Freedom, Inc_ - Brian M. Carney [29]
This experiment has been described, with minor variations, in hundreds of books and thousands of presentations. It may well be apocryphal. But whether those five macaques ever got the hose or not, audiences love the story because they instantly recognize the phenomenon it describes.
Indeed, this story suggests a plausible explanation for our earlier quandary—how a senseless and even damaging order of things can persist for so long. Giving a “cold shower” to those who attempt to take the initiative can have long-lasting effects. People learn from the harsh treatment that results from their “banana mistake” and then act strenuously to prevent others from trying to do the same. This is the way that corporate cultures are born, sustained—and eventually quash all attempts at change.
For many people, negative reinforcement from managers is a daily experience that broadly discourages taking the initiative, which, ironically, is precisely the sort of thing that a well-run company should hope its entrepreneurial people would do in order to retain a client, solve a problem, or deal with an internal conflict. Just one person in a group receiving negative reinforcement when attempting to show initiative may be sufficient to convince others that they themselves shouldn’t show initiative. Moreover, it also encourages them to prevent others from making the same “mistake.” Here is a sample of familiar yet “mistaken” initiatives an employee may prevent others from attempting:
agreeing to reimburse an unhappy client during his first call about an issue (one is supposed to seek authorization first);
immediately leaving to visit a client who has a problem with the company’s product (same “mistake”);
spending a small amount of one’s own money to solve a problem and asking for reimbursement later (same “mistake”);
holding one-on-one discussions with all concerned colleagues about a major problem (one is supposed to write a memo and call a meeting);
directly reaching out to a concerned colleague (instead of going through “channels”);
publicly giving bad news to everyone (bad news is for management only); or
communicating lavishly but only orally (one is supposed to keep written track of everything).
Depressingly enough, the odds are that you recognize at least some of these transgressions from your own experience and could even add to the list yourself. For the cold-showered employee, getting authorizations, keeping written track of internal discussions, following the policies—how the job is done—has become more important than why the job needs to be done or what you are trying to achieve. What’s more, a freedom-discouraging environment does not even have to be installed by the top guy—one employee in a small group is all it takes to turn the people around him into a bunch of “banana-fearing monkeys.”
For this reason, the odds of bureaucratization increase the longer a business—even a small one—has been around. A company that starts out with a strongly entrepreneurial culture will inevitably hit a rough patch, at which point someone will decide that it’s time to bring in some “real managers” to get the situation “under control.” Because control is their mandate and because their experience—which qualifies them as “real managers”—has not prepared them to deal with a liberated company or its uppity people, freedom is usually the first thing to go. “What this company needs is some discipline!”—read: procedures and policies. And the larger a company grows and the longer it’s been around, the greater the danger of being infected