Aubrey Daniels
Some years ago I had the benefit of attending a professional development class at the Kennedy School of Government. Surrounded primarily by non-profit and big government types, I listened to the dulcet tones of Aubrey Daniels as he put forth a comprehensive paradigm for managing people based on some very simple precepts that were very appealing to the engineer in me.
Aubrey’s take on management is based on behavioral science, the description of the Antecedent-Behavior-Consequence (ABC) model, and the description of reinforcement under the Rplus model. Simply put (perhaps too simply) an antecedent is anything that happens to make a behavior occur the first time. The behavior is the individual’s response to the antecedent. The consequence is the system’s response to the behavior. A positive consequence (or reinforcement) is any consequence that causes the behavior to repeat. A negative consequence is any consequence that causes a behavior to not repeat.
The key insight for me was around unintended consequences. What matters about any reinforcement is not what I think about it, it’s how the recipient reacts. As an example, I used to think public acknowledgement for good performance was a good thing. It turns out that one of my staff basically felt humiliated when acknowledged publicly, and preferred cash. By the same token, money is not a universal positive reinforcement, which explains why profit-sharing programs don’t have the results one would expect.
PositiveWare was built with positive reinforcement in mind, because it is only when behaviors are understood and tracked that an environment for positive reinforcement can be created.
Anyone interested in the topic would be well served by a read of Performance Management by Aubrey Daniels.
