Rafael Andreu and Josep M. Rosanas, Professors at IESE, University of Navarra
Transmitting values in silence?
It is very common nowadays that any problem resulting from someone's misconduct wants to be solved by setting rules. European regulations and laws in the political arena and rules of conduct in organizations, strictly applied, to avoid having to judge individual cases. Those of us who believe that the management of organizations necessarily (and fortunately) has subjective elements have always been skeptical about all these regulations as management tools. And we therefore find it refreshing that a Harvard Business School professor (M. Anteby) proposes silence as a way of transmitting values, from moral values to all those individual practices that are considered "good". In one of his examples, Anteby criticizes that, when trying to instill a spirit of work in a team in an organization, many times a program of training is made in which it is a question of giving instructions and advice to the employees so that they work in good harmony with their colleagues and that can be of little use. He prefers silence, the "silence board member " in his vocabulary, which consists of "giving signals" on how to behave, but not preaching, but doing. So far, we can only agree with agreement. In any organization, much more important than what management preaches is what subject behaviors it encourages and rewards, not necessarily in cash, as he suggests (a bonus for the achievements of teams that are able to do better, and then giving them discretion to hire and promote). It seems logical: if the monetary award is for teams, the team will be in charge of hiring and promote so that their performance improves. But bonuses have a problem: they often induce dysfunctional behaviors that may be worse than the intended good. There are other means that can be more effective and just as quiet, if not more so: boss approval (more important than you might think) and progress in the organization for those who do what they should and behave like team players; and non-progress (or dismissal) for those who don't and take advantage of others, however star-struck they may be. It's a very eloquent message, coming much earlier than the courses at training.