What is organizational behavior management? What are the five steps of this management approach?
Using the organizational behavior management approach, managers systematically analyze the factors that influence employee behavior, rather than relying on intuition or trial-and-error methods. Then, they carefully optimize both antecedents and consequences to maximize what Aubrey C. Daniels calls “discretionary effort.”
Let’s explore the five steps and examine Daniels’s tips for success at every stage.
Step 1: Identify the Desired Behavior
To explain what organizational behavior management is, Daniels goes through each step and offers tips. The first step of Daniels’s approach is to identify the desired behavior by clearly defining your objective and the specific employee actions that support it. The objective may be to solve a problem, like frequently missed deadlines, or achieve a goal, like heightened productivity. Daniels recommends that you start by establishing the objective; then, work backwards and decide which employee behaviors are most likely to lead to those desired results.
Daniels notes that executives often identify objectives—they’re responsible for knowing the company’s mission and values, so they have a better idea of what the company needs employees to achieve. In contrast, managers are responsible for implementing the behavioral strategies needed for employees to achieve the desired objective.
As you decide which employee behaviors to target, Daniels suggests that you consider three factors. Let’s explore each.
Factor #1: The Behavior Should Be Achievable for the Employee
Daniels suggests that behavioral interventions are best suited for cases when an employee is undermotivated—when they’re capable of achieving excellence, but they don’t want to for one reason or another. Daniels’s methods are not as helpful when the employee is simply underequipped to perform the desired behavior. If they lack adequate know-how or resources, you should address that—for example, with additional training—before asking them to change their behavior.
Factor #2: The Behavior Must Directly Contribute to the Objective
Daniel says that before you decide to target a specific behavior, you should consider how it contributes to the objective. If an objective depends on external factors beyond an employee’s control—like market conditions, organizational constraints, or actions by other departments—then targeting that employee’s behavior won’t garner the results you want to achieve. Instead, Daniels says you should focus on empowering employees to take ownership of behaviors that have a direct impact on the objective.
For example, say that your objective is to boost sales. It would be inappropriate to ask a salesperson to increase the number of customers entering the store, as that’s influenced by factors like location, advertising, and external demand—things that are largely out of their control. But you could consider targeting behaviors like whether the employee proactively reaches out to prospects, uses upselling and cross-selling techniques, and follows up on leads.
Factor #3: The Behavior Must Be Specific and Measurable
Daniels clarifies that you should ensure you’re targeting behaviors that are specific and measurable, rather than attitudes or personal qualities, which are subjective and hard to change from the outside. This ensures that both employees and managers have a clear understanding of what the desired behavior looks like and how progress can be tracked. For example, setting a goal to “improve customer service” is too broad and open to interpretation, whereas a goal like “respond to customer emails within two hours” is specific and measurable.
Step 2: Assess Performance to Date
In Step 2 of Daniels’s approach, you’ll collect baseline data about your employees’ current performance to use as a reference point for evaluating how effective your behavioral intervention is. Daniels suggests clearly communicating the purpose of the evaluation process—he notes that many employees are uncomfortable with performance assessments because they fear being judged or punished based on the results. This discomfort often stems from past experiences where evaluations were used solely for disciplinary purposes. To mitigate this fear and gain accurate baseline data, emphasize that evaluations are intended to identify areas for growth and improvement, not to find fault or assign blame.
What Kinds of Data Should You Collect?
Daniels says managers should collect two kinds of baseline data about employee behaviors: quantitative and qualitative data.
Quantitative data is more objective, so Daniels recommends focusing on that whenever possible. He also recommends using raw data—like simple frequency counts, response times, and numerical scores—over processed data like percentages and averages. Raw data provides a more accurate picture of behavior as it captures specific, concrete actions rather than potentially distorting the results through calculations or transformations.
For example, instead of averaging the time employees take to respond to customer inquiries, you might track individual response times for each inquiry. This allows you to see how consistently employees meet response time targets and identify any outliers or patterns that could signal specific problems.
Qualitative data describe your subjective assessments of aspects of performance that can’t be counted, like an employee’s acumen for customer service. Because qualitative data are subjective, many people consider them less reliable than quantitative data.
Step 3: Communicate Feedback and Goals
Step 3 of Daniels’s approach involves giving employees feedback about their performance so far and setting up goals for them to aim for. Both feedback and goals are potent antecedents—they help employees understand whether they need to speed up, slow down, or be more careful in their work.
How to Deliver Feedback
Daniels explains that the way you deliver feedback has a significant impact on its effectiveness. When providing feedback, focus only on aspects that are within the employee’s control. This ensures that the feedback is actionable and doesn’t lead to frustration over outcomes that are beyond their influence. Additionally, Daniels recommends that you give individual feedback privately; public recognition can be uncomfortable or demoralizing for those who are underperforming. In contrast, you should give group feedback publicly—this can encourage mutual support among your employees.
How to Set Goals for Your Employees
Daniels suggests setting easily achievable, bite-sized goals for your employees and taking things one goal at a time. Easy goals are those that are just beyond an employee’s current reach. The employee is more likely to succeed at these than they are at challenging goals, which increases the likelihood of positive reinforcement and boosts their motivation to keep doing their best. This means that, somewhat counterintuitively, easy goals can be more effective at improving performance than challenging ones. It’s also important to set goals that are fair—instead of giving everyone on your team the same goal, tailor individual goals to suit each person’s current performance level.
Step 4: Encourage With Consequences
The fourth step—using consequences—is the crux of Daniels’s approach to management. According to Daniels, people tend to repeat behaviors that lead to positive consequences while avoiding those that have negative consequences. This means you can leverage consequences to reinforce desired behaviors and deter undesired behaviors. Daniels lists two main types of behavioral consequences; we’ll discuss each, along with some of Daniels’s tips for harnessing their power.
Consequence #1: Positive Reinforcement
Positive reinforcement is a motivational technique that works by tying desired behaviors to positive outcomes, thereby increasing the likelihood they’ll be repeated. Daniels asserts that positive reinforcement is the only way to promote discretionary effort—it creates a clear and rewarding connection between employees’ actions and their sense of satisfaction, motivating them to consistently invest extra effort into their work.
There are two kinds of positive reinforcement:
- Natural positive reinforcement: This occurs when the behavior automatically produces a positive outcome (like the satisfaction a writer naturally gets from writing). Daniel notes that unfortunately, most work tasks do not include natural positive reinforcements.
- Created positive reinforcement: When positive reinforcements don’t come naturally, managers must create them. Created reinforcements include social recognition (like praise and celebrations) and tangible rewards (like bonuses and prizes).
Consequence #2: Negative Reinforcement
Daniels states that negative reinforcement discourages repetition of a behavior by tying it to an unpleasant consequence. These consequences can be punishments (natural outcomes of the behavior, like reprimands) or penalties (outcomes that take something of value away from the employee, like pay cuts).
While negative reinforcement can be useful for achieving short-term results, Daniels advises against using them too liberally. He says negative reinforcement prompts employees to do just enough to avoid the consequence and doesn’t encourage them to invest discretionary effort into their work. For example, say you set a rule that employees must follow procedures exactly as documented, or else they’ll be fired. They’ll likely follow the procedures to the letter, but they may not engage creatively or suggest improvements to the process, as they’re primarily focused on avoiding negative outcomes.
Step 5: Review Your Progress
In the final step of Daniels’s approach, you’ll evaluate whether your behavioral intervention has helped you achieve your objective. To do this, gather the same kinds of data you collected in Step 2 and compare your results. Then, determine whether the behavior changed and whether you’re closer to achieving your objective than you were before.
You can also ask your employees for feedback about the reinforcements you’ve been using. Daniels warns against asking people what reinforcements they want before your intervention because they may not know or answer honestly, but you can gather feedback afterward to gauge the intervention’s effectiveness.
