DISHONEST BY DESIGN? 10 STEPS CLOSER TO TRUE. Does your team exhibit these symptoms? • Strong group cohesion • Close personal connections • Self-policing • Robust privacy policy • High organizational esteem • Internal locus • Flexible metrics • Subjective operational assessment • Altruistic Intentions If you answered yes to several of these characteristics, you may have inadvertently created an ideal breeding ground for dishonest behavior according to Dan Ariely, Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University. I have spent many hours agape, aghast, agog, appalled, astonished, astounded, awe-struck, awed, baffled, and befuddled, listening to his New York Times bestselling book The Honest Truth About Dishonesty. In study after study Ariely uses his favorite “matrix task” of finding pairs of numbers that add up to ten while introducing alternative X factors to test our assumptions about cheating. Rather than being a simple cost benefit analysis, it appears dishonesty is more like a contagious disease than a personal proclivity. These findings are proving personally prophetic as we enter into negotiations with one of our non-profit boards who, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, believe their governing skills to be beyond reproach. This kind of overly optimistic self-assessment, according to professor Ariely (whose TED talks have been watch 2.8 million times) is not an exception to predictable behavior but more the rule. When comparing the many opportunities for undisclosed indiscretion, it is doing so for an altruistic cause that tops the scale for infectious rationalization literally doubling what he calls the fudge factor. If you suspect your board meetings could use a little less fudge, here are ten factors that will add more proof to your team’s performance: 1. Mix things up; add new team members disconnected personally and professionally. 2. Start each meeting and include in each document a commitment to absolute honesty in all interactions. 3. Introduce an external auditing influence to independently assess decision making and budgeting compliance. 4. Insist on transparency in all communications. Create a centralized communications area where all significant correspondence is categorized, searchable and available to all stakeholders. (email is easy – it is not transparent) 5. Benchmark your standards against peers within your industry as well as those “Positive Deviants” who, with the same resources, find ways to do things better. 6. Remember who you are there to represent. If you are a board member your first responsibility is to represent the members’ views and not your own. If you represent a team or customers make sure you are both listening to and expressing their concerns. 7. Define, monitor, display, share and live by well defined metrics. Opinions oscillate, metrics motivate. 8. Be wary of your illusions. None of us is capable of understanding anything in its entirety. We all view the world through the narrow slit of our own experience. Use a systems based approach to ensuring all sides of all issues are considered in their entirety. 9. Altruistic intentions are not a get-out-of-jail card for ill advised actions. Volunteer deliverables require the same accountability as those expected of paid staff members. 10. Enlist experts. The volunteer culture must be very careful not to direct activities, commit revenues or advise direction in areas where they lack specific expertise. The infrequent market feedback inherent in most nonprofit environments must be balanced with expert analysis from independent resources. If these ideas seem self-evident, maybe that is because professor Ariely is also the founder of the Center for Advanced Hindsight, which is to say that he specializes in the science of knowing what you already knew. Now why didn’t I know that? Oh and in the interest of full disclosure this message has not been approved by anyone of any importance and represents my limited understanding and absolute admiration for Dan’s rationally irrational research.
Posted on: Tue, 30 Sep 2014 21:18:23 +0000
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