Chapter 2
Getting Past the Five Myths of Employee Motivation and Performance
There is always an easy solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.
Executives and managers, in their determination to get better performance from their employees, do a lot of dumb things. At times, it seems as if efforts at organizational improvement occur more by accident than through a clear understanding and intelligent implementation of how to consistently get results. Why do organizations do such a hit-or-miss job at getting things accomplished and producing results that matter? A critical factor is the frequent misunderstanding of how to produce good performance. Much of what managers try to do is often based on simplistic or wrong assumptions about human performance and getting results.
So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.
Misunderstanding Performance: The Five Myths
We must give up the idea that competence must exist within the person and expand our view that whenever possible it should be built into the situation. What workers need to do their jobs—information, rules, and knowledge—is often spread all over the place.
The failures—and subsequent missteps to both diagnose the failures and the attempts to correct them—at the people end tend to be driven in part by chronic misunderstandings about performance. It's pretty hard to consistently get results (or diagnose and fix problems) when managers don't understand how to produce good performance in people. Instead of understanding, in fact, five misperceptions are common in most organizations—so common that they've become myths:
1. Smarter is better.
2. The right behavior is key.
3. The ends justify the means.
4. Good people mean good results.
5. Incentives are key.
Let's consider why each of these is a myth.
Myth 1: Smarter Is Better
IQ does not separate the star from the average performer. Every job has an IQ hurdle that people have to jump over, but whether you jump it and just barely clear it or whether you jump it and clear it by 30 extra points doesn't seem to make a difference. People get mistakenly fixated on IQ as a predictor of success. There is data that says that when you look at the whole IQ range from zero to 180, that the better the IQ, the better the performance, but that's because you are looking at a wide range of people. Once you get into a certain profession, that's where the theory falls apart. Within professions—where you are talking about people who already have at least average, and more than likely above average IQs to start with—then IQ seems not to play a role.
People in most organizations tend to believe that smarter employees make a better organization. As a result, organizations often do things like measure how many hours of training the average employee gets per year (with an increase in that average being perceived as a good thing) or provide tuition reimbursement programs so that workers can take college courses. To be fair, some of these programs are really more about rewarding people. But many programs don't even restrict what degree program or courses a person can take. In addition to for-credit courses, there are plenty of corporate open enrollment programs where attendees sign up for courses they find interesting (even if there is no connection to their job responsibilities).
The basic premise behind such efforts is that smarter people lead to a better, more productive organization. It's hard to argue with the premise that it's better to have smart people than dumb people working for your organization. And an organization can often achieve competitive success because of very small margins, so a business that has a smarter executive or a better-trained workforce would seem to have that edge. But there are fundamental problems with this premise.
For one thing, too many organizations have simply equated knowledge with performance—if Jack is smarter than Jill, then Jack will outperform Jill. This assumption is wrong. Chris Argyris (1990) has coined the phrase “learned incompetence” to refer to instances where individuals and especially organizations acquire coping mechanisms that effectively result in stupid decisions—despite the collective intelligence or learning levels of the organization's members. This is a critical point: The overall intelligence level of an organization is not a function of the intelligence of the individuals employed there. Businesses with many well-trained and highly educated people are capable and often guilty of very poor analysis and decision making.
Others (for example, Janis 1972) have pointed out how very intelligent individuals or organizations are still capable of very poor and consistently myopic performance. Simply put, being smarter, better trained, or more skilled is usually not a bad thing—but it is rarely the solution to getting better results.
Furthermore, there are plenty of examples of organizations that have had workforces of first-class intellects with outstanding credentials (such as a number of investment firms with employees boasting MBAs from top-10 schools—thus, lots of smart individuals), yet the collective intelligence of the business hasn't apparently matched that of the individual talent. To put this another way, collecting smart individuals doesn't result in a collectively smarter business. And hiring smarter people can actually become a negative for the organization if the assumption is that smarter individuals are sufficient for a smart business—good recruiting can create false confidence and discourage the firm from building the processes and institutional elements that produce wise actions.
Thomas Gilbert (1978) identified what he called the “Cult of Knowledge.” In this instance, organizations become guilty of treating knowledge as if it is an end in and of itself. This is an important distinction. Businesses that typically claim to value brighter or more highly skilled personnel often treat this factor as if their final goal was more knowledgeable people. The stated goal is that being smart is the desired end state, when the reality is that the real target is probably unclear and unstated—but one that assumes that if people are smarter, having to rework things will go down or sales will go up. There are very few businesses (schools and some research firms are probably the exceptions) where it is realistic to argue that having smarter or more skilled employees is the desired result—nothing further is expected other than being knowledgeable or skilled.
Again, the point here is not that investing in learning or knowledge is a bad thing. But unless this is a tactic aimed at addressing a specific organizational problem (such as an inability to execute a specific sales program because the sales force lacks a particular skill), the generic process of getting smarter people is as likely to help the organization as having better work stations. Smarter or more skilled people may be a means to an end, but they are rarely a meaningful end for most organizations. And if “smarter and more skilled” is the means, it isn't generic but rather a focused initiative to deal with specific knowledge or skills gaps that prevent the execution of a particular program.
Myth 2: The Right Behavior Is Key
A bad manager confuses activity with performance.
A tremendous amount of literature and many management fads focus on how employees behave. The basic thesis is that if a company can get people who have particular skills or behave a certain way, then success is assured. This belief is incredibly widespread in most organizations.
If you doubt this last statement, then go look at the standard evaluation or appraisal form your employer uses. What you'll almost certainly see is a form that assesses someone's worth on the basis of how they behave. Showing teamwork, communicating well, working hard, strengths and weaknesses—all these are widespread appraisal categories for many firms. All evaluate behavior (or attributes and traits—not quite the same as someone's actions, but clearly an effort to judge how someone will behave). And if you feel that performance appraisals aren't a fair standard, then go look at a few résumés. Odds are that the ones you look at will describe behavior such as “manages projects, directs staff, writes budget analyses,” and so on.
What's wrong with focusing on behavior? Behavior is certainly a critical aspect that contributes to individual and organizational results. The problem is that too many executives and managers treat employee behavior—much like knowledge—almost as if it is the desired end result. But only very rarely is a specific behavior the desired result for an organization. Instead, the behavior usually matters because it helps produce a specific result or output by the employee. And this result or output—which is what's really important—tends to get lost when organizations focus first on behavior.
There are several reasons why this is true. For starters, employees can do most of the “right behavior” and still not accomplish what is important. And by focusing on behavior, managers fall victim to the assumption that there is only one right way to do a particular job. Instead, as work evolves to require more decision making and mental thought, there is also more variability in how the job can be done effectively. Even relatively unskilled blue-collar or service work is increasingly more demanding of employees and their ability to make decisions or judgments on the job. Thus, it is becoming harder to accurately and fairly dictate how an employee must do a particular task to produce a particular result.
Try not. Do or not do. There is no try.
Finally, one of the basic traits of organizations that fail at execution is their focus on behavior. Execution involves getting things done or producing results. A focus on behavior deemphasizes the focus on results. Managers may “try” and employees may “work hard,” but these are not the same things as accomplishing what they set out to do.
Gilbert (1978) labeled this the “Cult of Behavior” because of its overemphasis on how people act or what they do rather than its focus on the results they produce or their accomplishments. Dwelling on behavior is an organizational culture component that tends to retard results by emphasizing activity rather than accomplishments. Now this is not to say that behavior is unimportant. The behavior that employees exhibit can (but not always) contribute to their success. But it is critical to remember that to focus primarily on how employees act is to lose sight of what they produce and how successfully they perform. It makes far more sense to focus on what matters—what employees are expected to produce, and whether or not they execute effectively—rather than their behavior.
Myth 3: The Ends Justify the Means
Almost the antithesis of the Cult of Behavior is the management school that believes that good execution involves doing whatever it takes to get results. This is somewhat akin philosophically to the infamous Leo Durocher quotation “Nice guys finish last.” The assumptions behind this approach basically center on the belief that executives and managers who are good at getting results will do whatever is necessary to get those results—even if it means being tough or perhaps crossing a few ethical boundaries. This is sometimes used to justify behavior excesses or problems (abuse of staff, ethical lapses, failures to perform in other areas) by arguing that to “get good sales” or “hit the numbers,” the organization must tolerate poor performance in other areas that would otherwise be considered unacceptable.
The problem with the assumptions behind this approach is that, ironically, it's a very naive understanding of performance and getting results. The first point is that the distinction between ends and means is often a false once. In other words, it's often not possible to draw a line between the result and the method used to get the result because the means is the end. For some people, how they do the job (the means or the process) may be their critical accomplishment.
Here's an example to clarify this point. For a CFO, one overall expected accomplishment would be books that have been balanced using generally accepted accounting principles. Any sharp accountant can produce financial records that balance—the challenge for a good CFO is to do so but by using these professional principles. Thus, the means (using generally accepted accounting principles) is part of the end (or desired result) for this particular performer. This is not an atypical example. In many jobs, how someone does the work is the standard for the success of the person's performance. As a result, a manager or an organization that claims that the ends justify the means not only doesn't understand how to get results but probably has a poor record achieving consistent and long-term objectives.
In addition, too many executives who claim that the ends justify the means end up cutting corners or managing in ways that produce short-term results at best and have long-term negative consequences. This is a great example of the “fixes that fail” issue mentioned in chapter 1—where short-term fixes (expedient behavior, driving employees harder) may produce quick results but have negative long-term effects (employee burnout and turnover, distrust of management, failure to grow organizational capacity, and worse performance).
Ironically, although this approach to managing (the ends justify the means, or nice guys finish last) seems to imply that it's all about results, it's not. Organizations that manifest this approach are actually falling victim to Gilbert's Cult of Behavior, because they are espousing a philosophy of how to treat people to get performance that implies that being rough, making threats, cutting corners, or being a hard person are elements of what succeeds. Perversely, however, this is just another case of emphasizing behavior, with the belief that if one behaves this way, then the desired results will automatically follow. Thus, it's not just an effort at expediency but also a belief about how to get people to produce and what gets them to function best. It's an overly simplistic approach to getting results that ignores the sophistication within both people and modern organizations.
This approach of cutting corners or behaving ruthlessly to get things done is also rarely effective beyond the short term—if that far. An organization that legitimizes such behavior produces abusive managers and burned-out employees, which of course are ultimately counterproductive to good performance. And even in the short term, this approach tends to produce a brutish implementation of initiatives that are often wasteful and imprecise, as things tend to be done in a hurry and whatever is expedient is considered justified. But because those who use this approach believe that the ends and means are distinct and different, they are ultimately incapable of producing consistently because they cannot deal with ends (or results) that have process elements.
Myth 4: Good People Mean Good Results
The best evidence indicates that natural talent is overrated, especially for sustaining organizational performance.
Somewhat similar to Gilbert's Cult of Knowledge, there is a strong movement that argues that if an organization recruits or hires good people, then that organization will be successful. It therefore follows that the organizations that perform the best are the ones that do the best job of attracting talent—especially people talented at getting results. The assumption behind this approach is that a collection of talented individuals will usually perform collectively to that level and thus produce a successful organization. “The War for Talent” (Fishman 1998) probably epitomizes that position as well as any source or advocate. According to one of the coauthors of the original McKinsey & Company study of this “war,” Ed Michaels, “All that matters is talent. Talent wins.”
Many of the flaws inherent in the Cult of Knowledge are applicable to this approach as well. There are many examples of organizations with numerous talented individuals who, despite their individual talents, appeared to be organizationally inept or performed poorly. Organizations can do a great job recruiting talent but fail to provide the processes and resources that would allow that talent to flourish. And talent does not ensure good performance (and in some ways may work against it). There are certainly many examples of organizations with less individual talent that out-execute their more talent-rich competition. Finally, good talent is at the mercy of a host of organizational issues such as culture, internal systems, and alignment (so people don't work at cross purposes). As the performance consultant Geary Rummler wisely observed, “Pit a good person against a bad process and the bad process will win nearly every time.”
None of this means that organizations shouldn't seek to hire and retain talented people. But it's important to note that having talented people not only does not guarantee success; it isn't even the most important factor in getting good results. There are simply too many organizational variables for performer talent to be capable of driving performance.
Another version of this philosophy of organizational success is the belief that most work is done by star performers. This is a variation on the Pareto Principle—an argument that 80 percent of the work is produced by 20 percent of the people. As this particular approach to managing people goes, the key to organizational success is not only to attract and keep talented performers; it's critical to get the top of the heap—the very best talent. What is usually part of this belief is that talent tends to be innate, that some performers in their respective endeavor just have God-given talent that others can never hope to achieve.
Organizations that follow this approach tend to be based on a star system. The stars receive different compensation and treatment. There is a tendency to believe that because a star performer is a unique personality, management has to tolerate eccentricities or differences. Thus, star employees are given a longer leash than the rest of the staff, and actions that would be grounds for dismissal with others are more likely to be tolerated or forgiven when a star is involved.
Those managers who use this star system are guilty of all the assumptions pointed out above about the Cult of Knowledge. Putting good people together doesn't mean getting good results. The dynamics of a successful, well-performing organization are driven by much more than individual talent. But this star system also is uninformed about how outstanding performers develop. Research on a diverse range of professions and circumstances now shows that innate talent is mostly a myth. Instead, outstanding performers (including apparent child prodigies like Mozart or great athletes like Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan) are primarily a function of their practice habits (Ericsson 2006).
More specifically, talent is shaped and developed through practice and work—in particular something called directed or deliberate practice, in which there are specific goals for each practice. Natural talent or aptitude appears to have little impact on ultimate success, and there appear to be very few individual limiting factors that preclude the possibility of becoming talented at something. As Anders Ericsson (2006) notes, “The traditional assumption is that people come into a professional domain, have similar experiences, and the only thing that's different is their innate abilities.
There's little evidence to support this. With the exception of some sports, no characteristic of the brain or body constrains an individual from reaching an expert level.”
The important insight from Ericsson's research is that it's dated to believe that great performers are innately talented and that outstanding performance can't be grown or developed. It is just as wrong to operate on the belief that because talent is so rare, organizations need to tolerate behavioral excesses by their best performers (such as a creative researcher who abuses staff, an executive who's a screamer, or a leading sales rep who cuts ethical corners) because having talent means also having some excesses that must be tolerated as part of the talent package.
Myth 5: Incentives Are Key
A widely held belief by many boards and executives is that compensation is critical to performance. This had partially contributed to a wide range of “pay for performance” systems across diverse industries. It has been used as partial justification for better pay for executives, better compensation systems for managers or salary levels for performers. Yet increasingly, data seems to disprove this approach (Pfeffer and Sutton 2006). The noted business consultant Jim Collins (2001), the author of “Good to Great,” concluded that “what our research showed us, is that how much you paid the managers and executives in the good to great companies, and how you paid them, whether it be stock options, bonuses, or any of that, had virtually no explanatory power as to whether the companies performed well or not” (Audio Education Inc. 2007). There can be many appropriate reasons for boosting pay or increasing incentives but generating better results doesn't seem to correlate strongly with these strategies.
The Fallacy of the Answer
There is no simplistic approach to worthwhile achievement in human affairs.
—William Hastie, civil rights leader
A whole host of organizations, executives, and managers believe that the key to success is dependent upon one specific skill or action and that if only they could find out what it is, they'd be able to solve what ails the business. Just looking through the list of best-selling business books will show that many of them push one particular answer that is supposed to be the solution for whatever ails an organization. Consultants and authors push these quick fixes, and organizations jump on them for many reasons. Partially it's because they appear to be quick, simple, and straightforward. Partially it's because some of these clients are eager to see results now. Partially it's because of a desire to believe that the organization's problems are due to just one factor—and somewhere out there is a magic bullet that will provide the solution.
Perhaps the classic case of this syndrome is the business process reengineering (BPR) craze that hit organizations back in the 1980s. Even the BPR expert and coauthor Michael Hammer admits that most BPR efforts didn't meet their goals and that the failure rate was 70 percent (Pfeffer and Sutton 2006). A more recent example is the best-selling book (and now popular DVD) The Secret, which argues that success is driven by a positive attitude.
When the solution is simple, God is answering.
If you look hard enough, you'll find consultants, books, or organizational improvement movements that argue that they've got the magic bullet to get better execution and increase performance. Examples range from communication skills to the customer is always right to specific leadership styles to managing by walking around. A plethora of widely diverse approaches share the commonality of how a quick fix is possible or why a simple approach will cure a host of evils—the performance equivalent of penicillin.
Each evangelist is quite sure that his own patent medicine cures everything.
Unfortunately, organizations don't work that way. Businesses are systems. This means that they're complex, with multiple levels that interact to reinforce each other (Rummler and Brache 1995). It means that diagnosing what is broken usually isn't easy (although it usually isn't rocket science either). And it also means that fixes for the performance issues require systemic rather than simplistic answers. Quick fixes and magic bullets rarely work, because the system tends to adjust to the change and ultimately overwhelms it.
You're probably wondering why some of the approaches advocated by this book in subsequent chapters don't also fall victim to this trip of a mythical magic bullet. The distinction is in being part of a system. That's because this book advocates approaches that are interrelated and interdependent, both in analyzing how to improve performance and then in designing and implementing solutions. The recommendations in this book recognize that building and sustaining performance isn't quick, that it isn't simple, and that the solutions with the most impact vary from business to business. They aren't presented as quick fixes or simple solutions, and they're designed as a systemic approach to performance issues.
System problems require system solutions.
In a complex world, all problems are system problems.
Many magic bullets also fail because others who copy them focus on the gimmick rather than the principle behind it. Jack Stack of SRC developed what he called the Great Game of Business, in which all staff (including the janitors) would learn how to read the corporate financial reports and then have a meeting every month to discuss business performance. Other companies have decided to send employees to accounting or financial classes and then review corporate spreadsheets—with mixed results at best. The problem was that SRC was successful not because of the training and game but because this organization focused on measuring progress, created an atmosphere where people knew how everyone was doing, and got everyone aligned on priorities. There are lots of ways to do this—the principles are much more important that the tactics. But organizations who adopted the trappings without the principles and the deeper changes would fail.
In a more recent example, Marcus Buckingham looked at how this could be both a trap and an opportunity:
Ralph (Gonzalez) is a store manager who was charged with resurrecting a troubled Best Buy in Hialeah, Florida. He immediately named the store the Revolution, drafted a Declaration of Revolution, and launched project teams, complete with army fatigues. He posted detailed performance numbers in the break room and deliberately over-celebrated every small achievement. To drive home the point that excellence is ubiquitous, he gave every employee a whistle and told them to blow it loudly whenever they “caught” anybody—whether coworker or supervisor—doing something “revolutionary.” Today, the whistles drown out the store's soundtrack, and, by any metric—sales growth, profit growth, customer satisfaction, employee retention—the Hialeah store is one of Best Buy's best. But here's what really impressed me. Most companies would take a best practice like Ralph's whistle and say, “That's a great form of recognition. Let's give out whistles in every store.” Best Buy did something much smarter: It extracted and spread the core lesson from Ralph's best practice, rather than institutionalizing the practice itself. (quoted by LaBarre 2001, 90)
In Buckingham's example, the Best Buy managers succeeded because they did not view this as a quick fix or focus on the instant solution. They recognized that it wasn't the whistles (or the catchy name) but instead much deeper, systemwide changes that led to Ralph Gonzalez's successful efforts at the store. Unfortunately, this isn't the approach many leaders take. As a result, a host of very reasonable ideas get imposed blindly on organizations, regardless of the degree of fit or the execution issues. If you think about the initial example of Steve in chapter 1, you can probably think of many other organizations with similar approaches—initiatives with little staying power and ultimately little or no success.
Performance Solutions Notebook
Here's an example of getting performance wrong. Health-care-acquired infections (HAIs) provide plentiful examples where organizations and practitioners have demonstrated a misunderstanding of human performance in ways that have not only failed to mitigate the problem but in some cases have even worsened it. Infections are the classic case of a “magic bullet” approach. For centuries, through ignorance, arrogance, or impractical approaches, health care practitioners have ignored the role that providers played in spreading infection (Gawande 2007). Up to a quarter of all women giving birth in Western hospitals in the 17th through 19th centuries died of puerperal fever—which was spread by unhygienic doctors and nurses (Lentini and Mouzon 2007). Within the medical profession, initial advocates of hand washing were met with disdain or contempt by their peers, who refused to believe that those taught to make people better were potentially making them sicker (Gawande 2007).
The health care field has tried to develop antibiotics as the primary means of addressing infections—to seek a magic bullet rather than focus on performer behavior. At one point, this led to a widespread practice of overmedicating with antibiotics. The result was to make the problem worse (Gawande 2007). The development and rising infection rate of MRSA (methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus)—staph infections that are resistant to most forms of antibiotics—is a direct result of a failure to understand how human actions contribute to infections as well as a simplistic approach to this problem. In fact, the reliance on a magic bullet—antibiotics—seems almost as if it is an attempt to ignore the role of humans, a belief that the right drug will undo or overcome any human performance issues that contribute to the problem.
Finally, many organizational approaches to HAIs have failed to acknowledge the realities of the work environment or human nature and have therefore been unrealistic in their assumptions of human nature. As Dr. Robert Weinstein noted, “At the root of the resistance problem are health-care workers, who, although generally willing to do the right thing to control antimicrobial-drug resistance, undervalue the problem, do not know what the ‘right thing’ is, or need an easier way to do it” (Weinstein 2001, 188).
One common element of many HAI initiatives is to encourage hand washing among medical staff. Yet such programs often fail to take into account how challenging it is to do this and achieve high rates of compliance (Gawande 2007). Because this is both such a change from routine as well as so time consuming, it is very difficult to get medical professionals to wash their hands dozens or even hundreds of times every day (Brennan 2006). Yet many initiatives fail to understand human nature—they often assume that a memo and official policy is sufficient to get compliance or perhaps some internal enforcement police. Peter Perreiah, who headed up a short-term success HAI project with the Pittsburgh Regional Healthcare Initiative, noted that some practitioners responded with “I'll go back to doing what I was doing when you turn away” (quoted by Brennan 2006, 68).
Such efforts don't realize that unless sanitizing stations are ubiquitous and reminders are constant, old habits will return and staff will cut corners. As a result, most health care facilities have undertaken HAI programs and most have failed to achieve significant compliance (Gawande 2007). This is despite the fact that some Western countries have HAI infection rates of nearly zero and that some facilities in the West—even in countries with comparatively high infection rates—have achieved nearly zero infection rates (Berwick and Leape 2006).
One reason that this problem of HAIs has gotten worse is that many medical professionals fail to understand HAIs (and what contributes to a lower infection rate) as a performance problem rather than a patient condition. Dr. Scott Geller argues that health care professionals generally fail to see how human performance contributes to HAIs: “When we understand human behavior and why we do what we do, we can pinpoint critical actions and safety checks before we act. Then we can make the right choices and act to prevent errors” (quoted by Brennan 2006, 67). Most HAI initiatives are good examples of a failure to understand human performance—both in terms of how humans drive the HAI problem and in terms of how to get human performers to successfully implement HAI countermeasures.
Hitting the Mark
Organizations often goof up when it comes to understanding people issues and determining the correct response. To truly understand work and how to get good results, managers need to get past simplistic “one theory fits all” approach to dealing with people:
• Specifically, hiring lots of smart people isn't a prescription for success. Being smarter usually doesn't mean being better at the job. Workers just need to be smart enough. Organizations can build in information or memory to the work via job aids or performance support systems.
• Focusing on behavior is a mistake. Behavior does matter, but it's almost never the end result and it's a deceptive predictor of performance. Instead, smart managers focus on accomplishments in evaluating work and distinguishing between good performers and mediocre ones.
• Don't confuse ends and means as if they were always distinct and different. Sometimes how the work is done is the end result. Management has done a poor job defining work measures if it's possible to hear someone say “He met all his goals but he's a poor performer.”
• Hiring good people isn't the answer. It's better to have good, talented people than weak ones. But systems and processes matter more to success than the caliber of employees. Good people do not automatically mean a good organization. To produce good performance, management needs to also pay attention to systems issues. Focusing solely on the quality of the people (through hiring or training) will usually result in failure.
• It's not all about the money. Simplistic theories about incentives rarely are borne out long term. People are individuals. Motivation and incentive schemes need to recognize that what drives Jane may be a irrelevant to John. Furthermore, the belief that if only all the employees were motivated then the company would do well is naive and ignores the multiple factors that go into producing good results in an organization.
• System problems require system solutions. It's rarely workable to seek a quick fix or one simple answer, because such an approach ignores how the system interacts to create the problem and also fails to produce a systemic solution and implementation. Smart executives don't seek simplistic answers. Rather than seeking one culprit, they understand how the parts of the organization contribute to the problem, and they produce solutions that engage the entire system.
It does not happen all at once. There is no instant pudding.
If a quick fix is successful, it's almost always because it's a specific fit to the particular issue and specific organization. In those instances (unless a lot of luck is involved), you will likely see some in-depth analysis beforehand (reflecting a good understanding of the reality of the organization), a solution that fits the business well, a number of internal changes going on that complement the new initiative, and a well-thought-out and systemic effort to implement the fix effectively.
The search for the one quick fix is a universal human failing.
Generic, off-the-shelf initiatives are usually more destructive than they are curative. There is value in considering new options and being open to innovative approaches or new ways of doing things. However, problems arise when leaders look for instant solutions, fail to understand the factors that influence performance, and don't adapt new ideas to the reality of their organizational culture. Fortunately, there are effective ways to build in execution and performance within the workforce—as we'll see in the chapters to come. Effective and consistent execution and workforce performance doesn't come from a Band-Aid approach. Instead, it involves a system and culture that takes a coherent approach to getting results. Quick fixes almost never fit within the system and usually end up being subsumed by the existing organizational culture.