The Power of Intermittent Reinforcement

“In an article called “What Shamu Taught Me About a Happy Marriage”, Amy Sutherland describes her attempt to train her husband by using a technique used in animal training: intermittent reinforcement. If you see desired behavior, you reward this. That’s it. You don’t respond to behavior you don’t want. No punishment.

What works for Shamu the whale also works for humans. (…)

I am not suggesting you should hand out squid to your temporary tribe when they perform a trick well. You don’t have to “like” every single word they write on the online discussion board. And of course, tapping everybody on the head just because they filed their time sheets on time (“Good boy! Yes! Yes you are!”) gets annoying.”

Click here to read the entire post.

The Power of Habits, Rituals and Environments.

“When you enter a bar, your body is screaming: PARTY!

When you enter your office, your body is yelling: WORK!

Your surroundings signal to your body what mode to use. What kind of rules to invoke. When running on autopilot, which program to take.

If you suffer from insomnia, one of the main suggestions is to use your bedroom just for sleeping. Not for watching TV. Not for reading. Just sleep. So when you enter your bedroom, your body will switch into “Yay! Sleep!” mode.”

Click here to read the entire post.

Bas de Baar helps people find ways to enjoy the diversity of human interaction in their organizations so that they can get out of their own way and achieve their goals. - The Power of Habits, Rituals and Intermittent Reinforcement is a post from: Project Shrink.

If people start bringing cookies to go with the tea, the ritual becomes stronger.

While you are drinking tea, you are part of this Tea-Drinking Group. When you are not in the ritual, you’re out of the group.

The ritual creates boundaries of the group.

When you participate in the daily tea drinking ceremony, you are so in.

I described five exercises to bootstrap a group culture.

You need an initiation ceremony where all participants can be present. If people show up and do the exercises together they are so in this new culture. If they don’t show up, they’re not.

The Gathering. Bootstrapping As A Ritual.

We need a bootstrapping initiation ceremony as a ritual.

We need A Gathering.

Image by CalidellPhoto.

Bas de Baar helps people find ways to enjoy the diversity of human interaction in their organizations so that they can get out of their own way and achieve their goals. - A Gathering And A Tea Drinking Group. is a post from: Project Shrink.

Congruent mental models stimulate effective communication.

If you want to synchronize your model with that of your conversation partner, you are looking for clues about his believe system.

Words. Rituals. Behavior.

Communication becomes ineffective when you are just convincing the other about your beliefs, hammering on about your view of the world.

When you meet people where they are, instead of where you think they should be, communication becomes effective. When mental models get synchronized by understanding the model of the other, instead of enforcing your own, communication becomes real easy.

Personal branding, expressing what you are about, what you are thinking, is almost like a publication of your own mental model. It makes it easier for the other party to understand you. It makes it easier to synchronize mental models.

Using This In Your Project

When starting a project you can create a shared mental model among your team. It helps communication during the entire project.

Bas de Baar helps people find ways to enjoy the diversity of human interaction in their organizations so that they can get out of their own way and achieve their goals. - Effective Communication By Thinking Alike is a post from: Project Shrink.

But not all individuals like the same culture. People have preferences. Some like plan-driven approaches. Some like pure agile.

Three things determine the acceptance of the project culture…

No threat.

The new way of doing things should not threaten your position. If you don’t produce much, but manage to fly under the radar, unnoticed, you are not happy when radical transparency is introduced. We discussed the perceived threat that agile might bring some weeks ago:

“The difficulty comes when Agile starts to create transparency and accountability. Most organizations are not used to that, and will go through many “growing pains” that will either slow down or completely stop an Agile adoption effort. … When the Project Manager starts pushing more decisions onto the sponsor, and more accountability onto the project team, things can get awkward and frustrating.”

Make sense.

The “way of doing things” should make sense. It should be perceived as being useful. Some company policies can make no sense, and enforcing them onto the team can be a source for resistance. We all have experienced these kind of situations.

A friend of mine told me once … “On a project where I was one of several PMs, weekly progress reports had to be written and send to all other Project Managers. After a while I got the impression that no one was actually reading these things, because of the kind of questions I was getting – answers were all in the reports. As I was not fond of reporting just for the sake of reporting anyway, I started little irritating experiments like issuing identical reports with different dates, adding nonsense risks, just to see if anyone was paying attention. As you might have guessed, no responses what so ever.”

Right group.

We, Project Managers, radiate to the outside world our icons like Gantt Charts, two-digits precise risk assessments and large documents that seems to cover every little aspect imaginable. If you are a member of our group, you ooze control. We also have a specific language that sets us apart from other mortals. By adopting our symbols, our rituals and speak newbie PMs try to affiliate themselves with the group called Professional Project Managers.

If you want to be affiliated with a certain social group, you have no problem what so ever, in adopting the rules of engagement associated with that group.

Bas de Baar helps people find ways to enjoy the diversity of human interaction in their organizations so that they can get out of their own way and achieve their goals. - Acceptance Of The Project Culture is a post from: Project Shrink.