Kid Nation Episode Two - Chicken Wars

I posted last week about Kid Nation (new CBS reality show featuring kids without adult supervision developing a town from scratch in the "old west").  I think there are organizational dynamics from the show that can be applied to the "grown up" endeavors we face everyday in our work environments.  From a motivation an influence perspective I think there is some real "gold in them thare hills." 

The core themes in this past week's episode were:  to kill a chicken or not, ingenuity with a water pump, whether beauty queens should do dishes and would Greg get the gold star.  I have three lessons from the show but first I have a general opinion on the show itself.

Which came first... the chicken or the Greg?

The main hubbub of this episode was whether the kids should kill a chicken for food.  Talk about a ratings grabber - "See kids kill their own dinner!"  I really think this tainted the rest of the series for me.  I didn't like how the producers immediately set up artificial teams in the first episode and now I'm really grousing how they introduced the concept of killing a chicken for food.

I'm very curious if they decided to include the "kill the chicken" idea at the onset of the series, or, did they decide to do it after they had read all the kid's bios and found out that one of the kids (Greg) had some butchering skills.  Either way - it's a pretty sad situation.  I get that a few decades ago, killing your own protein was pretty common.  But I don't think the point of the series is to see who can live like a pioneer as much as how will kids organize and get things done - with minimal adult direction.  So far - it seems like the adults are having considerable impact on the direction of the town.  From setting up teams for conflict to creating a ratings lightning rod with the "Kill the Chicken" episode.

Prediction - one of the animals they have in the town will become pregnant and need to give birth - whanna bet me on this one?

If I wasn't interested in how all the organizational dynamics will play out I think I'd be done with the series. 

But on with the main point of this post - what can we learn from the series that just might affect our working lives.

Lesson One:  Your people already have an idea of who they are and what that means about the work they do.

I am speaking of little Taylor - the beauty queen in training.  Taylor in the first episode said she didn't do dishes because she was a beauty queen - in the second episode she reiterates that thought as she says that pageant girls don't scape dishes.  I'm not bashing beauty queens.  The lesson here is that the people within an organization already have a view of what they do and what they should do.  This view is based on their education, their job title, how they have been engaged in the past and what their long-term aspirations are.  The important thing to note is that as organizations are required to adapt more quickly to changing market dynamics, roles and responsibilities will change as well.  In order to influence behavior in an organization we must take into account that everyone as a view of who they are and where they contribute.  As managers we need to first understand their point of view and connect that view to the job at hand.  A disconnect between the employee view of their skills and roles within a company and the job at hand will result in non-performance.  As evident by the lack of dish-cleaning by Taylor.

Lesson Two: You own the problem - but don't be afraid to ask for help.

When morning broke on the range - the temperature had dropped below freezing and the water pump was frozen.  The boys who were tasked with bringing water to the town couldn't do their chore.  Instead of walking away from the problem they boiled water with the help of Sophia, and poured it over the pump handle to thaw the pump.  Problem solved.  The boys could have just went back to town and said - "the pumps frozen, sorry no water."  Instead they took ownership of the problem and solved it with help from another participant.  Many times within an organization this simple concept can be complicated by the dependencies created by bureaucracies but the lesson is simple - if you can't get your job done - find a solution - even if it means looking elsewhere for help.  If you can't close the books at month end because the data isn't coming in correctly - you have a problem.  You can't sit back and say it's the other department's problem - it is yours.  You can't close the books.  Fix the problem.

Lesson Three:  A rule is a rule is a rule.

The thing that stood out for me, being in the reward and recognition space, is the decision to award the gold star to Michael at the end of the episode instead of Greg.  Last week Greg said he wanted to win the gold star this week and he said he was going to work his butt off to make that happen.  And he did.  But the council was split on awarding the star to Greg or awarding it to Michael - who also did a lot of work.  The council awarded it to Michael.  But their decision seemed to come down to motivation - why was Greg working so hard?  One of the council members even said that even though Greg was working hard - he thought that Greg was only working to get the star, not for the good of the town.

Huh?

From a reward and recognition standpoint I say - give it to Greg.  You set the rules up and now, because you don't like why someone is working hard you give the award to someone else.  I don't remember the rules stating that you can only earn the star if you work hard and don't care if you earn the star.  The whole point of the award is to get people to do something.  Greg did something, arguably more than the others.  Your personal feelings as to "why" someone did it is irrelevant to the end decision.  Greg should have gotten the gold star - period.  While we may not agree with Greg's motivations, we can't argue with results.

They ended the episode with an ominous quote from Greg...

"I did a hell of a lot more work than Michael did. I thought it was pretty disrespectful, and I'm gonna do something about it."

In a nutshell this sums up how your own reward and recognition program can get out of hand if the rules aren't followed.  It not only cheapens the award for all, but creates a negative direction for behavior within the organization.  This is why it is so critical to fully understand the affect poorly designed and implemented reward and recognition systems can hurt a company.