Organizational Behavior Management - An introduction (OBM)

Joost KerkhofsRobert den Broeder

• Publisher: Van Haren Publishing
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9789401807098
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book is about achieving behavioral change in organizations. It provides a specific, practically applicable answer to the 'how' question of behavioral change, based on scientifically validated principles. This distinguishes this book from many other management books. Organizational Behavior Management, or OBM for short, is the field that deals with behavioral change in organizations. Some prefer to speak of 'targeted behavioral influence'.
OBM is not about changing people, nor is it about manipulating people. It is about changing the environment in which people behave. The goal is to create working conditions that inspire and motivate people to deliver peak performance. Leaders play an important facilitating role in creating and maintaining such working conditions. Applying OBM principles properly makes people happy to perform well every day. That's fun for everyone; it creates an absolute 'win-win situation'. People exhibit, or display observable behavior all day long. Sometimes people emit outright unwanted behavior. Others just don't do what we agreed upon, or don't do what they learned in training. Many organizations suffer from clumsy, unwanted, or even dysfunctional behavior in the workplace. For example in the form of 'pocket veto' and 'saying yes, meaning no', victim behavior, avoidance behavior or escape behavior.
Analyzing observable behavior, for example, answers the following questions:
•"Why are we now specifically emitting this behavior and not other behavior?"
•"How do you get people to want to behave differently?" This book gives answers to these questions and provides executives and other influencers with a solid and evidence-based approach for dealing with behavioral, performance and motivational issues.

1 Introduction

This book is about achieving behavioral change in organizations. We jokingly call this ‘the best kept management secret’. This book provides a specific, practically applicable answer to the ‘how’ question of behavioral change, based on scientifically validated principles. This distinguishes this book from many other management books.

Organizational Behavior Management, or OBM for short, is the field that deals with behavioral change in organizations. Some prefer to speak of ‘targeted behavioral influence’.

OBM is not about changing people, nor is it about manipulating people. It is about changing the environment in which people behave. The goal is to create working conditions that inspire and motivate people to deliver peak performance. Leaders play an important facilitating role in creating and maintaining such working conditions. Paul Gavoni¹ refers to behavioral science as: “the science of helping others”. Applying OBM principles properly makes people happy to perform well every day. That’s fun for everyone; it creates an absolute ‘win-win situation’.

Observable behavior is said to be ‘ emitted’

People exhibit, or display observable behavior all day long. Observable behavior is said to be ‘emitted’. We intentionally use the word ‘emit’ in this book, simply because it is the correct term, and the term can be used in combination with both verbal and non-verbal observable behavior.

Sometimes people emit outright unwanted behavior. Others just don’t do what we agreed upon, or don’t do what they learned in training. Many organizations suffer from clumsy, unwanted, or even dysfunctional behavior in the workplace. For example in the form of ‘pocket veto²’ and ‘saying yes, meaning no’, victim behavior, avoidance behavior or escape behavior.

At management levels, we see, for example, ‘garbage-can decision-making³’ and spreadsheet management with a strong focus on meeting the targets. Not infrequently, this is combined with an extremely directive management style. The sad thing is that such a way of managing in the workplace leads to rapidly decreasing motivation, increased stress, all kinds of deprivation, reduced involvement, decreased engagement and increased turnover and absenteeism.

We can analyze observable⁴ behavior. For this, we use the ABC model, about which more later. In the ABC model, the A stands for Antecedents. An antecedent is everything that precedes and prompts behavior. B stands for Behavior. C stands for Consequences, everything that follows behavior.

The function of an antecedent is to prompt people to act. In other words: it sets the occasion, or the stage for behavior. Scientific research clearly shows that antecedents can trigger behavior, but are seldom strong enough to maintain desired behavior over time. Our brain makes future behavior mainly dependent on the consequences of our current behavior! We think these consequences are more important than, for example, what others say to us. B.F. Skinner put it this way: “behavior is a function of its consequences”.

Analyzing observable behavior, for example, answers the following questions:

◾ “Why are we now specifically emitting this behavior and not other behavior?”

◾ “How do you get people to want to behave differently?”

This book gives answers to these questions and provides executives and other influencers with a solid and evidence-based approach for dealing with behavioral, performance and motivational issues.

1.1 The role of working conditions in performance issues

Working conditions can motivate and inspire people, but can also seriously demotivate them. Some of your colleagues go to work every day with a feeling in the pit in their stomach. Not because their work is tedious or boring, but because their working conditions consume all their energy. Going to work is a challenge that these people dread taking on every day. Working for long periods under energy-draining working conditions is no fun for anyone. In fact, it makes us ill.

People who are reluctant to work will perform at minimum levels. Managers and other influencers notice this and, from their role or function, use their power and authority to try to boost performance. Frequently their efforts produce a lot of hassle and have little success as a result.

Restoring motivation and job satisfaction and thus improving job performance is a journey full of pitfalls and seemingly unexpected twists. If, after a number of management interventions, it appears that the performance level of an employee is still below par, it is not uncommon to start a process in which both parties eventually part ways. A ‘lose-lose situation’ for everyone involved.

Research by the real estate organization CB Richard Ellis (CBRE) and the University of Twente⁵ clearly demonstrates that a healthy office contributes to happier and more productive employees. People are usually perfectly capable of adapting to changes in the physical environment. Consider, for example, relocating within a building, or to another building, or switching to another employer. Sometimes it takes a while to get used to different sounds, different acoustics and colors and a different room layout. People who are unexpectedly confronted with such changes in their familiar environment may be emotionally affected. The process of getting used to and adapting to a new or changed environment is called ‘adaptation⁶’. Adaptation, generally speaking, is temporarily at the expense of performance.

The social conditions in which people perform are very important. The interaction with colleagues and leaders at work directly influences well-being and, therefore, directly and indirectly affects people’s performance levels and motivation. Social circumstances are about matters such as:

◾ How do we interact?

◾ How do we communicate with each other?

◾ Do we really recognize and accept each other sufficiently?

In this context we often speak of ‘social and psychological safety’. Lack of psychological safety undermines confidence, respect and trust. Without confidence, respect and trust it is difficult to become a good team⁷. Without confidence, respect and trust, it is difficult to perform well as an individual, team or organization.

How do you build respect and trust? We want to answer that question too. It is common knowledge that leaders play a vital role in the process of cultivating and maintaining respect, trust and psychological safety. Their leadership style, feedback (or lack thereof!), in short, their leadership behavior, is the key to improved performance, and to more inspired and motivated employees. Often performance improvement of an individual or a team starts with a different style of leadership!

1.2 Organizations are constantly changing, and with varying degrees of success

Organizations are constantly changing. We distinguish between ‘organic changes’ and ‘planned changes’. The organic changes occur naturally and spontaneously: new people come in, people change places, roles and positions, people leave the organization. Other examples of such organic changes are adjustments and improvements in working methods that we implement almost unnoticed. Simply because it is possible and because the new way works better, simpler, or easier.

Planned changes are the focus of organizational change management. Much has been published about organizational change management. There are very thorough training courses and it is an attractive field for many people to work in. There is a great need for the successful implementation of planned organizational changes. C...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Colophon
• Contents
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Organizational Behavior Management (OBM)
• 3 Performance: result and behavior in a context
• 4 Behavior
• 5 Additional concepts and approaches related to behavior
• 6 The four functions of behavior
• 7 The ABC model of operant conditioning
• 8 Three pitfalls for leaders during behavioral interventions
• 9 The parakeet exercise: how do we create passionate employees?
• 10 The OBM protocol, an overview
• 11 Closing remarks
• Appendix 1 - Topics overview online learning environment ‘Knowingo’
• Appendix 2 - Case study – Safety in an industrial environment
• Appendix 3 - The non-behavior checklist
• Appendix 4 - About the authors
• Appendix 5 - The OBM Foundation training
• Literature