Six Rules to Harness Emotion in Business Design

High performance and under-achievement have one thing in common: Both are fuelled by emotion.

Emotions in the workplace are like combustibles. Used properly, they will skyrocket you to success. If not, they can blow up in your face, causing complacency, confusion, and resistance to change. Whether you acknowledge them or not, they are embedded in the physical body and subconscious mind, both driving you forward and holding you back. The same is true for every member of your team.

Consider that today’s unproductive meeting is the result of something unresolved from last month. That’s how it works. Staff remain incomplete about decisions that were made without consulting the appropriate people or addressing concerns of those directly impacted. Incompletions run the show. That’s when the conversation is driven underground—to informal and political networks.

Few people want to talk about what’s really going on. Even the “experts” tread with caution. Speaking about culture, trust, bullying, and success principles is too high level, far removed from day-to-day activities. Until we get down and dirty, dealing with everyday occurrences, we tend to think those generalized words of caution are intended for somebody else. It’s not me, it’s them. The truth is, it’s all of us.

It takes courage to own our humanity. Learning to embrace our flaws and imperfections, without experiencing a loss of power, takes time and practice. Keeping ourselves in the Possibility Zone takes practice. Quick fixes have become our “solution”: asserting power to get our way, using intimidation, looking the other way, suppressing how we really feel, talking behind people’s backs. Those tactics all have a backfire effect.

When the business environment is superficial, people show up on autopilot. They are cursory and compliant, not deeply committed to the work they do. Imagine the upward spike in growth and profits if you could redirect this combustible human energy to retool your business as a rocket ship that’s loaded with purpose and meaning. Isn’t it worth giving it your best effort to shoot for the stars, even if you only get as far as the moon?

Systems leadership is a creative superpower, a secret weapon. Use it to serve the greater good, to teach and inspire people who are sickened by office politics, creatively stifled in their jobs, or socially suppressed in their careers. The right kind of structure can blast people out of the soul-sucking systems that hold their potential trapped.

Let me give you an example.

Animosity and resentment ran thick between Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) and salmon gillnet fishers. Fishery managers were reacting to new legislation, and fishermen were angered by their reactionary approach to resource management. Neither party trusted the other.

Fishermen were allowed to harvest sockeye salmon, but in so doing they inadvertently caught coho, a non-target species that had just become protected. DFO managers believed there was no way to avoid catching

coho, so they saw no alternative but to shut down the commercial fishery.

I was brought in by industry to find a solution. I knew I needed to find a common denominator—something both sides wanted—that would enable them to work together differently than they had in the past.

I related to both industry and government as equals with different strengths. DFO’s strength was scientific protocol and authority to proceed. Industry, meanwhile, had decades of technical, local, and empirical knowledge of the fishing grounds. The challenge was to combine strengths and capacities from both sides to build systems to satisfy real and perceived risks, threats, and concerns.

I asked the fishermen, “If you could fish sockeye but had to avoid coho, what would you do differently?” “We’d avoid Area X entirely,” said one. “We’d use a weed line to drop the net lower in the water so coho (which swim shallower) could go over our nets, but we’d still catch sockeye,” said another.

One guy had invented a revival box so non-target species could be flushed with oxygen-rich sea water, revived onboard, and released live. In other words, the fishermen had a ton of ideas.

DFO managers nearly sprung from their seats with accusations. “We can’t make resource management decisions based on hearsay and good intentions!”

I suggested setting up a test fishery in Area D to evaluate the fishermen’s empirical knowledge against DFO’s scientific protocols.
“DFO will never go for it,” said the fishermen.
“Okay,” I said. “But if by some miracle DFO does agree to a test fishery, would you honour the test fishery protocols as a matter of your word?”
“Of course,” they said. “But it will never happen.”

I had a similar conversation with DFO.

“If we set up rigorous scientific protocols and provide third-party validated catch data from the fishing grounds in real time, so DFO managers knew moment to moment exactly what was happening on the fishing grounds, would you enable us to manage a series of test fisheries?” I asked.
“Sure,” they said, “but who’s going to pay for it? We don’t have the budget for this kind of research.”
“What if we build a budget, use DFO’s best guess at run size prediction, and take a percentage of the total catch off the top to pay for the research?” suggested the association president.
“The fishermen would never agree to this in a million years,” said DFO.
“Okay,” I said. “But if by some miracle they do agree, would you permit us to set up and manage the test fishery?”

Neither side believed it was possible to get the other to agree. I knew in my heart it was possible. A few weeks later I facilitated the signing of Canada’s first collaborative agreement between an industry association and DFO. The research was funded from the proceeds of the catch. Every aspect of the project was documented and systematized: determining the selection criteria, recruiting the test boats, programming the input devices used to collect field data, recruiting and training the onboard observers who validated the findings.