Overcoming the BOHICA effect. (cynical employees)

Abstract: Management schemes to implement plans like Total Quality Management to improve competitiveness often fall prey to cynicism, especially among those who have seen similar plans go awry. Ways to overcome the effects of employee cynicism are described.

 Text COPYRIGHT Foundation for the School of Business at Indiana Univer 1994

Alas, a permanent cure for shoddy products and services has not yet been found. But the imperative need to "do something about quality in our organizations" is clear to almost everyone. Some key organizational players have been desperately tinkering with remedies from the past and the present. Total Quality Management (TQM), the most lovable of the unlovable strategies, seems to be the cure of choice today. However, TQM is a deceptively strong medicine because it translates into a serious attitude and systems adjustment. TQM works best in a lifestyle change - for organizations, a culture change.

The good news is that TQM, used successfully by the Japanese to make great economic strides, could also help improve U.S. corporate performance. The bad news is threefold.

First, serious culture change means philosophy change, executive change, management change, perspective change - and risk! The irony is that seeking a new comfort zone (where what we are doing actually works most of the time) requires severe discomfort. That certainly challenges the "will to persist" in any organization, especially in those with a low tolerance for pain.

The second part of the bad news is the continued success of the Japanese, who tiptoed past us while we were asleep (or at least too drank with arrogance to pay much attention). In Japan, TQM is old news and the Japanese have moved on to "flexibility strategies." While some U.S. corporations have made great strides in quality recently, many have not, and the road ahead promises to be rocky and full of competitive potholes for both countries.

Third, the first flush of fresh enthusiasm for change has peaked in many organizations. The thirst for a bright new look is already dulling.

The Bohicans

This grinding down of the will to change and the overt and covert sabotage of the new, better ways of doing things is called the BOHICA effect. Bohicans are old, experienced, cynical employees with long memories, misused and unappreciated talents, and an approach to change best characterized as "Bend Over, Here It Comes Again!" These old veterans of plots past and visions revisited, along with their young "in-training proteges," have learned to bunker down and wait out the quixotic, FAD-tasmogorical, "slap and stick" approaches to making things better.

As you have probably already surmised, there is hope for a turnaround even though the bad news still exceeds the good news. To understand why it is so easy for the Bohicans to stymie real progress, you need look no further than the executive suite.

The Executive Decree: Let's Get Better - Fast!

Even executives read. Not a lot, but just enough to sniff the sense of what they perceive to be a new, quick fix that promises a better bottom line, and now! Their management theory sources vary little: Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, USA Today, and People. The quick overviews in these publications are often enough to arouse an executive mandate to "get it done." Translating that simple message in itself can tie up middle management minds for months. These executives see the hottest, "quick" topic of the past few years as Total Quality Management and its many variations.

The Executive Problem

The executive decree carries with it the bacteria of an executive disease. "Get it done" means get it done now - at low cost and without messing up "that which we all know has worked well for us over the years," even if it hasn't. This executive decree carries with it the seeds of destruction that keep the well-intended, and often even the well-financed, from ever blooming beyond a quick "flash in the plan." Executive decrees that sustain the BOHICA effect include:

• Forcing a short-run approach to long-term programs such as TQM;
• Starting at the bottom, forcing people to get on board without the "safety nets" they need while the organization changes and people learn new ways;
• Telling first-line and middle management that they must bring all their people into problem-solving and decision-making processes without clarifying how to do that and what the future world will hold for those supervisors. Will they arrange for their own demise by teaching their trade to their people? Color them confused, upset, and resentful. They often would like to be supportive, but no one really helps them reach that point.

Despite Deming's exhortations to "drive fear from the organization," these executive decrees "keep fear out in front." In other words, "If we can't do this well, we'll have to..." (pick one):

• be sold.
• be buried by the competition.
• further "downsize" the work force.
• restructure (yet again- the perennial nonsolution).
• be relocated in the South, Mexico, or overseas.
• "window out" anyone over age 50 with 30 years of service. (No harm there - they obviously have no experience we need in our next millennium of equally high mediocrity).
• overlay a radically different "work style" on the traditional approach and ignore the conflict and confusion being caused.
• all of the above.

Meanwhile, back at the shop, the next Bohican generation begins breeding as the latest fad falls flat!

The BOHICA Effect

Bohicans are survivors. Guided by the biblical passage "This, too, shall pass," they stay low, line the bunker, keep their options open, smile, nod at the right times - and wait. Actually, they outwait management. As Business Week noted recently, "Management plans have the shelf life of cottage cheese." The Bohicans know management better than they know themselves. Sadly, they are usually proven right as bad intentions, good intentions, and mixed intentions flounder once again in a babble of new lingo. Meanwhile, the poor people in human resources knock their heads against the case-hardened culture and management insensitivity. The leaders' salvos of politically correct "Atta Androgynous" (they used to be 'atta boys' and later 'atta girls') become less frequent and less enthusiastic.

Because Bohicans also know it is unwise to highlight past failures publicly, they exhibit slightly sarcastic disappointment that things are growling to a slow snarl. Gee, what a shame!

Overcoming the BOHICA Effect

If you have already witnessed the BOHICA effect in your organization, or just want to be prepared for the inevitable, what can you do? Here are ten suggestions to help overcome the tendency toward BOHICA:

1. Don't start meaningful change if you don't mean it.
   A half-hearted TQM program is worse than none at all. Damage control is expensive and extensive.
2. If you started for all the right-sounding reasons but ignored the unchanging human natures that would destroy your plans, give it up now and be honest about why you are quitting. Just repeat after us, "This takes a level of doing and thinking that we just can't handle. Sorry about that."
3. Don't start any new employee morale campaigns, culture changes, or customer service projects without doing all the necessary homework and listening to your "people" people more and your "numbers" people less.
4. Write off the most incorrigible Bohicans.
   Some Bohicans never die, never fade away. They would complain about the food at the Last Supper. So, move in, move on, and ignore them. They can't and won't be a meaningful, positive part of this or any other change process. As you would write off a bad debt, simply write off the hard-core Bohican segments of your management and work force. Do what needs to be done.
5. Avoid the self-fulfilling prophesy.
   Don't manage this entire process as though most managers and employees are doomed to be and act like Bohicans. It will only compound your mistakes.
6. Size up the realistic impact of the Bohicans. Remember, Bohicans pride themselves on their ability to poison the reservoir and then duck the bullet. They spread incompetence, lack of confidence, and "party pooping" like organizational Typhoid Marys. Don't underestimate or overestimate their real ability to influence the outcome.
7. Offer your best support to the non-Bohican majority of your work force. Keep them involved throughout.
8. Don't give up what you really believe.
   Don't give in to the Bohicans! Pursue your quality goals with the fervor, enthusiasm, and passion they deserve. If true quality begins to take hold, the Bohicans will be on the outside looking in.
9. Change the reward system.
   It is critical that the new quality initiatives be tied into the compensation system in meaningful ways. Remember, the job of the Bohicans is easy when management says one thing while rewarding another. Any change not designed into the reward system deserves to be classified as a fad.
10. Defuse the Bohicans.
    Anticipate the disgruntled rebuttals and remove the obstacles, contradictions, and inconsistencies to demonstrate that this time and this program are different.

Crafting creative change is tough. Although the majority of your work force will give new initiatives a chance to succeed, a few hardened Bohicans can seem like hundreds because of the time and energy they drain from the change agents.

When faced with several Bohicans, it's perfectly natural to want to jump up and down shouting, "Why me, Lord?" Catharsis can be helpful. But after you have "vented," get back to the serious work of making change happen.

We wish you the best of luck in installing TQM and meaningful change. Hopefully, as time passes, the smoke clears, and the vaccinations take hold, you will have seen the last of the Bohicans!

Dick Dunsing is an associate professor of organization development and director of the Management Institute at the University of Richmond, Virginia. Ken Matejka is a professor of management at the A.J. Palumbo School of Business, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh.