4d: Leveraging Hawthorne Effect at Work

I think this phenomenon shows itself when working with any employee. When we invest time and create tracking methods to follow direct reports’ career progress and improvement areas, they know that they are being observed, and they try to improve the parts we have our eyes on. This phenomenon coincides with Goodhart’s Law (“when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure”). When we (as engineering leaders) try to put a true metric to a team to measure productivity, that metric will improve because people know we will be watching that metric and will try to improve that result. The important part is figuring out how to turn this into a positive effect. This is where I see the individual development plans have the biggest impact. Once we (together with the employee) clearly define and agree on which skills they need to improve, they will focus on it and get better even when they are not directly focused on putting in extra effort to improve. It happens in the background.

• Related Note(s):
  • 3e: Setting Clear Expectations About Communication and Collaboration;
  • 20: Influencing Others;
  • 23: The First Question of Feedback Discussions;
  • 24: Strong teams are motivated by goals;
  • 53: Guiding Direct Reports as Manager;