, most influential change managers can implement is empowerment. Too many of today’s companies have rigid structural impediments such as layers upon layers of rules, procedures, and bureaucratic processes that stifle employees. Many organizations may have outdated rules and procedures that no longer apply to current situations and thus, may stifle any innovation or creativity on the part of employees (Baucus, Baucus, Norton, & Human, 2008). Companies need to give employees greater ownership over tasks, freedom to break from norms and old practices, and the freedom to fail (Axtell et al., 2006). For example, Southwest Airlines balances autonomy, empowerment, and accountability by adopting the practice of freedom to fail, which emphasizes that, as long as the employee has done the wrong thing for the right reasons, they will not be punished. Empower employees, giving them greater ownership and responsibility for tasks. Grant them freedom of thought and freedom to exercise new approaches and ideas in order to influence change, foster innovation and creation of new ideas and more relevant approaches to issues and challenges they will face in future endeavors (Baucus et al., 2008). Also, management must foster open communication and provide employees with a big picture view of the organization, the competitive environment in which it operates, and the corporation’s core values and vision. Employees that have a greater awareness of the bigger picture and that are encouraged to share in the values and vision of the organization are much more likely to actively apply themselves, their inherent creativity, and give their full efforts toward helping the company break from the mold and continue succeeding in a highly competitive market. They are more likely to offer up new ideas and approaches that are relevant to success instead of just focusing on how to look as though they are productive just to get to the end of the day (Baucus et al., 2008). Actively encourage employees to increase their knowledge of what they are working on, encourage them to communicate and initiate dialog with customers, partners, and coworkers in other departments with whom they might never have interacted with previously. Leaders and managers may also institute job rotation to promote increased understanding and knowledge of employees. Once employees gain a greater perspective, realize how they play a role in the success of the organization, and are encouraged to look for new ideas and techniques instead of relying on old ones simply because they worked, these employees will be much more productive and participative in the organization. Thus, open communication, training, and communication of core vision and values is another step towards breaking from the status quo in a firm (Henard & McFadyen, 2008). In addition, examine the way the firm has coordinated its rewards, incentives, and punishment schedules and rules. To create trust, innovation, and full engagement of employees, rewards and punishments must be restructured. Instead of punishing failure and only rewarding success at the end of a completed project, look to rewarding all progress made by employees. Try to stay away from punishing failure and risk-taking. Instead, reward failure, acceptable risk-taking, and steps toward progress made by employees (Eesley & Longenecker, 2006). Only punish inaction, as inaction is extremely detrimental to maintaining competitive advantage (Anonymous, 2002). Also, give employees incentives and time for exploration of new ideas, investigation of new approaches, and experimentation. Reward employees whose ideas are innovative, creative, and adopted in the organization by supporting them fully and financially in order to encourage this behavior to continue (Eesley & Longenecker, 2006). For example, highly successful and innovative Google, Inc. allows its employees to utilize part of their work time for pet projects and projects that pique their interests. Google, Inc. allows employees to put an effort towards their individual passions. Such approaches can lead to new ideas and new products that can help the company obtain and retain competitive advantage (Quintus & Välikangas, 2006). Simultaneously, companies may utilize certain techniques while hiring in order to break from the monotony and nonproductive bane of conformity. Attempt to consciously hire people who are slow to learn and adopt cultural norms. Such slow learners tend to not shy away from asking why the organization does what it does. They question old, outdated practices and ideas, bringing management and employee attention to outdated approaches. Also, companies can hire people who seem disagreeable or objectionable as a way to foster constructive conflict and communication into decision-making processes (Baucus et al., 2008). Try to hire people with whom you are uncomfortable or have a negative gut reaction to. This will allow hiring of diverse individuals. In addition, a company can hire individuals with different skills than the ones required for the job they are applying for. They can bring new and different perspectives to company challenges (Anonymous, 2002). Seek to employ smart, bright people and realize that great ideas and suggestions can come from anyone (Anonymous, 2007). However, exercise some caution in these techniques. Make sure these people possess well-developed moral codes and greater understanding of the business so as to avoid unethical issues or behaviors that may arise (Baucus et al., 2008). Furthermore, there is a technique that many innovative, successful companies have been utilizing to break the status quo and obtain a competitive advantage. This technique is simple and one that a majority of workplaces seek to keep out of the company culture. It is a simple, yet transformative technique. It is simply organizational fun and competitive play. So many organizations have become “prisons” for the human spirit, becoming anchors for depression and forcing out creativity at great detriment to the company’s wellbeing and success. A massive two-thirds of workers do not like their jobs and feel no sense of commitment to their organization’s goals (Berg, 2001). Something as simple as fun and play in the workplace can greatly increase morale and productivity (Anonymous, 2002). Play and fun can stimulate and open critical communication. Also, it can stimulate creative ideas and reduce stress. Teams that engage in competitive playfulness provide support and appreciation in high-pressure organizations. Notably, it is hard to stay in unproductive conflict with people whom you can laugh with. Create a fun work environment so people enjoy coming to work and have increased enthusiasm, which they are more than happy to direct towards the company’s goals (Berg, 2001). To create a playful, fun and stimulating work environment, have employees bring in and keep toys on their desks. Set aside time for coworkers to play board games like chess, creative games like charades, or even challenging computer or console games to stimulate thinking, creativity, and relieve stress. In addition, have camaraderie stimulating pizza parties once or biweekly, allowing employees to have time to relax and to interact with others. Another idea is fun competition. For example, create a rule that whoever arrives to a board meeting last has to chair that meeting. This can stimulate creative thinking and will certainly result in breaking conformity (Berg, 2001). Another positive result of fun, pleasant, supportive work environments is the ability to attract superior applicants (Anonymous, 2002). These organizations have an edge in hiring as people look for companies they will enjoy working for. Companies with these environments attract applicants who naturally view work as a joy and have the energy and enthusiasm to devote to organizational goals. They can also help stimulate others within the organization to unleash their creativity and inspire them to contribute more to the organization (Berg, 2001). Nevertheless, companies must be aware that creative competition and play could possibly lead to detrimental situations like hazing, high stress, and ugly competition. Be sure to distinguish between productive and unproductive competitive activities and ways to play. Create a mechanism for employees to voice their concerns when situations get out of hand or stress levels become too high (Baucus et al., 2008). It is important to note that all techniques listed previously should be combined with active, on-going ethics training for employees and managers alike. This give them the proper training necessary in order to deal with any ethical issues that may and do arise while trying to break conformity, implement new, creative ideas, and try new approaches to challenges. Be sure to communicate to all of the firm’s constituents that there are some rules that should never be broken such as those for product safety, sexual harassment, discrimination, and financial reporting. Hence, the risk taking that accompanies innovation, creativity, and breaking from the status quo needs to be undertaken with ethical guidelines (Baucus et al., 2008). By and large, there are many techniques to utilize to set a company apart from all those boring, uncreative, conformist companies. Each technique can be implemented to varying degrees and each has positive and negative aspects. The positive outcomes that arise when the techniques are followed carefully and implemented well can be groundbreaking for companies and can maintain competitive advantage in a market or create one if there was none to begin with. However, remember that ethics training, open, clear communication, and trust are vital to the success of these techniques (Baucus et al., 2008). One of today’s toughest tasks a manager faces is recruitment. How can a manger attract skilled employees who can provide the passion required to excel at their job functions and to add value to the organization' The following are ways to induce nonconformists to consider your company versus the competition. Most firms advertise an open position through traditional advertisements such as newspaper ads and internet job seeking sites (ex: monster.com or CareerBuilder.com). The use of general ads that include limited job attribute specificity has the potential to appeal to a wide array of job applicants and to increase the size of the applicant pool. However, such advertisements may also increase the number of unqualified or inappropriate applicants pursuing employment, and may be unappealing to job candidates who are highly focused in their job search strategies (Feldman, Bearden & Hardesty, 2006). In lieu of these traditional media avenues a few alternatives include, posting the position within your organizations web site and having the newspaper or internet career sites directing the candidate to the firms site, utilizing industry specific career sites such as dice.com which is specific to technology professions or using an internet career site that utilizes more advanced technologies such as Jobfox which uses a mutual suitability system that incorporates an in-depth profiling software that matches the right candidates personal characteristics with a specific criteria your firm designates. Either way it is important to note that job recruitment is as much of a marketing tool as it is a management practice (Feldman, Bearden & Hardesty, 2006). In order to effectively advertise your firms job openings you must work together as a team between marketing and management along with collecting other ideas from other departments. When creating the advertisement you want to identify the types of personal characteristics which are required for the position. Byrne’s (1971) similarity-attraction hypothesis posits that, in the employee recruitment context, job applicants are attracted to organizations and recruiters with personal characteristics similar to their own (Johnson, Winter et al., 2008). Therefore, if you are an innovative and non-conforming type of organization you want to express this through a recruiting slogan that stands out from the others. After the slogan, include the education and experience requirements for the position but then list the necessary personal characteristics which reflect the type of employee your company wants to attract. The average US employment advertisement mentions 1.7 such characteristics but similarly, Dutch employment advertisements, which have a lower turnover rate after recruitment, mention on average 3.5 personal characteristics (Born, Taris, 2010). If we model ourselves after the Dutch we will attract a narrower field of potential employees and attract the skilled, cultural stimulation and innovative required in our non-conforming and innovative environment. After we have attracted talented recruits to consider our organization as a career choice we must secure their decision so not to be distracted by our competitions efforts to recruit the same talent. Efficient recruitment is an important factor when attempting to gain a competitive advantage. Many companies are looking to the future by hiring valuable, skilled employees to replace those who are retiring. The market for new talented employees is becoming more competitive, so to effectively attract these types of employees companies are implementing a “branding” technique. Similar to their marketing strategies of branding their products they are attempting to brand their employees and organization to market to new recruits. This is a creative new approach that can be successful if implemented correctly. The author of the article Using Branding To Attract Talent suggests, “For a company to exploit its brand effectively when it fishes for talent, it must think of recruits as customers, use sophisticated marketing analysis to identify its key rivals, determine which corporate attributes matter most to specific types of recruits, and understand how best to reach them.” (Hieronimus, et all 2005). In order for this style of recruiting to be effective we must start off with identifying our competition, this means that if we are in the technology business than we want to see how other technology firms are performing their recruitment functions. By identifying the competition we can see where our style of branding can attract more recruits, the typical firm will emphasize benefits, compensation, job security and the ability to grow within the company but if we can take that to the next level and emphasize the emotional associations such as how fun it is to work at our firm, the type of intelligent culture and innovative atmosphere our firm provides it will contribute enormously to the career decisions of highly talented individuals. We have learned that recruiting the right talent is just as important as managing the talent we currently employee. To successfully gain talented employees into our organization we must successfully market our organization throughout the entire recruitment process. Not only does the recruitment process have to be serious and get the job done but flavorful and fun at the same time, if we come off as a boring and un-enjoyable working atmosphere than we are going to attract those types of employees but if we market our firm as exciting and innovative then those who value that type of working environment will be attracted to it. Now that you have seen how nonconformity can benefit an organization will you still work the same at your job, have we inspired you to think outside the box' It is very important to see that the majority of companies who follow the path of the nonconformist atmosphere have been consistently increasing their revenue year after year. Besides revenue gains it has increased company morale and made not only the organizations better off but society as a whole. We will see better and more innovative products and services develop through the use of this model and our lives will be better off because of it. 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