Do People Pay More Attention When They Are Being Assessed?
Recently I had a discussion with a few peers about how to use assessments and exams.
The conversation went something like this.
“People who know they are being assessed will pay more attention in a training course or at their daily work. We need to use exams and assessments to get
them to pay more attention because otherwise they will just flake off. People are inherently lazy and we need to make sure they work.”
The conversation above sounds like a hidden threat. The threat I see goes something like… If you miss something you are in trouble on the exam or “Pointy Haired Dude” is watching…. This is an old school paradigm that destroys critical thinking in my experience. For example, the issue of an Exam has dogged classic PMP training and has generally pulled down the quality of critical thinking across the spectrum of corporate environments. It dogs classic workshop training when the conversation moves from “whats the best way to think about this ….. to ….. will this be on the Exam? If not on the exam then, can we move on to stuff that will be on the exam?”
When people become more concerned about the exam or assessment they have often stopped thinking critically. For agile training, which is most of what I do these days, people can easily fall back to old learning styles of known answers to known questions. Most of today’s business problems are demandingly complex and do not have predictable outcomes. A test or exam is a simple predictive Q/A model and that includes the situational stuff as well. For situational stuff, I just memorize the abstract pattern for which the situational question is written for and then answer according to the pattern. To deal with complexity people need an empirical thought process for the finding stuff we don’t know we don’t know. Cramming more factoids into adult heads is counter productive. As adults we typically have more than enough information crammed in our heads. The question becomes “Can we make better use of what we already know or have experienced to deal with uncertainty?”
In my experience, open reflective learning will occur and empirical behavior will result when, as a trainer/leader to I make the environment safe for learning. As a manager/director of people the same policy holds true, if you punish people for making mistakes they will stop making mistakes by trying not to do to much beyond what is painfully obvious that needs doing. In either case, learninig is shut down for knowlege workers. Sharing of knowledge, both tacit and explicit, comes to a halt and the organization’s ability to learn atrophies because those muscles are no longer being used. At this point the best we can achieve is a pursuit of efficiency and what you find is a focus on faster / cheaper / quicker. Anything that is different and innovative gets squeezed out by the fear of not doing something that is well understood and controllable.
Innovation is needed across most areas of today’s corporation. Learning should be part and parcel to every engaging job and challenge. For innovation to occur people need to focus on learning and that means expect mistakes. If they do not feel safe they will make feeble attempts to do some new things but, never really bravely reach out of their comfort zone. If you are hiring for factory / robot type positions then expect robots but, knowledge workers are key for innovative culture and fresh ideas.
People in my workshops pay attention because they care and I care. It is a social bond. As a leader/trainer you set a behavior pattern that will be modeled. Are you modeling “I am watching you!” ? People that work/report to me pay attention because we both care to do the best. Those that don’t care can and should be asked to leave or excuse themselves until they sort out their destructive tendencies. I call not caring destructive because it destroys empirical behavior .
Generally, it is useless to retain people that do not care. In most cases the overhead of managing them is in excess of not having them there. Which sadly means I am better off doing the job myself. As a leader or trainer your first job should be to foster an atomosphere where learning is safe and encourage your people to become learning machines. Better teams make better people who make better products.
- At the forefront of learning is where innovation occurs.
- Learning is about knowledge creation (see Nonaka’s paper).
- Knowledge creation is an interactive process.Organizations that foster learning reach new heights.
- People that are in learning mode are paying the best kind of attention.
- A good scrum process enables the team learning process.
Maybe I am completely off my rocker 
but, I found the conversation interesting.
Comments?
- Doug
January 13th, 2010 at 10:50 pm
I think what’s going on here is intrinsic vs extrinsic motivations. (Jurgen Appelo’s book will have some good things to say about this.) Any kind of extrinsic motivational attempts can have negative effects and be terribly misused as an intimidation factor. If training, etc. has a value, then “sell” the actual value, not the negative consequences. Also, do more to ensure people can master the material then use it appropriately since, I assume, that’s the point of having folks trained.
I completely agree with your attitudes and find your peers’ comments downright scary and evidence of why/how ponderous methodologies get created. The “people are lazy” attitude goes along with the “problems are failures of individual will” view of quality, so find the guilty and punish them.
Such massive distrust is what needs to be assessed, evaluated and “fixed.”
January 14th, 2010 at 11:31 pm
Yes, I was about to polish on it more. The big thing I continue to find is that too many managers/directors/leaders (what ever the name), believe that FEAR is the way to motivate.
FEAR shuts down and kills critical thinking.
January 17th, 2010 at 4:53 am
You’re touching here on something known as the Hawthorn Effect. I wrote about at my site: http://billbennett.co.nz/2009/04/15/the-hawthorne-effect/
One of the strange things management experts have learnt, is performance improves following company training, even when the training isn’t relevant to the job.
January 22nd, 2010 at 7:08 pm
Now that is interesting. Perfomance improves even when training is not relevant. I will be reading your post next.
- Doug
March 4th, 2010 at 4:03 pm
Interesting idea, but I must disagree — at least partly. Incentive is not fear.
I taught in a university for some 35 years, and since retirement have taken a few short courses myself. I am still finding things which work. The key thing is to get people to pay attention, which (in a classroom setting) they do only about 20% of the time: there has been actual research showing this.
Critical thinking is a humbug. You can’t teach it. Class discussion is a waste of time, because usually everyone not directly involved tunes out. Group discussion lets the “weak” members rely on one or two of the more vocal ones: it gets nowhere slowly. Teachers like it because it fills the class time, but it is a very inefficient way to teach.
What works is very rapid delivery, with only short questions allowed; followed by an instant test. I was in a course run that way, and everyone was at peak of attention for FOUR HOURS straight. It was a evening class, and everyone went home to sleep afterwards, and dreamed the material. Our retention was phenomenal. We had also some practical (lab) instruction, and separate tests for that.
What I learned was that short quizzes should be given right after the material is delivered. This reinforces the material, and it obliges the class to PAY ATTENTION, which is an acquired habit, and a key to learning. No “going home to review” first, which is usually just an excuse for procrastination.
A test right after presentation solidifies the information in the minds of the auditors, and also builds confidence and real self-esteem. It even seems to stimulate interest in the material.
Original thinking will mean something, once the basic material is mastered. I think that most people are quite good with coming up with new ideas, once they have some background in a field. Looking at alternatives comes naturally.
It reminds me of grade-school teachers who spend (or waste) hours of time trying to “stimulate the imaginations” of their charges. I have never yet met a normal kid who did not have imagination! What they need training in is FOCUS: most children do not have that in today’s world. It is partly because their teachers are lazy, and find it easier to go into some “activity” than actively to teach. Thus, today’s children cannot even write by hand. They lack the ordinary ability which is a basis of drawing, art in general, and even simple mechanical skills.
People generally enjoy doing what they are good at. Give a person skills, and they are likely to enjoy the exercise of their new abilities.