FLOW AMONG DEPARTMENTS
[Controlling Assisted Suicide In The Company]

When an assisted suicide is unfolding in the company, do you know? Can you identify its features? And what do you do about it? By assisted suicide we mean employees playing on a fellow employee’s weakness, helping him fail and then standing by as he implodes.
Sometimes assisted suicide is active, in the form of many subtle roadblocks to trip the person. Sometimes it’s passive, standing by when just a little help would have made the difference. This behavior violates a number of our 18 Flow-Of-Work factors. At the broadest level, it is competition turned against the company, rather than focused outward. It’s a domination of personalities within the company’s walls, rather than the desired domination of the marketplace.

The owner of a firm employing over three hundred people was dealing with a worsening situation. One department was adversely affecting the productivity of the other ten. The company was behind schedule on a large job, and although there was no danger of defaulting, this delay might affect new contracts that were being negotiated.

Interview with the Owner

The owner started the company and built it up over the course of three decades. He had an easy and collegial relationship with his staff. He had handpicked each department head and was satisfied with everyone’s performance. Problems began when a manager who had been with him from the early years went into retirement. The owner hired a new person, whose department created a stubborn bottleneck in short order.

The owner was dealing with this remarkably well, considering the situation, and we commented on his poise. He’d faced problems before and hired consultants who had helped. He wasn’t worried. Further, he told us how his outside interests lifted and pleased him. He was very proud of accomplishments in two separate areas of competition, and discussed his successes with us. He balanced gratifying wins against potential disappointments.

Observations in the Company

Staff worked diligently in the departments. Everyone had something to do and activities matched the job descriptions. If there was a slowdown in one department, it wasn’t immediately noticeable. The effect was picked up at the end of the work cycle, as projects stretched weeks beyond schedule.

The department head we were supposed to talk to was in and out. He seemed rushed all the time, and gave us different reasons why he couldn’t set a time to meet. He sure set himself up to be “the problem.” But if we had limited our focus to this man, we would have missed the rich interplay that was giving rise to the bottleneck. It was the larger system that held the answer to what was going on and what it would take to fix things.

No employee in the company fell below a middle range on any of our 18 measures. We did know that the new department head was having serious problems and we were interested in whether the following Flow-Of-Work factors were being observed with him:

• A pattern of cues and reinforcers to help him identify the most successful aspects of his performance and work on them (Factor 18, Before and After)

• A task analysis to break down some of the more difficult aspects of his job responsibilities for easier absorption and learning (Factor 7, Bite-Sized Pieces)

• Giving more frequent and more pointed support in the beginning for a necessary skill not yet strong in the man’s repertoire (Factor 8, Little Steps)

The manager was cutting himself off from his peers, not reaching out for support, and he was avoiding us. He must know the potential consequences of not finding time to work with consultants hired by the owner. We decided to meet early with the owner and give him an interim report. But before we did, we attended a department head meeting.

All the managers were there except the one who was in trouble. The group talked about him and their inability to pick up the pace because of his poor performance. These accomplished and highly skilled men and women seemed very confident, barely taking notice of us and talking freely among themselves.

We had observed these people in their own departments, and in this meeting they repeated the Flow-Of-Work behaviors they demonstrated with their staff:

• Interacting in ways that encouraged F-O-W attitudes and feelings while avoiding those confrontations and challenges that would provoke resistance and stoppage (Factor 6, Emotional Intelligence)

• Using feedback often and in a positive way to keep things flowing (Factor 3, Praise)

• Arousing F-O-W by their presence, suggesting the history of good experiences the staff members had accrued with them (Factor 11, Positive Presence)

Their reaction to the new manager seemed out of character with their day-in, day-out performance. This manager may have problems, but how might we separate what belonged to this individual, and what belonged to the system at large? We developed a theory and planned to check it out. We might be witnessing an assisted suicide.

Report to the Owner

We shared the scores of our behavioral assessment with the owner, and told him we would like to sit in on another two or three department head meetings before we submitted our final report. We told him what we had seen so far, but did not share the resistance of the identified manager just yet, and we did not tell him our theory about assisted suicide.

He was interested in the middle to very high scores throughout the company on our assessment, and how the bottleneck in the targeted department did not stand out in any clear relief. We were interested in that as well. The whole system was slowed. The department heads blamed the new manager. We wanted to find out more. He sent us back into the company.

We did not want to tip our hand. If the managers caught on to our thinking, there was a likelihood that they would try to prove us wrong by making their “weak brother” look even worse. It would suffice to observe the ongoing process in the department head meetings.

When the Observation is the Implementation

The next meeting with the managers took a slightly different course. People critiqued the work of the missing manager for a bit, but then went on to other issues. The owner called us in to ask what we had found. We spoke highly of the ten managers and their value to the company. We specifically described the proficiencies of the individuals that attended the meeting.

News travels fast. At our third meeting the managers found us interesting, engaged us in conversation and talked about the company and their hopes for it. When the meeting convened a consensus was reached to help the missing manager. Everyone had something to contribute. The stalemate was over. They had decided to let him live. We handed in a report about the dissolving of the bottleneck and the company got back on schedule. The young manager had successfully avoided us, and for a few brief moments in the hall, we never saw him again.

Conclusion

“Let us all hang together,” Ben Franklin told fellow colonists on the eve of the Revolutionary War, “because we will most assuredly hang separately.” A company is an entity, and our Flow-Of-Work research has shown us that behaviors of employees at every level of the company affect the behaviors of fellow employees. If F-O-W is low, you get blockage and logjams. If everyone pulls together, you get Flow. There is untold strength in employees tying their fates to one another.
The owner had hired a new person for a high position. It was a good time to remind the other managers how special they all were. This was a given, but sometimes the obvious needs to be said. Frustration was expressed in the assisted suicide of the new guy. We had to tread carefully, because no one was going to admit to this subtle process of letting an employee commit hara kiri (remember those World War II movies?).

When we paid full attention to the successes and skills of the ten managers and dutifully reported our findings to the owner, the scale was tipped in the opposite direction. The ten relented in their assisted suicide attempt, and the company returned to a Flow that got them to meet their production schedules.

If we told the managers what we thought, they might have hotly contested our view. That didn’t bother us; we don’t mind people contesting us. The give-and-take that follows always leads to good things. Our worry was a different one: we might be so right that the new manager would be sacrificed, of course largely by his own hand. We never told the man we helped and we would bet he was so caught up in the welter of company activity he missed the real action. The owner would have gotten it if we explained to him, but such findings are lightning-hot. It’s like leaving a thunderbolt in someone’s hand and walking away. We preferred to use our influence on behalf of Flow in a way that would give the best results with the least potential backlash.

We have identified assisted suicide as one of the elementary flow-blockers in a company. It happens all the time and everywhere. It is so important a phenomenon that it demands its own name and a careful approach. The person about to destroy his standing in the company is in a strategically dangerous position. He has either painted himself into a corner or allowed others to put him there, and in desperation he loses the ability to use all his mental faculties. We know that when we teach companies to relent in this practice, retention increases, needless emotionality drops to tolerable levels and Flow-Of-Work increases.

INCREASING FLOW IN THE DEPARTMENT
[Trouble In The Kitchen]

A service company with gross sales of twenty million dollars and two hundred and ten employees had difficulties in the kitchen. It produced almost seven hundred meals a day and over four hundred snacks. The kitchen area was large enough to accommodate the maximum of nine employees during rush periods, so that there was little need for jostling. But physical confrontations still broke out periodically and verbal arguments constituted an important portion of the communications in that hot and humid corner of the building.

The staff was observed at work. Key employees contributed to a negative and electrified atmosphere and frequently had to be ordered to stop behaving poorly. The supervisors spoke with a hard authority. Blaming occurred often. If the line slowed down the employees berated each other and then the movement of trays across the preparation tables would stop altogether. The kitchen was a source of concern for the company, and even though a number of people had been fired over the years, the problems continued.

The company operated in a highly regulated environment, where deficiencies led to poor ratings that were publicized, and fines of ten to fifty thousand dollars easily accrued.

Meetings with Administration

Interviews with administrators and kitchen managers laid out the scope of the problem. Personality conflicts always seemed the worst in this department. Firings over the years had not ameliorated the situation. They only provided short relief. Although stresses were great throughout the facility, they were most keenly felt in the kitchen. The kitchen was also the one area not visible to consumers, and so not subject to scrutiny and immediate feedback.

Poor self-image was forwarded as a possible explanation for the work slowdowns and mistakes in that department. Goals were set to increase cooperation in the kitchen, reduce aggressive incidents and help the line keep moving at a high rate with a low frequency of mistakes. As always, the presentation of meals had to be attractive and the choices needed to reflect the individual diets of people who were ill and had specific needs.

Behavioral Assessment

Observation revealed very low frequencies in the following Flow-of-Work Behaviors:

• Use of positive reinforcement (Factors 3 and 8, Praise and Little Steps)

• Selecting alternatives to punishment (Factor 4, Strategies)

• Selecting cues and feedback that would reduce negative emotional reactions (Factor 6, Emotional Intelligence)

• Evaluative feedback aimed directly at Flow-Of-Work (Factor 3, Praise)

• Employees with a reinforcing presence in this setting (Factor 11, Positive Presence)

• Maintaining Flow-Of-Work Behavior under conditions of stress (Factor 15, Resilience)

• Maintaining Flow-Of-Work Behavior under conditions of novel stimuli and changes (Factor 14, Peripheral Vision)

There were areas where the F-O-W Behaviors scored high:

• Modeling that increases imitative behavior (Factor 1, Praise)

• Providing discriminative stimuli for F-O-W Behavior (Factor 2, Cueing)

• Use of negative reinforcement, or warnings about consequences (which was a low frequency on Factor 4, Strategies)

Observations were conducted over a four-day period at different times, to ensure that a reliable picture of flow could emerge. In addition, it was noted that fellow staff members from other departments made frequent and disparaging remarks about the food served them for lunch. The presence of kitchen staff in the dining room did not stop them, and the effect of the criticisms was studied.
These observations were written up and a full report given to administration, with recommendations for change. The general conclusion was that kitchen staff was doing a very good job. Meals were being prepared quickly, hygienically, and accurately. People were on-task and the work of individuals coordinated well.

Most employees modeled efficient and effective behavior, including the supervisors. Instructions were clear. There was a high level of stress in the department, so that small errors, mishaps or slowdowns quickly escalated into major incidents. Use of reinforcement and positive evaluative feedback was low, while use of threats for misbehavior was high.

Implementation

The immediate plan was to meet with employees in the kitchen, using the exact environment that evoked problem behaviors in practicing increased Flow-Of-Work. There were short, ten-minute seminars that identified areas for behavior change, with role-playing timed to capture low Flow and encourage an increase. The seminars were fashioned specifically for this group:

1. Angry Behavior Has In It A Chance For Flow. Anger did not have to turn into arguing and blockage. It could also be seen as invigorating Flow. Anger was described as a common reaction to frustration, and alternatives to blockage were practiced, where the eighteen skills could be increased. This riveted the group’s attention because anger was their “objectionable,” a sign of failure, and it created difficulties for them in their work lives and personal lives.

2. Recognizing The Premonitory Cues To Anger. Employees had been observed to be unaware of how furious they were making each other, and cues were identified for the group as a whole and for individuals. Alternatives to provoking were discussed and practiced. The company’s format for “Violence Prevention” was integrated with this presentation.

3. The Conduits For Human Energy. The wide span of adaptive responses to frustration, upset, agitation and fury was addressed, and the message was not lost on the kitchen staff. These were the ways to get along in the world and still be yourself. You did not have to destroy your elemental self to be successful. You just had to have a range of behaviors at your disposal. Behaviors were again practiced.

4. Making Behavior Fit Your Persona. A close link was developing between the presenters and the kitchen staff, so much so that the themes could become more personal. This was a more direct approach to the problem of violence. The employees were challenged to choose behavior that expressed who they really were, rather than letting their habits legislate their persona and their options in life. This was a bit stinging but it struck a responsive chord. Are you going to control your actions, or are your actions going to control you? We role-played how to act on your goals rather than your feelings, an epiphany for everyone in the room.

5. Connecting. The presenters noted how they acknowledged the kitchen staff, how they addressed people by name, and sought to show respect. They spoke in admiring terms about the excellent job being accomplished 365 days a year. They explored with the employees whether they knew these things about themselves. This also came as a revelation. A discussion ensued about respect, admiration and an identity that fit the great job. This was intended to help employees use their successes rather than their rowdiness to define themselves. The rest of the kitchen team supported the presenters.

There was a two-year follow-up, where the consultants got to model Flow-Of-Work, give people feedback on their efforts, continue to “see” the employees and admire their identity as providers and teammates. The consultants made sure to speak loudly and decisively in the dining room at lunch-time. They congratulated the kitchen staff on the tasty meals, and modeled appropriate peer behavior. The complaints about the food stopped, and two or three people could usually be encouraged to add their positive comments about the meals with a mild prompt. Negative and critical peers kept their comments to themselves, noting how attitudes had changed.

Incidents in the kitchen were under control for longer periods, and slip-ups were less frequent and much less intense. The consultants met with interested department heads biweekly to get the environment to respond in a supportive fashion to the kitchen, but then the conversation widened and portions of the Flow-Of-Work list were adopted by others in the building. Turnover was reduced and teamwork increased on measures worked out with the CEO.

Summary

A Flow-Of-Work assessment identified areas for implementation. Select skills that meant a lot to the kitchen setting increased so that the administration, department heads and staff agreed the problems had been successfully addressed. Approaches were studied for the environment at large, and other departments adopted some of the skills the kitchen staff had learned.

Consultation had been attempted a few years before, and the bottled-up anger had come bursting forth in open sessions. A lot of feelings were hurt, the problem did not change, people were fired and the consultants had to go. Success took the form of an accurate reading of the volatility in the kitchen. What were the Flow behaviors that would redirect energy and open employees to alternative approaches to their work? We found the answers in our researched and long-applied Flow-Of-Work factors.

The assessment gave us an accurate reading of what was missing in the kitchen and how we could help. We then brought our decades of combined clinical work to bear in two ways: 1. How could we create the conditions for a meaningful change, the kind that the employees would participate in and “own?” and 2. How could we reflect our richer understanding of human dynamics in a way that was easy for others in the company to capture and practice? We were not only interested in not just a quick positive change, but in long-lasting positive change, and this means adoption, practice and generalization of recently learned skills to new situations. Toward that end, we made ourselves available to the company at large, through our continued training sessions, to thoroughly implant this way of guiding and promoting Flow-Of-Work.

FLOW FROM EMPLOYEES TO CUSTOMERS
[Putting A Smile On Cookie Puss]

The Carvel in Centereach, New York was in an enviable position in the early 1960’s. Situated on Jericho Turnpike just East of Smithtown, it was a stop-off for the East End crowd. At that time, the Long Island Expressway was only open up to Ronkonkoma, a small town on a lake in the south, and the traffic would take the local roads north to Jericho to return on their eastward journey. Carvel was situated at that spot.

The store was new and spanking clean, and the customer lines always contained a luminary or two on the weekends. Jan, a counter person, remembers turning around once to lock eyes with Kim Novak (our equivalent to the more modern Angelina Jolie), who was beautiful in the movies but stunning when just a counter’s-width away. She asked for a Twice On Sundae, a banana boat with two large whirls of ice cream. This was a play on words. It referred to the Greek movie “Never on Sunday,” starring Melina Mercouri. Tom Carvel, the Greek-American founder and namer of the round birthday cake, Cookie Puss, also gave us the mildly naughty Twice On Sundae. One Saturday Hugh Downs of “20-20” pulled his 6’4” frame out of a three-wheeled Italian job, pushing the front of the little car open in order to get out. He ordered a large chocolate cone.

Every day, before the business picked up, the owner would hold an impromptu training session called Portion Control. He’d hold up a small cone, then place it under the nozzle of the ice cream machine. He’d lay a line of soft ice cream across the top of the cone, go around one more time, and in a deft move pull the cone down and away to leave a neat little curlicue on top. He’d weigh the cone, like he did every day, and every day it was the same. Portion control. Then he’d leave to manage his other stores and holdings.

Portion control sounded okay in principle. But Jan worked there seven days a week and saw how the ice cream flopped off the cone, leaving children disappointed, sometimes screaming and the parents scolding. These dramas were always followed by requests for another ice cream. Sometimes the parents would pay, and sometimes they’d put up a fuss.

The cone had a cavity in the middle; wouldn’t it make sense to splurt some ice cream down into it? It would act like an anchor, and solve a lot of headaches. So Jan added that extra ice cream, and word must have gotten around, because the store started to get real busy during the week, too.

This created a new problem. The lines got so long that people had to stand in the doorways. This meant keeping both doors open, on either end of the long counter, and losing air conditioning. So Jan decided to speed things up.

Why, exactly, did he have to take the time to make that curlicue at the top of the cone? What if he opened the spigot on the ice cream machine full flow, drilled a bunch of product into the cone, and pulled it away fast? A trifle less pretty, but rocket-fast. What happened next? He emptied the store more quickly, and the lines got a lot shorter. But then word got out that you could get served at this Carvel lightning quick, and the lines got really long. This time they went out the door and around the sides of the building.

Jan was working with his brother, Tom. He had the machines to the right, and Tom had the machines to the left. They began picking up speed in a kind of athletic competition. Jan did two cones at a time, and Tom went to three. Jan then did four cones at a time and Tom went to five. They topped out at six cones, to the delight of the children, who were now learning their names.

Meanwhile, the ice cream mix was flying off the shelf. The owner knew the boys weren’t following Portion Control but he also tripled and quadrupled his business, so he didn’t know how much was “waste” and how much was new business. He took to sticking around and watching them. They followed Portion Control to a “T.” When he left, they got to the business of business.

The place was hopping all the time, the boys took care to keep the place spotless, they either cleaned or served all through the night and they made the owner a lot of money. A few dozen employees came through the store and they all learned The Jan and Tom Method. Tom went on to teach English and Soccer at St. John’s the Baptist in Islip and was named Coach of the Year by the NCAA in his division for the barrage of wins he led over a 30-year period at that high school. Jan worked with teams to run three different programs that were among the best in their field in New York. One program was so surprisingly effective the Governor sent his wife to spend the day with him.

The Zombie Problem

The waitress asks you if you want a second cup of coffee. “Sure,” you answer, “I’ll take a second cup, but could you make it decaf?” She smiles, goes behind the counter and gets you a regular. The bill at a restaurant—any restaurant—is just as often wrong as it is right. The automotive service manager tells you not to worry about that sound coming out of the right front axle of your van. On the day the warranty is up, you get the bad news that there is definitely something wrong with the right front of your van and you’d better get it fixed right away.

The plumber fixed the leak under the sink but now the faucet is loose. Wasn’t he fiddling around with the thing for half an hour? How could he fix the leak in a way that loosened the faucet? The lines at the clothing store are so long that it’s time to pass out gurneys for the faint. Still, the lone person at the cash register is holding up a sweater this way and that, looking at it, sticking the plastic security tab into an unlocking device and smacking, smacking, smacking away with the heel of her hand only the thing won’t work, your beard just grew another inch, and cobwebs are forming around the guy in front of you.

You’re asking the fellow in the retail store about a product and he doesn’t know anything about it. Thank goodness you read Consumer Reports before entering the place. Another fellow gives you incorrect information with a total belief in its accuracy, and argues with you when you tell him what you’ve read and heard.

This is the opposite of mindfulness. In each of these cases, the individuals representing their companies are “flowing,” to be sure. But it’s not the Flow we are talking about. We are interested in Flow-Of-Work, that energy and mind commitment that increases productivity, on-task behavior, cooperation, teamwork, successful relations with consumers, and a competitive attitude towards other companies.
People who flow in a personal, self-oriented way, thinking about their girlfriend, their next meal, partying later, need to be around people who demonstrate Flow-Of-Work behaviors. These can be fellow employees, supervisors or consultants. Here is a real edge for any company: shifting staff out of the zombie mode and helping them be more successful in Flow-Of-Work.

Tom brought his many teams to the top spot in their division by encouraging a thoughtful kind of soccer, where the youngsters not only knew how to handle the ball and play as part of a team, but also looked up all the time to see where everyone was at every moment on the field, and where every person was likely to be in the next instant. That kind of mindfulness gave him the edge.

Jan’s teams were able to run top-notch programs and impart difficult information to special needs students by focusing on performance. Don’t all schools focus on performance? Absolutely not. Most schools focus on the “teaching model.” The teacher teaches, and tests are given at the end of the week, the month or the quarter. Jan followed the 18 Factors, which encouraged the students to perform all the time. And they liked it! They learned physics, calculus, World History, studied English literature and graduate with Regents diplomas.

The zombie phenomenon in the world of work shows up as low Flow-Of-Work. The 18 skills shift employees to a mindfulness and interest not only good for the company but good for their development and their future. In a new work-world with significant turnover in these entry-level positions, someone in the company needs to be astute and studied in the 18 Flow-Of-Work factors. People don’t stay long enough at the company for the radiating of flow to occur spontaneously.
This has to be programmed, and takes some forethought so that there are always a few go-betweens that can carry the torch. For even the store managers move from job to job, and the district manager needs his point man to keep the Flow going until he gets back. Our work includes this sort of planning with the company, so that it doesn’t lose momentum as people move in and out of job slots.

WHEN HYPNOTIC STATES DISRUPT FLOW-OF-WORK
[Awakening]

Harold worked as a consultant for a company serving health care facilities. His group of twenty-three specialists met from time to time with the director and his assistants to discuss their work. One day a colleague brought up a difficult case at one of these “supermeetings.” While we cannot go into the details of the case, suffice it to say that her young patient, a mother of two, wanted to die, and she would accomplish this by refusing her medications.

The consultant spoke in a touching manner about the patient’s life and her struggles. The story moved the hearts of the others and a quiet, funeral-parlor feeling grew over the course of the presentation. Harold observed his colleagues being pulled by the story to another state of consciousness. A great tenderness and understanding filled their hearts. Colleagues spoke up and supported the consultant. It must be difficult to remain in the room and keep one’s composure when the patient was talking of dying. The patient’s right to guide her destiny was invoked. Harold had rarely seen so large a group of people acting with such unity.

The woman asked for feedback on the case and everyone was supportive. In itself, this is not remarkable. This group was very bright and accomplished. The consultants were following the playbook, although there wasn’t that much in their lore about this kind of situation.

What role should Harold take? Should he go with the sentiments of the group? It was a unique and deeply moving moment, twenty-three colleagues tied by anticipatory grief to a person they’d never met and who lived miles away. Harold was well regarded in this group, and it would make sense to go along. He observed the director going along, and he was the one who paid the bills. The group seemed in comfortable agreement. The moment was perfect. What kind of heel would ruin it? And Harold’s star was rising in this company. Did it make sense to irritate the director, who was also the owner?

Harold thought about the possibilities missed in this therapy, of things yet unsaid. This decision by the patient had to be talked out in the most clear-eyed way. It wasn’t just her life; there were important people close to her that she had to consider. Harold also judged that the group would vote him down. The problem here was not the facts of the case, but the dynamics of conformity. He remembered a similar story in his training years ago, and remembered how another consultant handled it.

Here We Go

When it was his turn, Harold spoke up, and the spell immediately broke. “You go in there and tell this patient to take her medications. Tell her if she doesn’t, you’ll bring in her nurse, then the nurse’s supervisor, then the administrator. Why, you’ll just keep upping the ante. You’ll call in New York’s mayor. You’ll get the Governor. You will bring in the President of the United States!” Harold knew he was going to get a reaction, but what a reaction it turned out to be!

Howls of dismay echoed through the room. People stared at him in disbelief and even horror. One fellow jumped up and yelled that Harold was a maniac and should be hospitalized. The group exploded in a flurry of emotion and it took a while for the hubbub to die down. The meeting broke up without any clear resolution, but the therapist found Harold before he left, and thanked him. Now she knew what she had to do.

Harold was no longer a friend to this assembly. Friendliness had dissolved at that moment, not to be found again, and Harold was treated to coolness after that. But respect for his work was clear and thereafter he was sent to the company’s most troubled and problematic client facilities. His willingness to observe rather than get caught up in group-think had cost him the easy and relaxed relations he was developing with colleagues, but it also established him as the go-to guy.

The therapist ended up doing the right thing, everyone in the room had a chance to experience what it was like coming out of a hypnotic swoon, and the company lowered its risk on this case to zero.

Looking for the Flow-Of-Work

Behavior is a resistance when it gets in the way of productivity and successful competition in the marketplace. Some aspects of Flow were surely being satisfied in this situation. There was heightened cooperation and teamwork, the feeling in the room added to the retention of staff, and the needs of the consumer in question—the patient—were being listened to.

Still, the productivity in this field is measured by getting more patients and more client facilities through demonstrations of effectiveness. This was not an effective manner of dealing with this patient’s situation. And it’s about perception and standing, in relation to other companies that are making similar mistakes. Had this been played out the original way and competitors got wind of it, the company would have taken a severe hit. Other companies in this intensely competitive field had closed their doors already for less.

Flow-Of-Work has to do with the objective success of the company in the marketplace. Of course people are acting, or demonstrating behavior, all the time. Energy and attention are committed to endeavors both within the person, and between the person and his environment. When the company’s Flow-Of-Work needs and the employees’ needs coincide, you have a tsunami. You are unstoppable.
In the case cited above, the group’s hypnotic behavior directly challenged and threatened the company’s Flow-Of-Work objectives. And after that “learning moment” with Harold you can be sure that would not happen again. Harold had selected something to say that would realign personal and group flows with the company’s desired Flow-Of-Work objectives.

Lemmings and Mavericks

We share this story to highlight the tremendous disadvantage of agreement without exploration, argument, point and counterpoint. Flow in a company can sometimes become an inbred and irrational process. It needs to be shepherded forward by someone who has an eye on the customer. There has to be an ongoing connection with the consumer of our products and services. Even though this was about an ill and suffering patient, we see this scenario everywhere we look.
Who thought it was good enough to keep the customer waiting, tell him to come back tomorrow, sacrifice a sale for a ten-minute cigarette break, or work against his interests? Consistently weak operations will betray a flow among the personnel that blatantly disregards the facts of the marketplace.

That kind of flow does ensure greater teamwork, cooperation and retention, but to what end? Flow-Of-Work includes not only those goals, but productivity, on-task behavior, successful interactions with the customer and competition with other companies.

Self-satisfying flow runs dangerously against the company’s fortunes, and brings out the lemming in people. It’s an attractive force; it feels good. The lemming in us has to be counterbalanced with the maverick, that part of us that takes the outside into account.