When Solutions Become Distractions

Every once in a while, I have one of those annoying dreams in which either I am lost or I have lost something (coat, phone, keys, wallet, luggage, passport, password, tickets, directions, dog, etc.) and no matter what I do in the dream the situation keeps getting worse. The dreams are unsettling enough, but according to DreamStop they also might signify I have lost out on one or more real opportunities during my waking life. Ouch! Then a few nights ago I dreamt I was in a hotel room trying to pack my bags to come home but I couldn’t fit everything into my luggage because I kept finding things in the room that I had lost in prior dreams. I need to visit that hotel.

Back in 1919, when Walter Chrysler left General Motors, he was involved in a bitter disagreement with GM founder Billy Durant over Durant’s operating priorities, his management style, and what Chrysler viewed as his refusal to recognize untapped opportunities to control costs and improve efficiency. Chrysler was later quoted as saying:

“The reason so many people never get anywhere in life is because when opportunity knocks, they are out in the backyard looking for four-leaf clovers.”

I thought of Chrysler’s four-leaf clovers recently after speaking with an insurance executive friend about his claims operation. He told me he was under pressure to demonstrate improvement in his results, and he had concluded that some sort of clever, disruptive solution might be just what he needed to relieve the pressure and demonstrate his commitment to innovation. He didn’t have anything particular in mind, although he had read about insurtech, and artificial intelligence, and digitalization and they all sounded promising to him. What did I think?

Not all of us perceive opportunities in the same way, of course, and I'm grateful for that since much of my work the past few years has involved helping claims executives recognize problems and identify opportunities. Sometimes it's useful for an executive to kick things around with someone who might bring a different perspective. Not always, though, and I knew after this conversation, that my friend was ready to move into solution-mode without first analyzing the problems he needed to solve. That's not usually a formula for success.

So I suggested that he back up and focus on identifying the operating problems (and root causes) that were dragging down his results before he began to evaluate solutions. What kind of improvement in his results was necessary? Did he have a problem with claim cycle time, closing ratio, customer responsiveness, decision making, productivity, expense control, loss cost management, staff turnover, workloads, quality, or something else? What had to change? What was his timeline? How would he measure success? He became so quiet I thought we had been disconnected, but it turned out he was just disappointed with my advice. He wanted to deploy “cutting-edge” solutions, not slog through an endless, boring analysis of problems, root causes, and the cost/benefit of potential fixes. He wanted the instant gratification that comes from an immediate solution, and why not? Who doesn’t want to be known as a “solution-oriented” leader?

Well, solutions are wonderful, but only when they directly target the problem or opportunity at hand. If they don’t, even though they might seem interesting or promising, they are distractions. Like Chrysler’s four-leaf clovers, they can cause us to miss out on opportunities, and that’s not a good thing in the work world, as writer Adam Hochschild so eloquently reminds us:

“Work is hard. Distractions are plentiful. And time is short.”

I don’t know what my friend ended up doing to improve his results, but I do understand how he got distracted. The siren call of a well-marketed solution can be captivating, and when we are under pressure and something resembling a solution knocks, we tend to open the door wide, even when we can’t afford the distraction. In business, falling in love too early with a solution can be a real problem. In everyday life, not so much.

I’ve been struggling for years to convince myself that I need to buy a vintage Jeep Cherokee, even though I realize the vehicle represents neither an opportunity nor a solution for me. I don’t need another vehicle, I don’t have space for one, and I’d rather spend the money on something else. Yet I persist because the search has become a harmless yet entertaining distraction which, unlike my hard-working friend, I now have the time and freedom to enjoy!

Dean K. Harring is a retired insurance executive who now enjoys his time as an advisor, board member, educator, and watercolor painter. He can be reached at dean.harring@gmail.com or through LinkedIn or Harring Watercolors

Integrity

If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don't have integrity, nothing else matters.” --Alan Simpson

I was at the airport in Denver, wrestling with a crossword puzzle (10 down, 9 letters, begins with I and ends with Y, clue: morally upright) while waiting to board a Southwest Airlines flight, when I heard the person sitting directly behind me stage-whisper this advice to his companion:

It doesn’t matter whether you actually have a disability—they can’t ask you for proof—just go up and request a pre-boarding document like I did. They have to give you one. Why should you wait to board with the C-group? We can sit together in better seats if we pre-board.

Intrigued, I turned around to look at the co-conspirators. The speaker was a tall, tanned older guy who looked like he had just come off the golf course. His companion was shorter but could have been a member of the other guy’s foursome. Their objective? Gaming the Southwest boarding process so they could get on board before passengers who had checked in early or paid extra for early boarding privileges. The shorter guy initially demurred, but when his companion gestured toward the ever-swelling group of pre-boarders assembling near the jetway, he acted. He was back in a minute with a pre-boarding document. Grinning and fist-bumping, he and his pal enthusiastically joined the pre-boarding scrum.

A few minutes later, my boarding group was announced and we pushed onto the plane. The co-conspirators were parked side by side in the second row, the middle seat between them piled with their personal items to discourage anyone from claiming it. They looked very pleased with themselves.

While gaming the boarding process at the airport probably doesn’t register very high on the moral lapse scale, it is another example of how societal norms about acceptable human behavior are shifting. Remember being taught that behaving with integrity was critical to success in life? Our parents, our teachers, our clergy, our extended family, even our friends encouraged us to be honest, to make ethical choices, and to do the right thing. Maybe that’s what society expected of us, but it’s a new world out there, a world that rewards and celebrates achievement, but no longer obsesses about the behavior that enabled the achievement. It’s all about the outcome, not the process that produced the outcome. Imagine yourself back in school, taking a math test, writing down answers and not having to show your work calculations—it’s like that! Society admires people who win, and if those winners are clever or devious enough to win by taking advantage of shortcuts, cheats or hacks to beat the system, we often admire them even more.

While the “morally indifferent” behavior exhibited by the pre-boarders was disappointing, low-integrity people who operate without any moral compass at all tend to act out much more egregiously, and in the work world that can be very challenging. I am thinking of folks I worked with over the years who, by many measures, enjoyed tremendous success even though they routinely played it fast and loose when it came to honesty, integrity, and doing the right thing. They had no rules, no limits, no honor, no shame, yet they were often celebrated as winners. They lied, and cheated, and misrepresented, and intentionally undermined their colleagues. Yet they were showered with praise, promotions, and rewards-- behavior reinforcement which helped to make them even bolder and more committed to their strategy. Sure, a couple got called out or got careless and eventually crashed and burned, but I still remember the other ones—the ones who got away, who behaved callously, immorally, and unethically yet still ended up “winning.”

It’s difficult not to wonder how that happens. Why do employers tolerate low-integrity employees who behave badly? It might be a lack of attentiveness, or a leadership/management failure, or even a deliberate decision—intentionally excusing bad behavior because of “good” results. But experts such as Dr. Cameron Sepah and Jack Welch argue that companies should not tolerate “high-performing” employees who behave badly. Imagine a two-by-two with Performance as the Y-axis and Behavior as the X-axis. Sepah recommends companies deal with employees in each quadrant as follows:

His message is clear and it tracks with Welch’s—employees who behave badly must be rehabilitated or removed, not tolerated. But what, exactly, is bad behavior, and how capable and willing are executives to identify it and intervene? It’s often easier and more convenient to take a consequentialist view of behavior, where the consequences of a person’s conduct are the basis for any judgment about the conduct, which means behavior is only bad if the result is bad (i.e., the end justifies the means). Yet Peter Drucker tells us that if bad behavior results from the absence of character and integrity, that’s a weakness that cannot be cured:

By themselves, character and integrity do not accomplish anything. But their absence faults everything else. Here, therefore, is the one area where weakness is a disqualification by itself rather than a limitation on performance capacity and strength. 

For more on this topic, you might enjoy reading Amy Rees Anderson’s Forbes article Success Will Come and Go, But Integrity is Forever, but let’s close with Warren Buffet’s tongue-in-cheek description of the importance of integrity in the workplace:

Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy . And if you don’t have the first, the other two will kill you. You think about it; it’s true. If you hire somebody without [integrity], you really want them to be dumb and lazy.

So don’t hire low integrity employees, but if you must, make sure they are also dumb and lazy!

Dean K. Harring is a retired executive who now enjoys his time as an advisor, board member, educator, and watercolor painter.  He can be reached at dean.harring@gmail.com or through LinkedIn or Harring Watercolors