Inviting Continuous Improvement

We’ve all worked for employers who felt they owned us from clock-in to clock-out. If you were salaried, they may have felt they owned you for more hours than that. While you were at work, these employers expected you to keep your nose to the grindstone, often with a list of expectations longer than humanly possible to achieve. When you failed to meet their expectations, how did they make you feel? The photo above nails it for me.

A brilliant colleague of mine, David Bovis, has spent a lifetime studying the human brain and how it impacts the workforce. David says that the “Alpha (brain wave) state is slower, [more relaxed] and allows us to be more creative, more imaginative.” It is in this state that people have “Aha moments,” making breakthrough connections between subjects, actions, or ideas. It is in this state that humans are often at their most creative.

Compare that to the Beta (brain wave) state, which is more directed, more controlled, more centered inside oneself. The Beta state, while an important part of problem-solving and decision-making, is also one of the body’s responses to fight or flight instincts. Is it any surprise that Beta thinking is part of the body’s response when an employee is worried about their job?

If you’re with me so far, doesn’t it make sense that employers looking for continuous improvement would want their employees to be in an Alpha state at least part of the time?

To illustrate my point, I turn to the martial arts practice of Shu Ha Ri. It is a three phased process of developing students to master a skill. I only want to address the third (Ri) phase, when the student has perfected the skill and it has become muscle memory. At this point, their body can perform the activities by rote, leaving their minds to enter the meditative state of the Alpha wave. Here the practitioner is allowed to adapt what they're doing so as to continuously improve it.

When employers create an environment where employees fear for their jobs (Beta wave thinking), they are creating a workforce that only does exactly what they’re told. There is next to no creativity. Said differently, an employer can’t expect continuous improvement from a workforce living in fear. That is precisely why Dr. W. Edwards Deming’s 8th of 14 points was that employers should “Drive out fear.”

When employers create atmospheres that are relaxed, even fun, they are creating an environment where employees feel secure and can enter into the Alpha state more readily. It is here that they think deeply about what they do and develop solutions to problems they face routinely. 

So, if you want an innovative workforce where continuous improvement is a way of life, you’d like your people in an alpha state as much as possible. How do you do that? Create a workplace where:

• Problems are corrected by coaching, not chastisement. 
• Employees feel their jobs are secure.
• The appraisal system emphasizes how to succeed, even prosper, and yet meet all the company’s needs.  
• Managers believe that employees aren’t the cause of problems, working with them instead to identify and correct the root causes of those problems.  
• Find ways to reward successes and educate mistakes.