Learn a new word: Abstinence Violation Effect

No, it's got nothing to do with THAT, get your minds out of the gutter for a minute.

I admit to not being familiar with this term until seeing the accounts of the demise of former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo's new venture - an app called Chorus. Chorus was a kind of a social fitness app where groups of friends would sign up/join up together, share their goals for exercise and other healthy behaviors, and remain motivated to keep up with these goals leveraging their friends on the app to keep them going (and accountable).

The idea for Chorus was that once your fitness goals were social and semi-public, you wouldn't want to let down your team and friends, (and risk some level of open embarrassment), by slacking off, or not keeping your commitments.

But as it turned out, at least for Chorus users, this wasn't enough to keep users of the app from continuing to engage with their goals and their teams. Once users began to fall behind, maybe due to illness or travel or work or because exercising is a real drag sometimes, they simply stopped checking in on the app altogether. You could say they ghosted their fitness teams. They would not come back to the app once they had felt like they failed, (and everyone else on the team knew).

Turns out this phenomenon has a name, (who knew?), called the Abstinence Violation Effect which can be described as when people hide from their support group (exercisers, people trying to quit smoking, people who buy too many pairs of sneakers) when when they fail to meet the group's expectations, instead of turning to the social group for help during these periods.

The Chorus app users who had lapsed in meeting their fitness goals never really came back to the app, and since everyone who has ever tried to stick with an exercise regimen has likely lapsed at one point, the demise of the app was pretty explainable.

Why bring this up, i.e. why should you care?

Probably just to serve as a reminder that just having a support group in place and available isn't enough for a person who really needs help - to exercise, to quit a bad habit, to start a better habit, etc. Just being there isn't going to help the person who has really withdrawn.

Setting smaller, tangible  goals along the way, with regular check-ins and rewards for effort and progress is probably going to give the user, (and the team) a better chance to remain engaged with the overall goals and with each other as a group.

The support group isn't there to 'help you get healther' it is there to help you walk 5,000 steps this Wednesday, to buy some healthy snacks on Friday, and to go with you while you attend a yoga class on Saturday morning. These kinds of small, incremental, but tangible kinds of things can help both parties remain connected and accountable to each other.

It is really easy to ghost a support group whose purpose is to 'help you get healthier'.

It is much harder to pull a no-show at a Yoga class on a Saturday morning when your workout pal is already there at the studio waiting for you.

Interesting stuff. And in case you were wondering, yes, I have purchased too many pairs of sneakers.

Have a great day!

PODCAST: #HRHappyHour 311 - Creating a Culture of Performance Based on Feedback

HR Happy Hour 311 - Creating a Culture of Performance Based on Feedback

Host: Steve Boese

Guest: Marie-Claire Barker, Global Chief Talent Officer, Wavemaker

Listen to the show HERE

This week on the HR Happy Hour Show, Steve is joined by Marie-Claire Barker, Global Chief Talent Officer at Wavemaker. a  global media, content, and technology agency to talk about modern approaches to performance management and creating a culture of feedback.

Wavemaker is a 8,500 person strong, global organization serving many of the world's leading brands, and recruits and develops talented people across many domains - creative, technical, and people who can envision and develop a shared future with their clients. 

On the show, Marie-Claire shared how at Wavemaker they have developed and implemented an intentional, performance-driven culture, where organizational and individual goals are visible and shared, feedback (both public and private), is a point of emphasis and leveraged for professional measurement as well as personal growth, and how this culture of feedback and transparency contributes to organizational and client success. This is one of the best examples of how a traditional 'HR' process like performance management has been re-imagined and turned into not just an 'HR' program, but rather a key driver of business and operational success. 

Marie-Claire shared how this culture has and is impacting the organization positively, as well as some advice for HR leaders who want to re-invent performance management too.

You can listen to the show on the show page HERE, or by using the widget player below:

This was an interesting and informative show - thanks Marie-Claire for joining us.

And thanks to HR Happy Hour Show sponsor Virgin Pulse - www.virginpulse.com.

Reminder to subscribe to the HR Happy Hour on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher Radio, or wherver you get your podcasts - just search for 'HR Happy Hour'.

Postscript: On the show, Marie-Claire mentioned Reflextive, the software tool they use at Wavemaker for employee goals and feedback. Refelktive has been an HR tech startup success story and just announced new funding this week.

Feedback

Semi-frequent reminder as we all continue to push further and further into a world with constant, varied, and often very, very imperfect and uniformed feedback on almost everything we do, (I took an Uber ride last night from the airport to a hotel, I can only wonder what my driver was thinking as he 'rated' by performance as a passenger), that lots of the feedback we encounter is basically, crap.

Take a look at the image below, courtesy of the grapheine design blog on some potential client feedback if the classic French Tournee du Chat Noir poster which advertised a Paris cabaret theater was submitted today: (click HERE for a larger version of the image)

Just because we have better and more accessible tools to give each other, our organizations, and other organization's products and services more feedback, (and have that feedback be publicly available), doesn't mean that we, any of us, have somehow gotten better at giving and receiving said feedback.

As the image above describes, even classic, iconic works of art and design could be picked apart by less experienced and talented folks who by virtue of position in an org chart or on a project team feel compelled to pass their judgement on the effort of others. 

I am certainly not saying that having access to more forms and volumes of feedback is a bad thing, I am just reminding you that 'more' doesn't equate to 'better', at least not all the time. 

Le Chat Noir probably doesn't need any improvement. Your last work project might not either.

But if there are people in the organization who are pit into a position where they see it is their job to give you feedback, then feedback it is you will receive. 

Hopefully, it won't be the kind of feedback that compels you to alter your masterpiece either.

VACATION REWIND: Netflix ratings and what they might mean for your real-time feedback program

NOTE: I am on vacation this week - please enjoy a replay of a piece from January of this year.

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Netflix ratings and what they might mean for your real-time feedback program

Everyone's favorite entertainment streaming platform/service Netflix has been in the news plenty lately.

Their most recent earnings announcement was pretty fantastic, their revenues and reach are climbing steadily, and they continue to set the pace, tone, and standard for the modern entertainment experience. Just about everyone who is a Netflix subscriber loves it, and some think that Netflix (and some other services like Hulu and Amazon Prime), might one day ring the death bell for traditional broadcast networks and cable service providers.

Netflix is a case study example of a company that has managed growth, transition, technological change, and even making some strategic blunders to become one of the digital age's most interesting and influential companies. You might recall that Netflix made quite a stir in the HR/Talent Management space with their famous 'Culture Deck' a few years back. That document, which some have called the most important one in all of Silicon Valley, was seen and shared by thousands.

But why I was interested in posting about Netflix this week has nothing to do with their 'culture deck' or consumer cord cutting or the new season of Orange is the New Black. It is for another element of the Netflix approach I find really interesting and relevant to HR and talent management pros today - their approach and attitude about program ratings, the traditional way most TV programs have been judged, and their creators rewarded.

As consumers of TV we are all at least somewhat aware of ratings. They are reported on regularly. We all hear stories about TV's highest rated shows. And we know that when shows are cancelled, the usual reason is low ratings. In the traditional TV model, ratings are closely monitored, are made public and are widely reported on, and are the ultimate form of either validation and success, or rejection and failure. 

Want to know the ratings of any broadcast or cable TV show? That information is not that hard to find.

Want to know the ratings or even the total number of viewers for Netflix shows like Orange or House of Cards? Well, good luck finding out that information. Here is what Netflix thinks about ratings, from a recent piece on Business Insider:

Netflix thinks ratings are bad for television shows, and are a negative force on the talent that produces them.

Last week, executives from the likes of NBC and FX traded barbs with Netflix over ratings transparency.

FX CEO John Landgraf said it’s “ridiculous that we don’t have usage numbers on Netflix," while NBC’s Alan Wurtzel cited data from an outside research company that Netflix’s ratings weren’t all that impressive.

Netflix fired back, not just at NBC’s data, which content chief Ted Sarandos called "remarkably inaccurate," but at the very idea of ratings.

Netflix has always closely guarded its viewership data, so much so that many of its creators don’t even know how well their shows are doing. Tina Fey, who was the co-creator of the Netflix show “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,” said she had no idea how many people were watching the show,according to the Wall Street Journal.

Now Netflix is saying this type of secrecy is actually good for shows. Sarandos said that instant ratings data turns TV into a weekly arms race between networks, and puts “a lot of creative pressure on talent,” Variety reports.

He asserted that the focus on ratings “has been remarkably negative in terms of its effect on shows.”

Quite a bit to take apart from that story but the key for me is not the 'old guard' sniping at Netflix from the NBC exec, but rather the Netflix point of view that a focus on ratings, particularly instant or 'real-time' ratings information is in fact harmful to the creative talent that it is increasingly engaging to produce its content.

It is kind of a remarkable point of view, and in the modern world of digital content delivery and availability of big data and powerful analytical tools, very counter-intuitive. Everything - marketing, politics, sports, and yes even HR and talent management is in an almost lock-step march towards compiling more data, gauging success or failure more discretely, and importantly - providing results and feedback to people much more often.

You can't swing a cat in a room of HR people today and not find at least someone, maybe a few someones, that are scrapping annual performance reviews and shifting towards some kind of alternative program for assessing and hopefully improving employee performance. While these new approaches differ at least some, they almost always have one thing in common - the encouragement of more frequent 'feedback' (if you like 'ratings'), given to employees in the course of a year.

Sure, this 'feedback' is meant to be less formal, more forward-looking, and less frightening than the annual performance review, but strip away the new terms we are using and underneath it all to many employees it is going to feel like you've replaced the dreaded annual performance review with anywhere from 12 to 52 'mini' performance reviews. And that is going to stink worse than any uncomfortable one-hour annual performance review meeting ever did.

The real thing to think about in all this is the effect that feedback/criticism/ratings will have on talented people, especially creative people that are increasingly the difference between organizational success and failure.

Netflix, the paragon of the modern company, culture, and talent engine has decided that less feedback (in form of program ratings), is actually a positive, and beneficial to the creative talent with which it engages, and which it needs to compete and succeed. It thinks for people to do their best, most creative work, they can't be constantly worried, on a week-to-week basis, with ratings and viewer numbers. Netflix is playing the long game.

So what does this mean for you, the HR and talent pro wrestling with these trends and changes in the way 'traditional' performance management has always been done?

It might mean this: Replacing traditional, annual performance reviews with a system that amounts to more frequent, if less formal, performance reviews might be exactly the wrong thing to do if you are trying to get the best, most creative results from your teams.

Or said differently, how many really, really talented people do you know that like to be told how they are doing all of the time?

'The truth isn't always criticism. Sometimes it's just the truth'

In the wake of the Cleveland Cavaliers victory in the NBA Finals on Sunday night, former Cleveland Browns (NFL football for those who may have forgotten about the woeful Browns), and NFL legend Jim Brown was being interviewed and was asked to share his thoughts on the city of Cleveland on one of the sports talk radio shows that were recapping the Cavs win. Brown, as the de facto representative and patriarch of Cleveland sports, had all the right and expected things to say about Cleveland, the Cavs, and their star LeBron James.

The interview was not all that interesting, until for some reason the host changed the topic from the Cavs and towards Brown's comments on another former Browns player, running back Trent Richardson. Richardson, as I am sure you do not know, was a highly touted player coming out of college, but for some reason did not translate into a successful, (or even average), NFL player and is not out of the league.

While many NFL talent scouts and media had picked Richardson for a star in the NFL, Jim Brown himself did not - seeing Richardson as 'nothing special', and never considering him likely to become a star or even a productive NFL player.

On the talk show, the host asked Brown about Trent Richardson, reminding him that he was one of the only people to correctly predict Richardson would never be able to live up the the high expectations. and would never be a star in the NFL and in response Brown made the following observation, (I am paraphrasing a bit, but the gist of what he said is accurate):

You know I am not really proud or happy about that prediction, and I was not trying to criticize him at all. I was just telling the truth. And the truth isn't always criticism, sometimes it's just the truth. And that's what it was for him.

Preach it Jim Brown. 

I think this little anecdote is worth thinking about and keeping in mind as more and more organizations transition away from the traditional annual performance management/review process and cadence and more towards a more frequent, regular, and lighter weight feedback scheme. 

More feedback, even if it is the 'truth', (and that is definitely not always the case), increases the opportunities and likelihood for this feedback to be interpreted as criticism, and we all know how much fun being criticized is.

As we see in the case of Brown's 'truthful' observation about Richardson, the difference between 'criticism' and 'truth' often is only determined by who is talking and who is listening.