Devoted to Managers and those that seek to improve their management skills

I read an article by Kathy Sierra today that started by asking the question: Do you keep checking your email even when you don't need to?

She goes on to quote a couple of quotes from articles talking about intermittant reinforcement:

"The interesting thing that Skinner discovered about intermittant reinforcement and maybe one of Skinner's most important discoveries was that behavior that is reinforced intermittantly is much more difficult to extinguish than behavior that is reinforced continuously."

Than goes on to talk about relating it to email:

Patricia Wallace, a techno-psychologist,...believes part of the allure of e-mail--for adults as well as teens--is similar to that of a slot machine. "You have intermittent, variable reinforcement," she explains. "You are not sure you are going to get a reward every time or how often you will, so you keep pulling that handle."

Now I've brought all of this up to connect it to our management styles. Are you one that measures the output of your employees' intermittantly or continuously? Do you know what that question is asking? It is asking if you micromanage.

Think of it from the perspective of losing weight. Anybody that decides to do something in this area, is always told to not measure themselves everyday. This results in a wild swing in emotions and discouragement as it is not an accurate predictor of really is going on with you goal.

The same is true of projects you may be in charge of. Do you come in every half hour to see what the progress is? Maybe it's only every hour. Every two hours. The point is that your employees are the equivalent of watching your scale if you're measuring weight loss, and getting on that emotional roller coaster that makes you feel that you're not accomplishing your task.

Think of what it is like for employees if you're over their shoulders all the time in the equivalent of them being the scale you're continually watching. The same way you would feel, is the same way that they feel when you're over their shoulders too many times in a day.