Blog of Jeff

This is a question that is in the periphery of a current school project and it doesn’t really fit right now but I want to blog it so I will remember it in the future. The question is whether past experiences with disasters might actually be more of a hindrance than a help during a new disaster. Research has shown that trust in a strong and experienced leader is an organizational weakness because individuals become less questioning and critical in following the leader. Disasters tend to exacerbate this issue by adding a lot of pressure for quick action and reducing individual confidence. Theoretically, a leader/organization that has experienced a disaster before might have more leadership influence that will even more swing the pendulum toward unquestioning followers.

Oddly enough, there is a scene in a movie that really captures this idea for me. The movie is a very mediocre B-move horror and most people haven’t seen it but it is about some shark researchers creating some smarter sharks and then, of course, everyone gets eaten. Samuel Jackson plays a strong leader who survived a major disaster in the past and everyone defers to his judgment because of his past experiences. In one scene, he is giving a moving speech about how he survived the that disaster and everyone is starting to feel good about their chances for survival because they have this great leader. Then a shark jumps out of the water and eats Samuel Jackson in the middle of his “if we stick together, we can survive this” speech.

Aside from being funny as hell, it’s a turning point in the movie because everyone shifts into thinking for themselves rather than following Jackson. Individuals are trying things that sometimes work and sometimes don’t, but they are not just blindly trusting and following the experiences of another.

The idea I am suggesting is that “past performance is no guarantee of future results” when it comes to leadership and disaster recovery, just like it is in financial affairs. An organization that doesn’t have a strong leader or prior disaster experience may actually have an advantage in terms of surviving and recovering from a disaster. I’m sure that’s not always true because some lessons learned from one disaster surely can be applied to another. But not all. And if organization’s don’t have enough critical thinking and learning skills, there may be deference that there shouldn’t be.

People who know me realize that I have a strong dislike of mission and vision statements. I think they are greatly overrated as a management tool and that business consulting types have made a glorious racket out of making businesses feel they are the most important part of their entire strategic plan. They can be handy as a marketing tool but to think that every major decision an organization makes will be governed by the boundaries of a 25-word mantra is silly. Why would anyone think that it is possible to frame their entire strategic plan in a cute little marketing catch phrase? Also, in an era where flexibility is the most important business attribute, being locked into that catch phrase is evolutionary death.

I’ve been thinking about this more lately because of an interesting little study by Christopher Kayes from 2004 in the Human Relations journal. He looked at climbing deaths on Mt. Everest and how they can be attributed to breakdowns in organizational learning. Among two commonly recurring themes, leadership is a problem and goal oriented management is a problem, because they both get in the way of organizational learning. Following the leader and focusing on a narrow goal negatively affects a team’s environmental awareness and its ability to adjust. It’s easy to see how a strong, “we can do this” type of leader or a “climb this mountain” type of mission statement can end in disaster in mountain climbing. But the exact same lessons apply to organizations of all types.

A mission that works in one environment may be a horrible disaster in another. That’s why organizations need to be able to learn and adjust quickly and it is silly to assume that success is either due to a good mission statement or the lack of the same. Long term success takes a strategic plan that fits with current environment and the ability to adjust that plan when it is necessary. Anybody can get lucky in the short-term. Any leader can look like a genius for a few years. But organizations that blindly follow such a leader are just like mountain climbing teams heading to the peak. Just because a leader has scaled it a dozen times doesn’t mean he won’t get you killed this time. The inexperienced, low-ranking guy who notices that it is a lot colder at base camp than everyone expected is the guy who might save your life. If the team is willing to listen to him and willing to adjust its mission.

Usually, doctoral research articles are pretty boring, especially the methodology part. But one recent article finally made must read status, even making me want to jump straight to the methodology section. In the journal, Evolution and Human Behavior, volume 28, there is an article by Geoffrey Miller⁎, Joshua M. Tybur, and Brent D. Jordan from the University of New Mexico Psychology Department. They researched the effect of the ovulatory cycle on lap dancers who gave 5,300 lap dances. Even a discussion about T-square formulas can’t make that boring.

Summary finding: “Normally cycling participants earned about US$335 per 5-h shift during estrus, US$260 per shift during the luteal phase, and US$185 per shift during menstruation. By contrast, participants using contraceptive pills showed no estrous earnings peak.” That’s crazy. That comes out to a low of $17 per hour and a high of $67 per hour. We’re talking about an increase of $50 per hour!

The actually cool research piece of this study is that it is the first time that this solid of a link between women’s cycles and men’s behavior. It could be pheromones, it could be the women actually feeling and behaving differently, it could be from a lot of possible causes. But something actually makes men give bigger tips. The theoretical possibilities and implications for more research are big. Are women more likely to get raises from male bosses if they ask while ovulating? Or get hired at all? Win a big sales account? Should women actually schedule most of their important events accordingly? How do women respond to the cycles of other women? And on the male side, is higher tipping an easy thing to trigger or is it actually indicative of a major psychological reaction by the man. And where is the closest conference that has doctors Miller, Tybur and Jordan presenting, because that conference is probably awesome!

It also goes to show that for all the civilized veneer, we’re probably still a lot closer to instinctive animals that we like to believe.