Let the Performer Decide What Works

by Cynthia Riha

This is another of our occasional discussions about using the Six Boxes with family. But I think the point will prove important for all situations, so I hope those without children, or whose years of active parenting are (finally) behind them, will hang with me for a moment.

Being one who lives and breathes the Six Boxes Model, I’m always using it to analyze and solve performance problems at home (my kids would just love being called a performance problem). And following the shoeless-cobbler-kids metaphor, I often default to nagging, begging or screaming. We all know how well that works. So I was happily surprised recently to see a successful example of the use of the approach at home – with highly desirable results.

My youngest son has never liked to brush his teeth. He probably has more sensitive gums than most which makes it unpleasant, but being a parent more interested in the result than his experience, I try to be as insensitive to that as possible. Naturally, my efforts often went nowhere. But as a good performance consultant, many times over the last few years I have tried all the boxes:

Box 1 – calmly explaining how often and why to brush, feed-forwarding when it’s time to do, checking quality, nagging, harassing, feedback on how he did each time, pointing out people with bad teeth

Box 2 – fun toothbrushes, electric toothbrushes, timers, every flavor of toothpaste imaginable

Box 3 – verbal approval, thanking him, and more punishment than I want to admit

Box 4 – diagrams of how to brush, brushing demonstrations

Box 5 – once we decided the gum sensitivity was real, we adjusted his toothbrushes and quit insisting on the electric one

Box 6 – he’s too young to “prefer” not to brush. I’m the mom.

All of this produced limited results, and nothing produced a self-managed kid.

Until he saw a commercial on TV for this “really fun blue mouthwash” that shows you where to brush. I just thought it was consumerism trying once more to get my child to demand yet another useless product, but being somewhat desperate we went for it (actually Dad did).  Happy ending: It worked perfectly and I have never nagged again, and everyone has noticed how much better his teeth look.

At first, I smugly took credit for a great Box 2 (tools and resources) intervention. But the truth is, I had tried many things and in all the boxes. What actually happened was that the performer, left on his own but knowing it was a problem, found something that fit in Box 1 (it showed him both where to brush and when he was finished), Box 2 (it was a perfect tool), Box 3 (he felt a sense of accomplishment getting rid of the blue), and maybe most importantly, Box 6 (it was fun for him and made him feel independent).

As performance consultants, we love to engineer solutions. In reality, we are here to organize the influences on performance in a way that makes sense for the particular performer (or group of performers). The perfectly engineered solution is only perfect if performance is changed. Motives and preferences (Box 6) can’t be changed, but the rest of the system pivots on what they are. The system and the performer are actually one unit – we don’t design a performance system and then plop a performer into it. It’s a fascinating challenge – especially for those of us who love to “engineer” the perfect solution from our desk (or the kitchen table).

Comments

[Carl Binder]

Hey, Cynthia, this reminds me of the fact that we are always trying to find clients interested in teaching The Six Boxes Approach to individual contributors in their organizations, as a way to take pro-active control of their career development and performance improvement. When people learn to identify what they NEED to improve performance (e.g., "Boss, could we meet every couple of weeks to get clear on current expectations and for you to give me some feedback?"), it empowers them and ultimately improves engagement and participation in the enterprise.