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The ZIZO Effect
"The ZIZO Effect" podcast, hosted by Andrew Reimers and Jimmy Chebat, dives into the dynamic world of gamification, exploring how game elements are revolutionizing the way we work, learn, and live. Each episode uncovers the strategies behind gamification, offering insights into how it's being implemented across various industries to drive engagement, enhance productivity, and foster innovative experiences. From the workplace to personal development, and beyond, Andrew and Jimmy bring you the latest trends, tools, and game-changing ideas. Join them on "The ZIZO Effect" to discover how gamification is reshaping our world, helping us level up in all aspects of life. Get ready - It's Game Time!
The ZIZO Effect
Ep 11 Winning Workplace Strategies: How Gamification and OBM Drive Success
In this episode of The ZIZO Effect podcast, join host Jimmy Chebat for an engaging discussion with Rich Gold, a distinguished leader, and former President and COO of M&T Bank. Rich brings his extensive experience in organizational behavior management (OBM) and shares how its principles can synergize with gamification to transform workplace strategies.
Explore the intersection of OBM and gamification, uncovering how these strategies can coexist to enhance employee engagement and organizational effectiveness. Rich offers valuable insights into the science of human behavior and how understanding these principles can drive better outcomes in any business setting.
This episode covers the power of positive reinforcement, the role of technology in modern management, and the future of work. Learn how integrating OBM with gamification can create a more engaging and productive work environment, leading to sustainable success.
Whether you're a regular listener or new to the podcast, prepare for a thought-provoking conversation that reveals the secrets to unlocking discretionary effort and fostering a successful workplace culture. Get ready—It's Game Time!
Additional Credit: Aubrey Daniels International
Hello and welcome to the ZIZO Effect podcast. I'm Andrew J Reimers and today we have a special treat for our listeners. While I usually join in on our explorations of game-changing strategies, this episode will be a bit different. I'll be stepping aside to let Jimmy dive deep into a topic at the heart of what we love about gamification and workforce management. Joining Jimmy today is Rich Gold, a seasoned leader and thinker in the realm of organizational behavior management. As OBM and gamification increasingly intersect, Rich's insights will help us understand how these strategies not only coexist but synergize to enhance employee engagement and organizational effectiveness. So, with great anticipation for the insights this conversation will bring, I'll pass it over to Jimmy. Enjoy this deep dive into the powerful combination of OBM and gamification, a discussion guaranteed to inspire and provoke thought. Jimmy, it's all yours. It's game time.
Jimmy Chebat:Welcome to the ZIZO Effect podcast. I'm your host, J jimmy Chebat, and today we have a very special episode lined up for you. Joining me today is distinguished guest Rich Gold. Rich recently retired as president and chief operating officer of M&T Bank after an impressive 34-year career and continues to share his experience as an adjunct professor at University of Buffalo teaching organizational behavioral management. Rich, it's fantastic to have you with us today. Thanks, man. It's good to be here Today. We're going to dive into the relationship between gamification and organizational behavioral management, but first we'd love to get to know you a little bit.
Rich Gold:Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Sure, I married with two kids. I've lived in Buffalo for the last 32 years or so. I relocated from Long Island in, I guess, the fall of 1991. As you said, I recently retired from M&T Bank, about a year ago, last June. I was there for 34 years, held a lot of different positions in the organization. For the six years up until the point where I retired I was the president and chief operating officer.
Jimmy Chebat:That's amazing and we're going to dive into that career in a little bit here. Recently, post-retirement, you moved down to Florida. You and I have had a chance to play some golf. I know I'm really excited to get back on the golf course with you today. How was retirement treating?
Rich Gold:you. It's great I haven't moved to Florida. I won't ever abandon Western New York, but I'll take the edge off of the winters. This winter was an experiment. We just rented a place for three months just to get our feet wet, and it was wonderful.
Jimmy Chebat:Yeah, we had a brief conversation before the start of this and why we subject ourselves to these Buffalo winters. And, of course, retirement's a great way and opportunity to get back out into the real world.
Rich Gold:It's amazing. You don't realize how debilitating it is to spend three, four, five months in gray, wet, cold weather. When you get down there and every day it's a blue sky and the sun's out, it makes a world of difference. I agree. I stumbled upon something that's going to extend my life expectancy, I think.
Jimmy Chebat:I hope someday soon I'll be able to follow you down there, but I think it's the sun for me more so than the cold. I can deal with some cold as long as the sun's out. It's the gray yeah it's the gray.
Rich Gold:It's definitely the gray.
Jimmy Chebat:Let's jump into your background. I'd love for you to share your journey through the banking industry academia. What drew you into organizational behavior management?
Rich Gold:Yeah, so you know, my undergraduate degree is from Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations and that curriculum is heavy on organizational behavior, social psychology, you know a lot of that kind of stuff, things that address the dynamic in the workplace, and so I think I've always had a bent towards those sort of matters.
Rich Gold:And as my career progressed at M&T, I found myself in increasing levels of responsibility for more and more people, and I got to a point where I came to realize that there are a lot of people at the bank that are incredibly capable as it relates to financial engineering and all the things that you have to worry about having on hand to be effective in that business and really in any business. And for me I realized that there wasn't enough focus more broadly on teaching managers how to effectively bring out the best in the people that they were entrusted with, and I became very interested in that sort of field, in that space, and that led me down this path of getting acclimated and introduced to behavior science and then ultimately OBM, which is the application of the science of behavior to the workplace.
Jimmy Chebat:You know we had spoken in the past. You know you had studied organizational behavior management in school and I come from more of an application, of practical or applied it. But I came to some of the same conclusions when I was running a call center. A lot of our managers were basically just agents that were excelled at their job and we would promote them because we didn't want to lose them. But they were never formally trained or educated in people management and that's an important role. What is organizational behavior management? So?
Rich Gold:basically, there's a field called behavior analysis which delves into the science of human behavior, largely sort of put on of applying what we know about why people behave the way they do. That whole sort of mechanism is referred to as applied behavior analysis. You take what we know about human behavior and you apply it to different things. Organizational behavior management is, in essence, a branch of applied behavior analysis, but the application is to the workplace, and so what it helps you understand is why do people behave or react in particular ways in the workplace environment, and how can you use that understanding to adjust the environment in a way where they are, literally their behavior is reinforced in line with what the company objectives are, whether it be culturally or related to values or financial outcomes.
Jimmy Chebat:What you're saying is there's a foundation of behavioral science and it's just applied towards organizations. So behavioral science is its own science, and I know that it has a lot of impact on gamification. So tell us a little bit about behavioral science, sure.
Rich Gold:The way I put it, the E equals MC squared of behavior. Science is what's called the ABC model, and what that says is that all behavior and if you're a human being residing on planet Earth, you're subject to this law. Nobody's exempt, no one's exempt from the laws of human behavior. And the fundamental axiom the sort of the E equals MC squared is that all behavior is prompted by something called an antecedent. It's a trigger, it's a prompt, it's something that sets people off, but an antecedent triggers behavior, and all behavior is followed by consequence. So what you come to learn is, first off, there are only four consequences that affect behavior. Two of them have the capability of increasing behavior. Two of them have the capability of increasing behavior. Two of them have the capability of decreasing behavior. But what you come to understand is, very simply behavior is a function of its consequences. An antecedent is necessary to trigger a behavior or get a behavior going, but it's the consequences that determine whether the behavior will continue forth or whether it will stop, based on the consequence at play.
Jimmy Chebat:So give us an example of an antecedent, and then the behavior, and then the consequence.
Rich Gold:Sure, you just recently saw the screen go to the screensaver mode. That was a prompt for a behavior. Yes, you kind of went like this, which was a behavior to say someone's got to fix that, and the consequence was it got fixed. You got what you wanted. In that particular example, you get something you want and your behavior increases. That's the way you address issues like that. That's positive reinforcement. That's the barn boss of all the four consequences.
Jimmy Chebat:So apply that in a work environment. So how does that from an organizational behavior management standpoint give us an example from a work standpoint?
Rich Gold:Yeah, so what I would speak to is the extraordinary power and importance of positive reinforcement in the workplace, and this sort of gets much more deeply into your space, particularly around gaming et cetera, because there's a lot that can be learned by the way gamers operate and that sort of thing.
Jimmy Chebat:Somebody who doesn't submit their work on time Sort of.
Rich Gold:The fundamental objective on the job, in my mind, is to drive higher levels of employee engagement, because, in the end, more highly engaged workforces drive better outcomes for organizations. All else being equal, the organization that builds a culture that drives higher levels of engagement is the one that's going to succeed. So you have to understand how to drive engagement. Or, said another way, which would be more consistent with the scientific parlance, is you want to unleash discretionary effort, and so the two consequences that increase behavior are negative reinforcement and positive reinforcement, and it's really important to understand the difference between the two of them, because, while both have the capability of increasing behavior, they do it in very different ways. Most managers manage by negative reinforcement, and negative reinforcement looks and feels like do it or else. If you don't give me 12 of those by Friday, we're going to have trouble. There's an implied threat that the performer seeks to avoid, thereby producing.
Rich Gold:Most work environments on the planet are driven by negative reinforcement In some ways, simply because managers don't know any better. That's the way they were managed, that's the way they see it on TV, and, worse, they get results when they manage by negative reinforcement. Damn it, you give me 12 by Friday we're going to have a problem. You're going to provide 12. That reinforces the manage by negative reinforcement.
Jimmy Chebat:That reinforces the behavior of negative reinforcement.
Rich Gold:Exactly that's actually called the manager's paradox where negative reinforcing behaviors are positively reinforcing to the person doling out the consequences. So what those managers don't realize is they're leaving an extraordinary amount of production on the table, because positive reinforcement, although similarly is a consequence that drives increases in behavior, it does it in a very different way when negative reinforcement is kind of the curve that is created by have to do. I'll only do enough to stay out of trouble. He's asking me for 12. I'm only going to give him 12 or her 12.
Rich Gold:Positive reinforcement drives people to perform and do things, not because they have to do those things, but because they want to do those things. And so, if you imagine a graph of the two performance over time, negative reinforcement gets people up to a certain level and then they level off because they're never going to give you more than what they have to because they're not motivated to do that, created the ceiling. Positive reinforcement is a whole different curve. It goes way higher than the negative reinforcement curve, because people are giving you what you're asking for because they want to do it, because they know good things are going to happen to them when they do it, and the delta between the negative reinforcement curve and the positive reinforcement curve would be referred to as discretionary effort, that extra effort which is available should people decide they want to put it forth. And so all of my work, for certainly the last half of my career, has been how to unleash that discretionary effort by teaching managers how to more effectively utilize positive reinforcement.
Rich Gold:And positive reinforcement comes in all sorts of shapes and colors. There's social reinforcement, which is as long as the boss maintains their credibility and I talk about that a lot the boss has to always do what he or she says he or she's going to do. That's the essence of trust Always doing what you say you're going to do. The boss remains credible. A pat on the back, a high five, an expression of appreciation by the boss matters. Lots of people think it's all about the money. It's not about the money, recognition, it's about the recognition and reward, and the more immediate that reward is received when the person is performing, the more potent it is. NICC PICC, is that what it is? It's positive, immediate and certain consequences, and negative, immediate and certain consequences are way more potent than anything that's future and uncertain, and that kind of frames out why a paycheck is positive and it's certain, but it's future.
Andrew Reimers:Yeah.
Rich Gold:You know, basically the only thing that a paycheck reinforces is staying on the payroll, yeah Right. But the performer, in the moment that receives that proverbial pat on the back, that expression of appreciation, that recognition, that thing that, uniquely, is positively reinforcing to that performer, those are the things that drive outsized effort, those are the things that get people onto that want to do curve and those are the things that get people to unleash discretionary effort. For you, so immediate is critical.
Andrew Reimers:Immediate is critical and that plays so much into what we're going to be talking about here in a little bit.
Jimmy Chebat:It's a great transition for us here, because I recall the day that you and I met and it started off. I got a phone call from Marnie Levine, who's the president of Launch New York here, and she says hey, would you like to meet with Richard Gold, the president of M&T Bank? And I'm like absolutely I would love to. I'm like why does he want to meet you? She's like I can't tell you exactly why, but I think it's a great opportunity for you, given what you're doing, and so we had a chance to meet. Can you tell me in our audience what prompted you to make that call?
Rich Gold:Yeah, I remember it vividly. So let me just say one thing and then I'll tell the story. So reinforcement comes in all sorts of sizes, shapes and colors. As I said, social reinforcement reinforcement provided from one person to another is predominant. Tangible reinforcement involves me giving you a gift or something, a material in nature, that has the effect of positively reinforcing a certain behavior. Oftentimes, taking those two together, social and tangible reinforcement makes for a great one-two punch to try to drive people to perform at higher levels or the highest levels they're capable.
Rich Gold:The most powerful reinforcement that there is is what's called natural reinforcement. Natural reinforcement comes from the effort of doing the work itself, and to me, this is the essence of gamification. Gamification is building reinforcement into the work to make it so positively reinforcing that people are feverishly doing it, and that's the mission. You want to unleash discretionary effort. You want people to love every minute of what they do.
Rich Gold:So, having said that, I was minding my own business one day and I read a little excerpt in the Buffalo News saying that Launch New York gave an equity infusion to a company called ZIZO Technologies and it's a gamification company and it said a couple of the magic words in that little blur about what you're all about and what you're trying to do with gamification through your efforts, and so I had to meet you because it's right in my wheelhouse. It's everything that I believe is critical, and I think will continue to be critical in work in this country and beyond going forward. So I called Marnie to try to figure out how to track you down, and we wound up having lunch and the rest is kind of history.
Jimmy Chebat:Yeah, and a lot of that. The content from that meeting stuck with me for a very long time because you know we've talked before like I don't have that academic background around behavioral science and you know the education. I just know the practicalness, I know the effectiveness, I know what I'm doing, why I'm doing it, but I don't know the psychology behind it and you provided you know some of that basis for me during that conversation and I remember you know it was like two of us geeking out and riffing off of one another and that helped build this relationship that you and I have, because we can continue talking about it all the time. What were your main takeaways from that meeting? Once you started to understand, you know, kind of, what we're doing here at ZIZO and you know the relationship between that and what you're doing at M&T, what were some of your big takeaways?
Rich Gold:Yeah, Well, it reaffirmed a couple of things. I'm very fortunate in my travels at M&T to come across one person in particular who we've talked about, dr Aubrey C Daniels, who is widely believed in the field of clinical psychology and behavior science, the father of organizational behavior management and through that really chance introduction back in probably 2001, I went on this road of seeking to understand the science of human behavior. Why is it that people behave the way they do? And I've had a long run of research and understanding and self-teaching the science and what I found along the journey is it's really helpful to have that foundation because now you can put labels and tags and terminology behind what we see every day, because everywhere we go we see behavior, we're surrounded by it. Behaviors are simply the things that people say and do, and understanding how to work that into an equation to try to get more of the behavior you want and less of the behavior you don't want is an incredibly critical thing for anyone on this planet in order to effectively operate. Can I?
Jimmy Chebat:ask you a quick question Is that a form of manipulation? Have you heard that term? When you understand behavior and understand how to kind of move people into the direction that you want them to, would you consider that manipulation, or is that more influence?
Rich Gold:Yeah, well, it might be influence, but I will tell you. I mean, B. F Skinner had a rough time of it in the late 50s, 60s, 70s. The man was brilliant, but in those days, as behavior science was becoming organized as a true science, people were really worried and concerned about the so-called coercive nature of it. You're, you're secretly operating. It's operant conditioning is what it is, so people would believe that you were secretly operating on someone to manipulate them into doing what you want them to do. There's, I suppose it could be that way. If you're doing it in secret, yeah, or maliciously or maliciously for some untort purpose. But once you understand the power of positive reinforcement to give people what they want and in return, drive them to do more of what's needed across a whole spectrum of things, it's an open system. Yeah, it's not like I'm secretly working on you. At M&T, for example, we work really hard to make sure that everyone in the company understood the core foundation of why people behave the way they do, because everyone can benefit by understanding it, and so you know.
Jimmy Chebat:That's the distinction we have a saying here that part of our objective is to align the organization with its employees and align the goals of both, and we leverage the organizational goals to build our reward distribution matrix for the employees.
Jimmy Chebat:And by doing that and using the game mechanics that we do, you're engaging them more, You're giving them a sense of purpose and what's happening is they're more engaged in the work that they're doing, they're driven by the work that they're doing, they're staying longer, they're producing more and all of a sudden they're both aligned. And so I mean exactly what you just said is what we say in a different way, and I remember the statement you said it's like Jimmy, we do the same things but we take different roles. We get to the same end, right. So gamification, organizational behavior, management are related, but we just haven't kind of connected those dots. I want to come back to gamification, but first I want to talk about your experience with M&T Bank and when you, you know what first led you to say I need to start incorporating what I learned both in college and, you know, continue to learn ongoing to implement this at M&T Sure.
Rich Gold:The way you set up work here and what your business sets out to do is perfect, because you can't coerce people if they're not forced to stay with you. So you set up a corporate objective and you build the mechanisms against the activities and behaviors that you need to see from your people in order to achieve those objectives. People buy in or they don't. If they buy in, they earn the fruits and benefits of their efforts through all sorts of reinforcement techniques. If they don't buy in, they go somewhere else and hopefully find a place where the vision is such that they do buy in. So there's nothing coercive about it.
Jimmy Chebat:No, and to one point and I think we discussed this in one of our previous episodes the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic. Yes, that you can leverage extrinsic motivators to turn it into an intrinsic motivator. Once you become passionate about what you're doing, then you no longer need the extrinsic, it becomes intrinsic.
Rich Gold:This is. You know, we probably need a four-day podcast. But, we'll bring you back. This is the essence of an important scientific term in behavior science called shaping. At first you have to socially reinforce or tangibly reinforce behaviors to get people up a learning curve to a point where they master what they're being asked to do and it becomes naturally reinforcing there's that word again and when the work carries that much reinforcement, it doesn't take a lot to shape them up the curve to get them to that point and then from that point they're working feverishly because they're loving every minute of it, because it's exciting. And this sort of gets back to the question you asked me about that first meeting that we had, and what was amazing to me is that we were able to have a conversation that lasted well longer than the lunch that we scheduled about this stuff, coming from two different angles, and we parted ways, exchanging books. I shared with you Bringing Out the Best in People, which is all about the astonishing power of positive reinforcement, written by Dr Daniels. You shared with me, R reality is Broken, written by Jane McGonigal, all about gamers and gaming and the construct, and it was extraordinary because I read that book and I saw so much about what I know to be true from behavior science, without the author ever really citing the science, because she was coming at it from everything that she knew from a career in gaming to get people to feverishly perform, perform. And she was asking the questions that are very rightfully asked about how do we take the ability of games to drive people and their performance through the roof? What if we apply that to the real world problems and get our brightest minds in this country feverishly working to solve those problems? So it's not that people who spend 40 hours a week gaming. You know that's not what's broken.
Rich Gold:Her point is what's broken is that the rest of society doesn't carry enough positive reinforcement to draw that capability, that feverish dedication to a task, into matters that matter more than playing a game. I love it, gamification, kind of. That's what it is. It's taking everything we know about getting people to feverishly respond with great enthusiasm to a job, a task, a task at hand. And that's what drew me to you, that's what I took away from our meeting and that's what made me so excited about, you know, our ongoing relationship.
Jimmy Chebat:Yeah, our paths, you know, crossing I I think was very meaningful for me in my journey and it's the tail end of your career, but I know that you're still, you're still teaching, you're still doing things to help spread the word, and I'd love and we're going to get into the intersection, you know, later in this episode between the two and what we think the future is. But going back, you know, to your experience at M&T, what first led you to wanting to implement OBM.
Rich Gold:Yeah. So it's a good story. At one point and I give M&T so much credit and the culture to this day is stronger because of the journey we were on. Back in 2001, the company did its very first employee engagement survey and one of the findings from that survey was that nobody in the company thought we did a good job of people performance management. If you were a high performer, you resented the fact that there was no differentiation in the way you were being recognized versus your peers. If you were a lower performer, you resented the fact that no one invested any time or energy in helping you be better. You know you were. You just were languishing. And so, whether you were a high performer or low performer, you were thinking this place doesn't get it. They. You know we are not effectively managing performance, and I was asked, along with six of my colleagues at the time, to lead a, an initiative to try to quote unquote fix the performance management problem at the bank, and that process began by looking at the annual performance appraisal process and figuring out how to rewrite the form A and B. Teach managers how to be more candid in their end of year conversation. In retrospect, it's the dumbest thing ever because it's future uncertain. You know, as opposed to the PICC, you know the PICC, which is immediate and certain. And just by happenstance I mean you know you got to be lucky in this life I got solicited from a company called Aubrey Daniels International to attend a seminar called something like Managing People for Maximum Performance. It was being held in Cambridge in Massachusetts and the group of us decided to go to the seminar and see if there was anything more to the performance management challenges than rewriting the appraisal form. And I got introduced to Dr Daniels, which created a 20-something year relationship. The guy's unbelievable, he's impacted me. So you know so much. And we walked away from there saying holy crap, I mean it's. This is not. Performance management is not an annual thing, it's an all the time thing. All the time. You get that, gamers get that. The reinforcers coming out of any sort of game environment are thousands and thousands a second. You know you get that. And so that changed my whole trajectory and we got to a point where we began to introduce the principles of OBM people performance management. We call bank precision leadership at the bank across the bank leadership at the bank across the bank. And because there weren't consequences in place across the bank for people to take it on. Some people were self-motivated and took it on and some people sort of didn't. And over time, what you saw in the bank is, generally speaking, the areas that embraced precision leadership excelled. They tended to attract the better managers, the better performers. The culture was stronger it was palpable that it was stronger in those areas, and then other areas in the bank not so much. Some of those areas began to ask questions about how do they do it? Why is it going so well over there? And many areas of the bank began to gravitate to the science and to embrace precision leadership.
Rich Gold:And at bank\ point where I retired something like I don't the bank were working in areas that operated based on the principles of OBM or precision leadership. And we're at the point now where anyone in the company who is entrusted with the responsibility to manage others someone hired from the outside into a managerial role or someone who's promoted from within they have to go through sort of a two-day class in precision leadership to teach them the fundamentals of why people do what they do. Not all of them do it. Some of them just pay it lip service. But what you see is the ones that understand it, the ones that have figured out how to use it, to build operating frameworks on the job, specifically designed to bring out the best in what people have to offer, to reinforce the right behaviors that will drive the outcomes that that particular area is looking for. Those are the leaders that are emerging and excelling in our organization.
Jimmy Chebat:So you had a natural A-B test, Like the intent was to deploy it globally through the organization. But there are some people and we've experienced it when we're working with new clients as well Some people embrace it and some people don't. And then when leadership kind of sees one area is doing much better, is performing at a high level, like what's going on here, and realize like, oh, you're not using this tool, Well, why wouldn't you right, If it's effective? And again that curiosity is like well, what are you doing different?
Rich Gold:Well, I'm doing what we've started to implement. It's never been in our DNA to mandate anything. That's just not the way the culture at M&T was wired. But it is very much the way you say if something works, it sticks and it lasts, and I know you know this. It's very unusual that any management framework introduced into an organization can survive 23 years. Yeah, it says it all Right, Because they come and go Right, Different leadership changes and they bring in a different thing, but somehow precision leadership again as we call it at M&T has survived for 23 years.
Jimmy Chebat:That says it all. You said it at the beginning of this episode, and I use this as well where human behavior is universal, Nobody's exempt. Nobody's exempt, and that's kind of what keeps this working. So long is that, unless human behavior changes, this is always going to work.
Rich Gold:The key is you really it takes work right Because you're changing behavior. When you introduce a framework for operating that's steeped in behaviors that focus on positive reinforcement and you're introducing that framework into an organization again it's most every organization on the planet that has largely operated on the principles of negative reinforcement You're changing behavior. Changing behavior is hard because you've got to remove the reinforcement for the old behavior and introduce positive reinforcement for the new behavior, and you've got to stay with it as you again shape people up that curve to the point where they're fluent at what you're asking them to do.
Jimmy Chebat:Speaking of changing behavior, we've experienced quite a bit of change over the last decade, and probably more so over the last four years. You know, once COVID hit and the pandemic your experience over let's just take the past five years. I personally have seen a shift considerably over. You know the past, probably seven, eight years and there's a lot of change in the world. You know a new generational workforce, rising wages, the gig economy, the pandemic which drove work from home. What is your take about the outside influence in shaping behavior and between all of the things that I just talked about, whether it's the new generation raised on technology or rising wages, how does that impact behavior and how has it impacted M&T's culture?
Rich Gold:Yeah, yeah, I mean I probably I can speak, probably more broadly than just even M&T, I'll tell you. I mean, in the last five years the pandemic has had an enormous effect that it's going to be a long time before something else comes along, that sort of changes, the momentum that was created by that whole experience, by that whole experience Remote work. Let me back up a second. Generations have their own thing. Every generation does, and this generation that is coming of age now they have their own sets of reinforcers. That's okay, right To your point.
Rich Gold:No one is exempt from the laws of behavior, and so the challenge of leaders is to understand what's uniquely reinforcing to really individuals but you know, sometimes flocks of universe or groups of individuals, and what's uniquely reinforcing to them. Reinforcing to them, what's reinforcing to people today is so radically different in many ways to what was reinforcing to me when I was a kid. You know, it's just, I was all about you work hard and good things will happen, and you feel a sense of personal accountability and you wear that on your sleeve and good things happen. Today, more people are looking for balance. They were, you know, incredibly affected by the pandemic, maybe very personally in terms of, you know, losing people they care about, or just the shock of the whole thing to the system and the sense of vulnerability that that might have created. The reinforcers have changed Hard work for a lot of people, doesn't? It doesn't measure up anymore. Balance is what's important. So there are two challenges, I think, in particular that have emerged over the last five years. One is no different, which is understanding reinforcers and creating frameworks that seize the opportunity to reinforce the right behaviors necessary to make progress. That's always been the case. It's unique now, but it was unique when I was a kid too and whatever. You got to figure that out.
Rich Gold:The other thing is remote work, and it gets back to everything sort of. We've been tapping at my thing at M&T and my commitment to OBM and my reasons for teaching it for the last 11 years at UB in the MBA program is because people, for instance, people coming out of MBA programs. They know a lot of technical stuff. They understand accounting or finance or marketing or human resources from a managerial perspective, but they don't have a lick of meaningful training on how to bring out the best in the people that they are ultimately going to be responsible for sometime in their career. People need to understand that when you're placed in that position, everything changes. You alluded to it. Most managers today were tapped on the shoulder because they were fantastic individual contributors and someone said congratulations, you're a great videographer. And now you're going to manage a group of videographers and on that day the person's role has changed immeasurably. But they never get a lick of training in terms of what to do about it. So it's hard enough for managers that don't receive that training to bring out the best in the people they're entrusted with when the people they're responsible for are right in front of them.
Rich Gold:You introduce remote work and the notion that people are working all over the place. There's no sense of cohesiveness. The manager's responsibility is impossible without any sort of training in terms of why people behave the way they do, because now they've got to figure out how to set direction, how to measure results and activities that lead to the results, how to provide feedback, which most every manager sucks at to begin with, and then how to use that feedback to carry positive reinforcement for the behaviors that are required. People don't know how to do that because managers carry positive reinforcement for the behaviors that are required. People don't know how to do that, because managers never get trained in that, and that's what made me so passionate.
Rich Gold:For M&T's sake was to teach managers how to bring out the best in their people by providing good direction, appropriate feedback, leveraging positive reinforcement in the right ways and get better results. And M&T prides itself on the outstanding results we've gotten over long periods of time relative to our peers, and I attribute it to this kind of stuff. So now here we are in this remote world. Good luck. Companies that don't understand at all how to teach their managers how to effectively manage, they're going to be lost forever. Productivity is out the roof. Productivity doesn't have to automatically go away because people are working remotely, but if they gamify the work, if they make the work more naturally reinforcing and teach a manager how to come in over the top with social reinforcement and the pats on the back and the feedback necessary to make people better and better, you're going to get better outcomes, and the companies that figure that out are going to be the ones that succeed. The others are going to languish.
Jimmy Chebat:You know I use the term traditional management styles and just during this conversation I realized you had already defined what is traditional management style, which is negative reinforcement. And you know my next question was going to be do you feel that traditional management styles have become outdated and I think you had realized that a long time ago and the modern style is positive reinforcement is to maximize, and so we talked earlier about Bill Belichick, one of the probably the greatest coach of all time, and he you could just tell by his demeanor and his reputation that he's one way. If you don't like it, there's a door right. Very negative reinforcement and this younger generation that's coming into the NFL. They just don't respond.
Jimmy Chebat:I don't think I mean human nature just doesn't respond well, like you said, it just gets to a certain point. But generationally speaking, I think we become less tolerant. You know, with this newer generation and people seeing more of the impact of positive reinforcement. So you know if, looking at negative reinforcement, do you feel like it needs to go away, it's going to go away, that people are going to start embracing more of the positive reinforcement.
Rich Gold:Yeah. So it's a great question and the answer actually is no. The four consequences which we didn't get into. But positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement serve to increase behavior. Most people think positive and negative reinforcement are opposites. If you want to get more from someone, you provide positive reinforcement. If you want to get less from someone, you apply negative reinforcement. Scientifically that's not the case. Positive and negative reinforcement are the same. They both get behavior. Punishment and penalty are the two consequences that stop behavior. We don't have to get into the discussion on those for these purposes. But all four consequences are manifest in everywhere you look and are necessary, and so they're tools and you got to figure out which tool you need for which purpose.
Rich Gold:Negative reinforcement could be a very powerful antecedent. Negative reinforcement can get a behavior going Because if I say to you listen, man, if you don't start producing we're going to have a problem, you'll start producing, but you'll only produce enough to stay out of trouble. I have to be an orchestrator. I have to understand that I might use negative reinforcement to say, hey, you come in late one more time, we're going to have trouble. Or if you don't produce six by the end of the week, there's going to be trouble. That's an antecedent to prompt you to behave or to perform in a certain way. The minute I see you starting to move more towards where I need you to be, I got to switch to positive reinforcement. I got to jump you onto that other curve, because I know that I can get more from you once I jump to that curve than if I just continue beating you on the head to make sure that you give me that minimum compliance. So you're an orchestrator.
Jimmy Chebat:You got to know when to use both tools. You got to know when to use both tools.
Rich Gold:You got to know when to use both. And for someone who's not performing, or if somebody is, you just need minimum compliance, like coming in on time. You might use negative reinforcement but in almost all instances negative reinforcement gets the behavior going but positive reinforcement keeps the behavior going. But positive reinforcement keeps the behavior going and you want to make that switch. I think you know certain coaches like Belichick. It's hard to argue with the track record. The results are, you know have been unbelievable, but probably manages to your point way more towards the negative reinforcement. You know over usage of negative reinforcement. Probably not a guy that's patting people on the back. I suspect the rare times that he said to someone you kicked ass out there, it mattered incredibly. He probably took it too far and probably didn't adjust his style to the changing nature of wants and needs and desires of you know players today and maybe that's what his undoing was. And you know desires of you know players today and maybe that's what his undoing was. And you know maybe his, you know his really just his inability to be flexible maybe led to his undoing and it presents an interesting question in the field of you know sort of behavior science. I mean you what we say what I say and what many have said at M&T and I'm sure people say this the results you get are only as interesting to me as how you got them.
Rich Gold:You don't want to get results in immoral, illegal, unethical ways or ways that are not consistent with your values. Your corporate values have to matter, and so when you celebrate results, values have to matter. And so when you celebrate results, it's hard for me to imagine a scenario where you're celebrating results for results sake. I don't care here's a trophy or whatever. How you did it matters, because how you did it speaks to the replicability of those results over long periods of time, and sustainability for any organization is absolutely crucial. So you bring someone in who kicks everyone's ass for a year and drives performance up to the next curve. That's fine, but then, when that oppressive presence is removed from the workplace, the performance just sinks again. You want to build sustainability, and what I know and I think what you know is that positive reinforcement drives sustainable results, and that's what you're after.
Jimmy Chebat:Absolutely. I want to shift gears a little bit, but on the same kind of path. Technology, right and you know what we were just talking about really requires the human element, right, and where somebody's reinforcing positive behavior or using that negative reinforcement, you know, to affect behavior for a short term before again switching gears, so you always have a person, a human being, orchestrating, right, technology is coming in. How do you, what are your thoughts on using technology to be the orchestrator, at least part of it right?
Rich Gold:Yeah, my own view is technology has the capability of unleashing all the potential that behavior science teaches us is there in terms of identifying the behaviors that are necessary and additive to the cause and reinforcing those behaviors and marginalizing the behaviors that are detrimental or not additive to the cause. People are scared and there's a notion of we're going to dehumanize the system if we rely too much on technology. Technology is an enabler. Nothing in my mind, nothing, will ever replace the extraordinary power of you taking a walk down the hall and visiting with one of your people and saying I just heard what you did on that call with that particular client. You kicked ass. I can't thank you enough. Nothing's ever going to replace that. Technology will enable you to maybe do that more efficiently from time to time, but if you rely only on technology to throw out an email or throw out a text to express your appreciation, you will minimize the extraordinary power you have as a credible leader, because your presence, your voice, your persona matters and you don't want to reduce that to. You know. Digital means, yeah, but there are opportunities to augment your capability to flood your system with positive reinforcement by leveraging technology, and in your business is where it's, you know, by leveraging technology and in your business is where it's you know it's a grand slam home run, because you can create a level of natural reinforcement in the work that is necessary for the cause. That is not. You're not able to do it without technology, and so you, embracing technology in essence gamifying the work, making it as reinforcing and addictive as we know video games can be is going to unleash a level of discretionary effort that most organizations have only ever dreamed of, and the ones that understand it.
Rich Gold:And next time some organization is doing a systems upgrade or whatever, the first question they should ask is how do we gamify the work through this effort? What is it? When we upgrade to this accounting package or whatever the heck it is? How do we build in the proverbial bells and whistles that create natural reinforcement for people to do the work that we know has to be done in order for this company to be successful? That's the question they should be asking every time there's an opportunity to embrace new or upgraded technology or what have you?
Rich Gold:Technology is going to unleash this, and what's going to happen is, I believe, it's going to create haves and have nots. The haves are the ones that have figured out. If we're going to bring out the best that our people have to offer, then we need to reinforce behavior and we need to explore every way to do that. And technology is my best friend. The others are. We got to spend all this money, we got to figure out how to you know how to keep up with the Joneses, but they'll never actually master the secret sauce, which is all about bringing out the best in people and using what we know about human behavior to do it.
Jimmy Chebat:I've been saying that to every one of our prospects every time. But I have a belief that technology buys you time, exactly what you just said. It allows you to replicate and unleash right, maximize what your intent is across the entire workforce, as opposed to one or two or three people, because, as an executive, you know we're tasked with. We wear so many different hats, right, and you know we can't be responsible for going to every single individual and recognizing them, and especially when you talk about immediately, right. So you know using technology to do that. It isn't a replacement, but it's definitely a way to scale that behavior. I want to touch real briefly on AI. I don't want to go too deep because I know that this could be an entire episode in itself and there's a large belief system that AI is dangerous. It could be replacing humans, and what are your thoughts on AI and replacing a big chunk of the workforce?
Rich Gold:Yeah, well, I'm glad I'm retiring because there's going to be a sea change in the world and AI is going to bring it on and in the end, ai is going to bring it on, and you know it's in the end and AI is going to, you know is is going to drive that sea change. Uh, like other sea changes that that you know have happened over the generations, um, before it. You know, in the end, when you keep peeling back the layers of discussion, for me it's a tool, just like you know the chisel when it was invented. I mean, it is a tool. It is a tool. It's a really powerful one and used effectively, it's going to do great things. Used poorly, it's going to create great trouble, just like any tool, a gun, you know you pick it.
Rich Gold:But I do believe that in the workplace it will change the nature of many areas of work and the challenge is going to be to do it in a way where people feel liberated to do different things, or more of what they like to do and less of what they don't like to do, which you know in my parlance, is great.
Rich Gold:I mean it's positively reinforcing if someone comes to you and says, listen, we're going to start using this AI-based tool and it's going to allow you to do all of this, which I know you love to do, and it's going to do all this crap for you. The stuff that was, you know, punishing to do to use that one of the other consequences, the stuff that was punishing for you to do, doesn't have to be done anymore, so you're going to be liberated to do more of this. Now, is there going to be a change in the dynamic and structure of work, and will jobs change and maybe some jobs go away and new jobs be created? Probably, I mean, that's the way it's always been. So you know and there's no reason to believe that we're on some acceleration curve that there's going to be, you know, gajillions of people out of work and you know robots are going to be doing all the work. I mean I don't know.
Rich Gold:It's scary, easing into the pool from the shallow end, we're less likely to drown. You know we'll figure out that transition. And again to our earlier conversation, the companies that get it will use it as a vehicle for positive reinforcement. You know they'll engage the workforce. Tell me what are the things that you do that really add to the cause and what are the things you do that you think are just, you know, meaningless or, you know, menial, to say the least. Let's figure out how to use AI to allow you to amplify this stuff and do less of that stuff. That is a recipe for creating more natural reinforcement in the work. It's, you know, sort of another way of gamifying the work, making it more naturally reinforcing.
Jimmy Chebat:I think you have it right there, which the people who figure it out, who leverage technology for the positive and maximize positive reinforcement to continue to keep the workforce working, because I mean, I don't think any society can afford to have an idle human population. It's never done anything positive. I want to circle back here to gamification, and you know you've been kind of sprinkling it throughout the conversation here about your beliefs in what gamification is. But for our audience, if you can kind of tie it up and wrap it up, what is gamification from your perspective, sure.
Rich Gold:So positive reinforcement is the tool for unleashing discretionary effort. It is the vehicle by which an organization can create outsized production, accomplish whatever outcomes they're looking for. The most powerful kind of positive reinforcement known to the science is natural reinforcement, the reinforcement that comes from doing the work, doing the tasks that are required of you define. Gamification is injecting more natural reinforcement into work that needs to be done, making that work more fun. And what in gamification? Takes everything we know about video games and the incredible lure of them, because there are, I think, by some counts I don't know 10,000 reinforcers, a second in some video games. It's crazy, it's absolutely crazy. Figure out why really capable people are spending 40 hours a week doing that. And take just a piece of it and inject it into the work to make the work a little bit more like that and you'll get people producing at high rates and creating great levels of output because it's fun. And gamification is, in essence, making the work fun.
Jimmy Chebat:Our ideal customer profile is we target frontline workers that do repeated tasks day in, day out. They're mundane, they're not really intrinsically motivating and your point here is to take that task that's really where people get burnt out pretty quickly doing it and turn it into a natural reinforcer. Make it fun. Make it fun. Does it have a future in the workforce management?
Rich Gold:Absolutely In my mind, everything we've talked about in terms of the future of work and AI and all those sorts of elements of our discussion, the companies that get that, because the one thing about the generation that's coming up into the workforce and is already there, quite frankly, I mean, you know, my kids grew up on video games. You know Call of Duty and all of that they're in the workforce. Yep, you know that wasn't me. I mean you of duty and all of that they're in the workforce. That wasn't me. I got a birthday card one year from my assistant, barb. You might know this. These guys probably would never Remember the wooden paddle with the rubber band and the ball.
Jimmy Chebat:Yeah, the paddle ball.
Rich Gold:It's a kid holding the paddle and the rubber band is extended and the balls on the ground and the caption says is this all it does? Right, you've got to recognize that people in the workplace have. They have a comparative Like. I know what fun looks like. I'm addicted to Pokemon Go. My behavior gravitates to that.
Rich Gold:When I'm not feeling reinforced by what's going on, in whatever condition I'm in, I sort of fire that up and I'm doing this on the side. I know what's reinforcing to me and kids know that came up on video gaming. They know what reinforcement feels like because they lived it. And so if you don't put it here, you're not going to get everything you could get and it's not. You know, to your earlier question, it's not coercive. Make the freaking work fun, people will do it. If you don't make it fun, they're not going to do it and you're going to either performance manage them out and spend money hiring another one, and then you get into this churn, you know or they're going to quit and go somewhere where the work is more rewarding and that gamification is a key part and will be going forward. The companies that get it will make the work more fun.
Rich Gold:Now, that doesn't exempt leaders and influences in an organization to make sure they're doling out social reinforcement and flooding the system with social reinforcement. The more reinforcement the better. But if the work itself is naturally reinforcing you said it earlier you can't get to every one of your people all the time. You've got to intermittently reinforce behavior when you see it. So you could use some help. So you need to build a system where peers are reinforcing each other. Nice game, you know God, you hit that level. You know that's great. You're creating social reinforcement because of the natural reinforcement in the work itself. So you think about an environment where the work is naturally reinforcing. Everyone knows what success looks like and you create the system where they're positively reinforcing each other and you show up and you make the rounds and you dole out reinforcement from the boss. You've got a system where people are willing to walk through walls for you. And that's what it's about. It's unleashing discretionary effort, getting people to walk through walls.
Jimmy Chebat:I wanted to share a feature that ties into exactly what you're just talking about here. Again, we haven't released it yet, we're working on it, but we have this peer-to-peer recognition where we have a newsfeed that informs everybody about the different events and successes that their peers have had. Rich has just broke his own personal best. That's on a newsfeed. Jimmy just won this contest and in that you have the ability to click the heart button. So we're leveraging mechanics from social media, from video games, from different aspects that's recognizable by the peers. And we actually have a gifting where you can give each other coins, like for participating in a collaborative contest, and maybe you're the biggest contributor to the contest.
Jimmy Chebat:So the new feature that we're having is creating a separation or a differentiator between the hearts, whether it's the size, the shape, the color, so it represents different levels of leadership. So if you see regular hearts, it's just your traditional red, and then, if it's from your direct manager, your direct report, it's a little bit bigger, maybe a deeper red, and if it's from the director or executive level, it gets increasingly more bigger or different color differentiator. And again, we talk about how we leverage technology to scale. Where now I, instead of having to walk to different buildings and different offices and different, and trying to locate people I can see who needs that recognition and click a button and on their screen in real time to get those hearts. How do you feel about that? I mean?
Rich Gold:it's perfectly aligned with everything I know about the science of human behavior. There's a quote from Napoleon. He once said people will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon. Right, he figured out that recognition, as you know, materially meaningless as a cut piece of ribbon becomes a metal when you pin it on a soldier's you know epaulet or a lapel. And a soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon. And you know that's the meddling system in in the military. Yeah, and to be able to earn higher. You know, everyone knows what that distinction looks like and it creates this extraordinary amount of pure reinforcement. And so I think that feature is perfectly aligned and it's fabulous.
Rich Gold:In my class at UB, one of the things when we're teaching, when we're talking about reinforcement, the sort of the gradients, the relative strength of reinforcers Manager reinforcement is strong as long as the manager maintains his or her credibility. The more important thing for the manager is that the manager can arrange reinforcement in the system. And the smart managers understand when I pat someone on the back, it means a lot, but when I get peers to pat each other on the back, it means more. And in fact, peer reinforcement is more powerful, more impactful than the manager reinforcing and think about why that is. From the time we were little kids, we were influenced by peer pressure. Our individual patterns of reinforcement over long periods of time are designed to please the people, the group we're hanging out with. So peer reinforcement is really powerful and the smart leaders and smart managers of organizations create ways to allow peers to reinforce each other. All you've done to your previous question is you're leveraging technology to make it a lot easier to provide distinction among peers. It's beautiful. It's exactly what you should be doing.
Jimmy Chebat:I didn't know that peer recognition is more powerful than your manager direct manager's recognition. That's really interesting.
Rich Gold:Natural reinforcement is most powerful and that's why I'm hooked on you and gamification. But natural reinforcement is the most difficult to implement. There's systems upheaval, you've got to spend more money, et cetera. But manager and peer reinforcement are relatively easy to sort of contain and create and if you've got the good fortune of being able to overlay technology to enable that, you know you got a winning formula.
Jimmy Chebat:Finally, I want to kind of wrap this up into a nice bow and you know, talk about. You know, given all of your experiences, your expertise, your knowledge of operational management, you know your understanding of behavioral science, human behavior, technology we talked a little bit about that what do you see the future of work looking like? I know we've been talking about it this whole time, but if you were to kind of put it into a nice bow tie, a nice bow ribbon on this, what do you see the future of work as yeah, you know it's a critical question and I know we have been sort of dancing around it a bit.
Rich Gold:I don't know that, by and large, the days of everybody aggregating in one space, all doing the same work, managed by one manager, I don't know whether work ever looks like that again. You know agile approaches to work create. You know teams which are perfect for leveraging peer reinforcement, and I suspect that remote work will, you know, will be with us to some extent. So you know the groups that are working in any organization are going to be a little bit more spread to the winds. I think there's going to be a lot more reliance on technology to keep everyone connected, and so for me, the future of work is I think you asked the question about sort of managerial hierarchy Is it outdated and all of that?
Rich Gold:And you know, and it damn well might be, or is getting there, and manager is going to have to learn how to create systems that reinforce the right behaviors and punish the wrong behaviors, you know, so that the system is operating effectively and in that regard, the manager is just playing a role.
Rich Gold:They're not, in essence, superior, like I hate the notion of superior, subordinate, which people talk about in traditional managerial terms, the manager's got to be more of a coach and an enabler, and they got to see their role as that, and so the role of the manager is going to be to enable the team to succeed.
Rich Gold:And the role of the manager therefore has got to be how do I make sure we got the right behaviors going and how do I reinforce the crap out of those and allow the system to self-perpetuate? I think it's going to be a lot more of that than managing time schedules and people are late and I'm the boss and what I say goes, and negative reinforcement has been reinforcing to me my whole career and I'll stay at it. I think that all goes on the back shelf. And again, as we've talked about, I think, the companies that understand the power of technology to unleash discretionary effort, because it becomes a vehicle for allowing for more reinforcement to flood the system, those are the systems that will prevail and those are not hierarchical systems. I think they're more team systems, with someone who feels like a coach and an enabler as opposed to you know, I'm the boss.
Jimmy Chebat:You know I want to borrow I have borrowed a term from realities broken from Jane McConnickle, and use it, implemented it into kind of her vision, which is that we want to modernize workforce management, we want to change managers into happiness engineers. And it's exactly what you just talked about just now, which is look, shift the role, stop about. You know, of course there's gotta be role, of course there's got to be scheduling, there's got to be maybe some sort of reporting. But if you focus on the behaviors, if you focus on positive reinforcement how to make your staff happier through this science, this human behavior that we just talked about during this whole episode you're going to maximize, you're going to get that natural reinforcement and you're going to get that, you know, the performance you're looking for and help meet the business objectives.
Rich Gold:Yeah, I'm with you, I mean honestly, from the time we first met and exchanged books. You read Bringing Out the Best in People by Aubrey Daniels and Reality is Broken by Jane McGonigal, and you sort of merge those together in your thinking You've got the basis for how to run a successful company in the world going forward.
Jimmy Chebat:Beautiful. We dove deep into organizational behavior management. You know the synergy with gamification, how human behavior and behavioral science plays into that. Thank you for sharing your experience and you know your thoughts and your insights. I hope to have you back again. I think we can probably have like three or four more episodes in here. Rich, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you with us today diving deep into the intricacies of organizational behavior management and its synergy with gamification. Your insights, from the front lines banking to the academic arena, provided a unique lens through which we can view the future of workforce management To our listeners. Thank you for tuning in. Remember, as we've learned today, the key to future-proofing our workplace and keeping engagement high involves embracing change and leveraging technological advancements to maximize positive reinforcement, which will hopefully lead to the most powerful type of reinforcement natural reinforcement. So keep pushing the boundaries and thinking outside the box lead to the most powerful type of reinforcement natural reinforcement. So keep pushing the boundaries and thinking outside the box. Join us next time for another engaging episode. Until then, it's game time.
