Jim Rosen, president of Fantastic Foods, learned everything he needed to know about management in nursery school. The Entrepreneur of the Year winner was a Montessori teacher for twenty years, and he uses the same techniques with the 90 employees of the Petaluma, California, dry soup manufacturing company. Rosen reasons that "big people are just little people who got big."

Some of the Montessori philosophy is recast by Rosen for the production floor. He believes that self-esteem is critical to employee satisfaction and productivity. "With kids," he says, "the most important thing is how they feel about themselves. With employees also, if you want them to have the right attitude, you have to help build self-esteem." How does he do this? First, by giving employees tasks that stretch them, and making sure they have the ability and tools to achieve their goals. Second, he lets employees run with their ideas and risk failure. They learn something powerful from this.

Montessori classroom materials let children gauge their own progress. At Fantastic Foods, daily production goals are posted in the factory and provide automatic feedback on performance. Each person evaluates himself or herself, which builds self-esteem.

SOURCE: Reprinted through the courtesy of CIO. © 1995 CIO Communications Inc.

ORGANIZATIONAL REALITY

"I'm Okay, You're Really Weird"

Companies like Hewlett-Packard and Armstrong World Industries often find that working in teams poses challenges for many employees. Stereotypes and perceptual barriers lead team members to point fingers and claim that others are "weird." Many companies use the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (this Web site is not affiliated with Myers-Briggs, but contains information about MBTI) to build a trusting, collaborative environment that emphasizes the value of different type combinations. When Hewlett-Packard's North American distribution organization created a team to implement new software, it invested time up front to do the preparatory work to head off the stereotyping. Initially team members felt it was a waste of time, and that the team was spinning its wheels. They later realized that "it wasn't like losing days-it was like gaining weeks" in terms of productivity. The MBTI helps team members learn to increase their tolerance for others' different strokes.

Armstong World Industries' information services group switched from a hierarchical structure to self-directed work teams, and they used the MBTI as a tool for the change. The team found that a majority of its members were introverts-good at working long hours with a computer, but less skilled at helping users with their problems. The Myers-Briggs raised the team's consciousness about the importance of communication skills to complement technical expertise.

For Hewlett-Packard and Armstrong, the Myers-Briggs was a turning point. It ignited the team when members realized that diversity and differences are what make teams successful in the first place.

SOURCE: C. Hildebrand, "I'm Okay, You're Really Weird," CIO (October 1, 1995): 86-96. CIO Communications Inc.

SCIENTIFIC FOUNDATION

Seasickness as Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Virtually no one is immune to seasickness, especially those in the Navy who must perform their jobs on rough seas. While there are drugs for the problem, some of the side effects are the very symptoms that the drugs are intended to prevent: drowsiness, blurred vision, and dryness of the mouth. Naval and aviation medicine continue to try to solve the challenge of motion sickness.

The authors of one study devised an experiment to see whether self-fulfilling prophecy could help. They assigned twenty-five naval cadets in the Israeli Defense Forces to experimental and control conditions. Before their first cruise, the cadets in the experimental group were told that they were unlikely to experience seasickness and that, if they did, it was unlikely to affect their performance at sea. Cadets in the control group were told about research on seasickness and its prevention. At the end of the five-day cruise, cadets in the experimental group reported less seasickness and were rated as better performers by their training officers. These cadets also had higher self-efficacy; that is, they believed they could perform well at sea despite seasickness.

The pills and patches that physicians often prescribe for seasickness are unpleasant to the point of deterring their use, are of short-term effectiveness, and have undesirable side effects. Self-fulfilling prophecy has none of these problems, and it appears to work in combating seasickness.

SOURCE: D. Eden and Y. Zuk, "Seasickness as a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Raising Self-Efficacy to Boost Performance at Sea," Journal of Applied Psychology 80 (1995): 628-635.

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