RelationalProximity – Page 8

rLiving Day 12: Oily Subcontractors (Purpose/Continuity)

For a moment there, it looked like IBM had planned to reduce its employee workforce by 75% by 2017, but that turned out to be false. It would have been a great factoid for today given that I also know that Accenture planned to add 50,000 employees this year (which is true, also because I heard from their CLO). The contrasting strategies of employee vs. subcontractor between these two massive consulting companies would have been a nice little talking point.

So I’ll have to settle for BP and ExxonMobil instead.

Furious fingers are pointing at BP for that hideous gloop infecting the Gulf of Mexico right now. One jabbing finger is at the fact that BP let go ALL of its experts and engineers and entrusted subcontractors. This, according to Tom Bower, author of Oil: Money, Politics and Power in the 21st Centrury (on Here and Now– on my local National Public Radio station, WBUR this lunchtime).

Under the leadership of John Brown, who took over as CEO in the 80’s, BP went from a money-losing company to No. 2 in the world. How? “More for less!”. As Bower put it, “let’s get 100% by paying 90%”; subcontracting caused profits to skyrocket.

Relational Proximity Dimension #2 is Continuity: A relationship is formed and strengthened by the amount, frequency and span of time we are together. It includes a sense of shared history, and an anticipation of the future.

Relational Proximity Dimension #5 is Purpose/Commonality: Our sense of connectedness and relationship is greater to the degree we have things in common or share a common purpose or identity. A good relationship has a direction to it, something that is common between the members that holds it together.

This story is ostensibly about trust, but I propose that trust comes, in part, from a sense of common purpose, a sense that the parties involved have a stake in something together. Trust also comes from an expectation of future partnership. Is there enough common purpose (beyond $$) with your subcontractors, and enough shared vision and stake in the future, to enable trust, accountability and a fruitful, creative relationship?

The two main subcontractors involved in this oil spill are Transocean (responsible for the rig and drilling) and Halliburton (the cement casing). The argument appears to be what BP knew or told Halliburton about drilling depth, which makes a difference to the type of concrete used. [Did you know they’re drilling 6 miles down?!]. The argument is also increasingly turning against regulators.

Who’s watching? Interestingly, both BP and Exxonmobil use these subcontractors. A difference is that ExxonMobil retain an army of experts and engineers to ‘second-guess’ (as Bower puts it) everything Transocean and Halliburton do. As I would interpret that; they double-, triple-check everything the subcontractors do, therefore maintaining their standards and maintaining accountability. BP, however, leave the subcontractors to it. In other words, they trust them. Or you could say, the subcontractors trusted BP for the right information. And what of the regulators? Who do they trust? Who do we trust?

Comparing subcontractor relationships I’m curious to know what the relationship is like between ExxonMobil’s engineers and the subcontractor engineers, and what kind of productivity and safety performance they achieve. People scream for regulators (while they also scream for infinite freedom for themselves), but potentially there’s a perfect relationship there, working fine without the need for underpaid, under-qualified (according to Bower) regulators. A comparison between BP’s subcontractor relationships and ExxonMobil’s would be illuminating, I think: shared ownership? shared risk? not just shared profit? Similarly with continuity: is there a future-vision? Not just asking if the contract will be renewed, but do they have a creative vision for the future together?

Anger at “BP” or “Regulators” is understandable even though they’re made of people (or, People, who surely are to be trusted!?). Anger against subcontractors in general is less understandable, unless you’re a cynic. But I think a relational proximity analysis between entities involved in the creative, productive work, would be reveal more hopeful path of trust AND accountability than just blame and more external regulation.

What do you think? No, really, go on. Tell me. Don’t be shy! 🙂

rLiving Day 11: Neuroscience 1 (Directness)

It turns out, according to neuroscience research gathered together in David Rock’s popular book, Your Brain at Work, that our brains are wired for social connection.

No WAY!? I hear you thinking.

Sorry for the sarcasm. But just writing that first sentence made me realize how ‘duh!’ it is that the brain would be wired in such a way that matches how we experience life. Anyway, here’s a tidbit of the neuroscience (social cognitive neuroscience, to be precise) that appears to support “Directness”. And it’s all based on recent (since 1995) discoveries of “mirror neurons”.

Image: UCLA

Relational Proximity Dimension #1 is “Directness”. My relationship with someone is better and healthier the less mediated it is. It can be mediated by technology or other people: these reduce our ability to communicate fully. It can also be mediated, even when face to face, by dishonesty and fakeness: there’s a real me and a real you, any fronts we put up reduces directness.

It’s a pretty cool discovery actually (despite my ‘duh!’ comment). Mirror neurons, scattered throughout the brain, light up when they observe “intentional action”. That is, they won’t light up if they see random acts, but if they discern intent behind the action, the same neurons fire in their brains as though they themselves were doing it. (Effects of commercials on children, anyone?). The powerful limbic system that triggers a response to threats or rewards obviously kicks in once the intent has been discerned. Here’s the explanation from Christian Keysers, a leading mirror neuron research based in Holland:

What happens is that when we witness another’s facial expressions, we activate the same in our own motor cortex, but we also transmit this information to the insula, involved in our emotions. When I see your facial expression, I get the movement of your face, which drives the same motor response on my face, so a smile gets a smile. The motor resonance is also sent on to your own emotional centers, so you share the emotion of the person in front of you.” (p160)

Here are a couple of other quotes from the book that seem to support the idea that ‘directness’ is an important factor in building good relationships:

“The more social cures that are stripped out of communication, the greater the likelihood that the intent will be misread. “The more we can see each other, the better we can match emotional states”. (P160)

Collaboration with people you don’t know well is a threat for the brain. Perhaps, after millions of years living in small groups, the automatic response to strangers is “don’t trust them”. (p162)

An abundance of social cues makes people connect more richly, perhaps in challenging ways at times. For example, when there is an abundance of social cues, emotional information can travel swiftly between people in a type of contagion. p161

And now a few application thoughts/questions (some mine, some from the book):
1) Workplace learning. What learning performance is lost with online training? Do virtual worlds provide a close enough approximation to real-life that our brains might learn social behaviors from avatars? Is there an optimum amount of time a team needs to gather face to face to be most effective? (I’ve misplaced a piece of research MIT did on that, something to do with a ‘pulse’ (gathering, moving away to research, coming back again, pulse-like).

2) Management. Think that your attitude or stress-level has no effect on your workers? Their brains can’t help but be affected by you.

3) Communication. Precisely because we don’t want to discern another person’s reaction (and therefore trigger a reaction of our own), we resort to sending emails, or doing nothing, rather than face them.

4) Autism spectrum. It appears that mirror neurons show damage in people with autism. It also appears that therein lies a clue to a better response/treatment.

What would you add?

rLiving Day 10: Family (Relational Proximity)

The girls were playing around in bed tonight, avoiding going to their own beds. They’d had a few spats today, as most days. But they were having a laugh now and suddenly M~ (3yrs old) grabbed C~ (5yrs old) around the leg and gave her the biggest squeeze saying, “I wuv you C~!”. I’m sure tomorrow at some point they’ll be screaming again. That’s what happens in families.

Who are the people most important to you? With whom do you have the most significant relationships?

I suspect you included, perhaps exclusively, ‘family’.

Why is that? Is it just, well, because? Maybe relational proximity explains why families end up being the most significant relationships we have even if they’re not the best. Relational proximity doesn’t guarantee relational health, it provides the basis of possibility for health. Here’s a quick attempt at working through the model in the context of families. I’m going to try it as though looking back. But first here’s a quick recap of the five dimensions:

1. Directness – the degree to which the relationship is unmediated and truthful
2. Continuity – the degree to which it has a history, the parties meet regularly, and it has an expected future
3. Multiplexity – the degree to which the parties know each other through different contexts
4. Parity – the degree to which there is a symmetry in power
5. Commonality/Purpose – the degree to which they share a sense of common purpose or identity

So here’s an attempt at looking at all five with respect to the health of family relationships.

1. Directness
+ We’ve shared physical space, face to face; our real selves have been more exposed to each other (at least in the early years, but even later it’s difficult to fake it) because it’s really hard to keep up a pretense ALL the time.
– Lack of face to face time with parents or even siblings has been a grievous loss (even if we got used to it).

2. Continuity
+ We’ve seen each other daily, weekly, monthly for years and years; we have a lifetime of shared history, and an unquestioned anticipation of a future relationship until the day we die.
– Moving away to different cities or countries, while not changing the deep sense of belonging, prevents us knowing each other as we are now (so we end up regressing to our teens whenever we meet!)

3. Multiplexity
+ The number of different things we’ve done as a family, the number of contexts we’ve seen each other in, is almost uncountable. So we really, really know each other, whether we like it or not!
– We were always taken to events and other activities by other people, not our mom or dad. We only had a domestic life together – eating or chores – we never did anything else, so I never knew what they were capable of.

4. Power
+ We felt safe and protected and also respected; encouraged to try things out knowing we had a back-stop.
– We felt scared and intimidated. We loathed the pain and humiliation.

5. Commonality/Purpose
+ We all had the same last name! We had the same blood. As an adopted child I never felt anything other than their true son/brother. We didn’t exist just for ourselves, we realized that as a family we could serve others.
– I was the outsider, the black sheep. We were expected to follow the family business, as though that was more important than just being family.

I’m not sure these are the best examples. But I think it’s possible to see that you need to have all the positive elements of these five to even have a chance to loving each other.

Do these resonate with you? Do the five dimensions help explain the dynamics of your family?