The Amygdala Hijack

It’s Monday morning.  You’re riding in the bike lane trying to get to work, checking over your shoulder for trucks coming up from behind.  Out of nowhere a car backs out of a driveway on the right.  Before you can think, you’ve already darted into the traffic lane and steered around the rampaging commuter.

Fortunately, there was nobody racing from behind and you didn’t get hit.  Now you can quickly swerve back into the bike lane.  Before you can collect your thoughts, your body has sweated though your clothes even on this cold morning.  “How did I survive that?” you think, after your heartrate returns to normal.

The answer is that you have your amygdala to thank.  Your amygdala sensed danger and instantly flipped you into fight or flight mode.  Your amygdala hijacked your body, bypassed your logical brain, and steered you to safety much more quickly than if your logical brain had been in charge.

The amygdala appeared early in evolution, long before primates, and was instrumental in the survival of humans in prehistoric times.  If you were walking in the savanna with your tribe and a lion appeared, stopping to think through all the options was counter-productive.  You needed to act NOW.

Why talk about the amygdala in a blog about Quality?

In the modern world fight or flight situations are rare.  The premium on CORRECT decisions is much higher now than on QUICK.  When workers encounter anomalies, we want them to think LOGICALLY rather than quickly because the penalty for wrong decisions is high.

That being the case, then one would think that modern corporations would be exploring every avenue to make workers feel safe.  WELL, IF THEY ARE, THEY’RE DOING A POOR JOB.

Here are the numbers from LiveCareer:

• 87% of respondents have fears that affect their professional life.
• Fear isn’t linked to political affiliation. Overall, Independent, Democrat and Republican-leaning respondents all had the same incidence of fears affecting their work, 87%.
• Employees of larger companies [>500] felt less fear that those of smaller companies
• 81% would turn down their dream job if it involved facing their biggest fear or phobia.

Why, then, do workplaces allow fear to reign?

Most likely it’s a combination of three reasons.  Management doesn’t know:

1. How much fear exists in their organizations,
2. How damaging fear is to the organization, or
3. How to drive fear out of the organization.

I have written before in this space about the damage that fear does to quality and how managers can drive fear out.  Refer to those articles and their links to find out how to address items 2 & 3 above.

Many managers, however, have no clue how much fear exists within the organization, item #1.  Here is a checklist you can use to measure yourself. 

• High turnover
• Poor communication between employees and managers or employees themselves
• Harassment and bullying
• Favoritism and cliques
• Micromanagement
• Unfair compensation
• Lack of recognition
• Unequal application of company policies
• Frequent absenteeism
• Negative office politics, incessant talk of who's up / down
• Unequal workload management
• Poor work-life balance
• Messengers get shot
• Numbers rule.  Daily goals reign supreme.
• Managers talk about collaboration and out-of-the-box thinking but no one takes them seriously
• Following rules and avoiding blame are everyone's top priorities
• Promotions go to the ones who most wholeheartedly embrace the fear-based culture
• Innovation is slow because workers fear taking calculated risks

If you see more than 5 of these symptoms, your product quality is suffering and so is your P&L statement.  You are throwing money away.

My colleague, Jeff Veyera, and I are writing a book, THE FEARLESS WORKPLACE.  In it we collect our years of experience in quality and process management to give you a step by step approach to change the culture in your organization.

How about you?  Do you have a similar story?  What has worked best for you?  Comment below.