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PIC – Positive Immediate Consequence – Aubrey Daniels – Dallas Growth Summit

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 1ST, 2009

 

It’s Sunday so I’m going to lead with a football story Aubrey Daniels told at the Growth Summit. Your football team’s defense is practicing against the opponents tendencies they will face this week. Over and over they practice the same play so they know what to anticipate and respond to when the play occurs. How many times do you think it will take for the linebacker on your team to instantly recognize the play to respond to it?
 
The answers from our audience started at 3 and ended around 50 or 100.
 
Aubrey Daniels answer? This will scare you – 300. 
 
This leads to two issues Daniels feels mitigate progress in the area of human performance. People don’t improve in a straight line. There could be great progress, and then none at all, or no progress and then tremendous growth at intermittent stages. The second issue is when there isn’t immediate success the company or people lose sight of the goal and get discouraged.
 
To understand more about human behavior please return to my earlier blogs from Aubrey Daniels book Oops, 13 Management Practices That Waste Time and Money (and what to do instead). You’ll find the list of 13 practices that waste time and money, the difference between contingency based and rule governed behavior, the difference between positive and negative reinforcement, why companies use negative reinforcement, and why Employee of the Month is a poor behavior management practice. Or simply pick up the book. 
 
Daniels pointed out that positive reinforcement:
  •         Always works
  •         Everybody’s positive reinforcement is different. [It’s why you must treat everyone differently – each of us is unique in what we respond to.]
  •         You always get more of the behavior you reinforce.
  •         Only consequences maximize performance
  •         You increase the behavior that is occurring when you get it [positive reinforcement]
  •         It takes many positive reinforcements to develop a habit.
The final point refers back to the linebacker story. The second to the last point refers to a problem that occurs when we don’t reward immediately. If we reward when the person is no longer doing what we intended to increase, the person being rewarded will assume what he is currently doing is what he is being rewarded for.
 
It compounds the value of “catch someone doing something right!” If you can do that consistently, reward with an immediate positive consequence you will consistently get the result/performance you are seeking.
 
In Atlanta the city had a challenge with getting their sanitation crews to put recyclables into the proper bins. Using a PIC/NIC Analysis form [Positive Immediate Consequence – Negative Immediate Consequence] Daniels demonstrated why the crews failed to follow the proper procedure even under threat of being fired. We’ll explore that in my next blog.

 

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