Season 2 Episode 31
Translating Military Research into Corporate Impact
Dr. Paul D. Bliese is the Jeff B. Bates Professor of Management and Chair of the Management Department at the Darla Moore School of Business. A former U.S. Army Colonel and research psychologist, he spent 22 years at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, where he directed studies on stress, leadership, and soldier well-being, including oversight of the Army’s Mental Health Advisory Team program in Iraq and Afghanistan. His academic work bridges military and corporate contexts, advancing organizational research, leadership development, and statistical methods, and he currently serves as the incoming Editor-in-Chief of Organizational Research Methods.
This is Paul’s first appearance on the Moore Impact Podcast.
Topics include:
To learn more about Paul Bilese, click here.
To learn more about the Darla Moore School of Business, click here.
Photo Courtesy: Babbel
Kasie Whitener (00:04):
Good morning, welcome into Moore Impact. This is Kasie Whitener, your host. This is our show where we bring our scholars and practitioners out of the Darla Moore School into the public and have them talk and tell us about their research and explain the work that they're doing, both for our students and also in academia in general, and contributing new knowledge into the world. Last week we had, uh, Dr. Orgul Ozturk on here a few weeks ago. We've had Jason DeBaker, we've had Bill Hulk, we've had Chris Yenkey, we've had all this crowd. And I finally convinced Paul Bliese to come in and sit across from me at the microphone and tell us a little bit about what you do, who you are, what your background is, how you got here. So, welcome in Dr. Paul Bliese, you are chair of the management department, which makes you my boss, which is amazing. So let's do this. Let's talk a little bit about you and your background. How did you get here?
Kasie Whitener (00:48):
Wonderful. So I kind of have a, a little bit of a different background. I actually was in the Army. So I was active duty army for 22 years when I did my whole career at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. And then when I got ready to retire from the Army, then one of my colleagues, I'd published some work with Rob Ployhart, one of the faculty here. And he said, Hey, you know, come down and check out South Carolina. And I said, uh, okay, why not? I'd been down to Fort Jackson.
Kasie Whitener (01:17):
Sure.
Paul Bliese (01:17):
And done some things down there. And then, uh, you know, I just met the department down here and really loved it. I thought, what a great school, and it'd be fun to be part of the Darla Moore School.
Kasie Whitener (01:26):
So the work you were doing in the Army, how does that relate to our management, our study of management? How did you know this was the right department for you?
Paul Bliese (01:33):
Well, you know, we have a great HR department here, and one of the things we do in HR is we are working with like engagement survey data, things like that.
Kasie Whitener (01:42):
Okay.
Paul Bliese (01:43):
On there. A lot of companies, you know, they're tracking the wellbeing kind of broadly, the morale, the motivation of their employees. And a lot of work I did in the Army was kind of that on steroids. So I would take teams into Iraq and Afghanistan and we would just have thousands of surveys and we would take scanners. And then when we were in theater, we would crunch those numbers in real time,
Kasie Whitener (02:06):
Right.
Paul Bliese (02:06):
Then, you know, brief back the commanders and say, you know, this is what we're seeing in terms of the wellbeing of soldiers. These are the levels of combat. And so that was actually, I mean, we were doing it faster in the army than they do it in,
Kasie Whitener (02:21):
In corporate. I, I imagine. So the annual survey can't really keep up with, oh, by the way, we're in combat right now.
Paul Bliese (02:28):
Well you now, I mean, a lot of corporations, and I think employees get frustrated by this 'cause they fill out a survey saying how they're doing one way or the other.
Kasie Whitener (02:35):
Right.
Paul Bliese (02:36):
And then they never really hear anything about it. And a company that's contracted do it maybe two or three months to analyze it. And I mean, we were doing it within a week know this. And so we would, like, we just got these numbers, we just ran 'em through the scanners and that so.
Kasie Whitener (02:51):
But this is data-driven decision making for the commanders in theater, right? As as things are unfolding, as things are happening, as tactics are being deployed. And then you're getting that feedback of like, this is what's working. This is what's not, this is how our people are feeling as things are going along. So I would imagine there's a lot more at stake in that kind of research.
Paul Bliese (03:08):
Yeah, absolutely. And I was, I was just so impressed with the leadership in the Army because as you can imagine this, this, uh, the research that we're doing, the, the findings, they got a lot of visibility.
Kasie Whitener (03:20):
Sure.
Paul Bliese (03:20):
Like suddenly you'd find that, you know, we'd do something, it'd end up on the front page of the New York Times.
Kasie Whitener (03:25):
Oh my goodness.
Paul Bliese (03:25):
Right. And so the, you know, we got, but the leadership in the military was just like, listen, we don't wanna hide the truth in any way. I mean, what you find is what you find. They just said, we don't wanna be surprised. Okay. We want, if we read it on the New York Times on the front page,
Kasie Whitener (03:40):
Let let us know first.
Paul Bliese (03:40):
Exactly.
Kasie Whitener (03:41):
Yes. Tell us first and then you can tell everybody else.
Paul Bliese (03:43):
Yeah. But they were super supportive of, you know, finding out what was happening with troops. And this was a great way for them to use data to go back to Congress and say, you know, during this period of time with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
Kasie Whitener (03:56):
Right.
Paul Bliese (03:57):
There were severe shortages of personnel. I mean, we were just churning through our soldiers.
Kasie Whitener (04:02):
Right.
Paul Bliese (04:02):
You know, multiple deployments were going on short dwell times. And so they could use this to go back to Congress and say, you know, we're understaffed. We can't support these wars in Iraq and Afghanistan unless you give us more resources. So, they were super supportive of what we were doing, you know, on multiple levels.
Kasie Whitener (04:19):
Has that, uh, position in the military, that research that, uh, data-driven decision making, has that always been part of the military? Or were you kind of a part of a new era in military operations?
Paul Bliese (04:30):
Well, I think that it was always, it had been a part of the military, you could probably trace its roots back to World War II would be my guess, when they were doing similar work on there. But we maybe took it to a new level by just the speed at which we could do it.
Kasie Whitener (04:44):
Okay.
Paul Bliese (04:44):
And part of this is we had the computer technology, we could take scanners into the theater, we could do things like that. That just turned that around quite a bit on there. But it was, you know, we both, uh, just, you know, they responded to the data.
Kasie Whitener (04:58):
Sure.
Paul Bliese (04:59):
The data was the data. And we had then, because we were doing this over multiple years, like it went back several times, we could really track like, here's how it's changed since last time. And, uh, you know, we tried very hard to get good data.
Kasie Whitener (05:12):
Right.
Paul Bliese (05:13):
I just say it's, it's a challenge
Kasie Whitener (05:19):
Right.
Paul Bliese (05:19):
Statisticians would tell you, you know, this is the perfect way to get it. And we tried, I we got better and better at it.
Kasie Whitener (05:25):
Yeah.
Paul Bliese (05:25):
But it was, you know, but still, it was good.
Kasie Whitener (05:28):
I can even imagine like your, your regularly deployed specialist being like, what are we doing? Why am I answering this on email? You know what I mean? Like, what were some of the data instruments, the, the data collection instruments that you guys used? Was it like mass email to a unit or were they interviews, or how were you engaging with folks?
Paul Bliese (05:44):
No, this was really, this was just paper and pencil
Kasie Whitener (06:03):
Right, right, right.
Paul Bliese (06:04):
The trick is how not to get bias data. Because we could send a, an order a frago out to a unit and say, you know, give us 250 soldiers, have 'em fill out surveys.
Kasie Whitener (06:14):
Right.
Paul Bliese (06:14):
But the inclination if you're the person receiving that is to say, Hey, you know, let's get the 250 easiest people to get the ones around here.
Kasie Whitener (06:23):
The ones that volunteer for it. Or the ones who wants to be part of a survey.
Paul Bliese (06:29):
Exactly. Or the ones that, you know, because the, the units were widely dispersed.
Kasie Whitener (06:34):
Sure.
Paul Bliese (06:35):
And some of these areas had very few resources. So then what you end up is you get this bias sample of the people who are in the big, you know, forward operating bases.
Kasie Whitener (06:43):
Right.
Paul Bliese (06:44):
These things on there. And so the, over the years, we had to come up with a way to say, no, we need to try to get everybody, and so, but it had to be doable. Like we couldn't randomly select the last two digits of a social security number and see if your social security number, you know, you get this. So we ended up just having to randomly sample platoons. So we would just say, this platoon has to fill it out.
Kasie Whitener (07:07):
Right.
Paul Bliese (07:07):
Right. This platoon has to fill it out. But, it was, uh, and the data, I mean, I, I'm confident we got some really good data by doing this. And the, the senior leadership of the military was, you know, they were impressed I think by having their own resource, you know, not contracting it out, but people in uniform.
Kasie Whitener (07:24):
Right.
Paul Bliese (07:24):
Go in there with these skills to do it.
Kasie Whitener (07:26):
And I think there's gotta be a sense of buy-in too, as far as like, obviously you're asking questions, you're part of the military apparatus. The questions that you're asking are important, and the answers that I'm giving you are equally important. I need to not mess this up. Like, I need to not blow it off. I need to make sure that I'm taking it seriously if I'm the platoon leader or I'm even a squad leader. Yeah. I could see that.
Paul Bliese (07:44):
And I think the soldiers appreciated us asking.
Kasie Whitener (07:46):
Sure.
Paul Bliese (07:46):
Right. I mean, they were in a really difficult time in some way. What we've done with that data is we've put a very good kind of solid historic, uh, numbers down. You know?
Kasie Whitener (07:56):
Right.
Paul Bliese (07:56):
I mean, we can look these reports, these were the mental health advisory teams, if anyone's like, totally interested in it, but they could probably Google MHAT or, and these reports were put out by the Army Surgeon General, and they did, uh, I think we had about 10 years of them that were out there tracking the, the wellbeing you of the troops. So.
Kasie Whitener (08:14):
When you think about the speed at which you guys were, were, and we gotta run to break here in just a second, but like, um, in terms of the decisions that those officers were making, did you see change in real time as well?
Paul Bliese (08:25):
We did. Like we could see, we could track how this data would lead to different outcomes on there.
Kasie Whitener (08:31):
That's great.
Paul Bliese (08:32):
Yeah.
Kasie Whitener (08:32):
That's great. Alright. We're talking with Dr. Paul Bliese here. He is a professor in the management department, and he's gonna give us a little bit more detail on some of the work he's been doing. It's Moore Impact Kasie Whitener. Don't go away, we'll be right back.
Kasie Whitener (09:01):
Welcome back into Moore Impact. Kasie sitting here with Dr. Paul Bliese, the Jeff B. Bates professor of Management at the Darla Moore School of Business. I wanna make sure I get that in there. We wanna, um, recognize our endowed chairs. It really matters. You're also chair of the management department and my boss, which is awesome. Um, and getting a chance to talk about your research first at the Army. And as we were at break, I was asking you, when your Army commanding officers are presented with this data, are there incentives to not make decisions consistent with the data? Is that, is, is there tension there? Is there political tension there? Um, but so I'll let you respond to that. Like what does, what does it look like?
Paul Bilese (09:39):
Yeah, so again, you know, from my experience, and I indicated this before, really the senior leadership of the military was more interested in just not being surprised. Right? And, but there were clearly tensions in terms of, you know, resources is where I saw most of it from there.
Kasie Whitener (09:55):
Sure.
Paul Bilese (09:56):
So, you know, the data would indicate things like, we had a real issue with getting behavioral health resources to some of the outlying units. And so the data would come back and say soldiers are saying they just, you know, if they're having sleep problems, which is super common, of course in a combat zone and these things, you know, they just couldn't actually get to behavioral health to get the care that they would need on that.
Kasie Whitener (10:18):
Right.
Paul Bliese (10:18):
And then that would lead directly, like the leadership, the chief of staff of the Army was, uh, worked a lot with him. A General Casey and General Corelli, the vice chief, were the ones that I primarily worked with. But they would, you know, do what was required to get assets out there to say, you know, we need to get some more behavioral health assets and they would borrow from the Air Force, for instance.
Kasie Whitener (10:38):
Yeah.
Paul Bliese (10:39):
You know, so in some cases from, again, from my perspective, it was great to see the Air Force and, you know, the Navy supporting, you know, these operations. I mean.
Kasie Whitener (10:49):
Sure.
Paul Bliese (10:49):
With them on there.
Kasie Whitener (10:51):
And we know the organizations are gonna make better decisions when they have that data in front of them that gives them a sense of this is the, this is the right path. Not even just what our people need or what they want, but when they express truth and trust that, hey, if I tell my commanding officers this is what I need, they're gonna do what they can to get it for me. Versus like, Hey, it doesn't, it doesn't matter. Why bother with this? They're not gonna do anything about it anyway. Which kind of leads me to the corporate side of research. So you come out of the army and, you know, um, Rob Ployhart here. But he hired me too, by the way. He recruits a lot of people into the Moore School that Rob. But anyway, um, so, and Rob says, Hey, come take a look at the Moore School. And you get into now doing more civilian research and working with corporations. Are you seeing the same kind of thing where, hey, we present this data and our decision makers are inclined to move with the data or create strategy around that data?
Paul Bliese (11:43):
I do see it, but I think, again, one of the things that I see in corporate America a little bit is that delay. And so, you know, if, if, uh, employees are doing an engagement survey and filling out these responses on there, and it takes three months, six months to get the responses,
Kasie Whitener (11:58):
Right.
Paul Bliese (11:59):
Then I think the senior leaders within the corporations kind of dismiss it. 'cause they're like, well, that was six months ago.
Kasie Whitener (12:05):
Right.
Paul Bliese (12:06):
So I think that this is where I think the Army was ahead of the game by just the speed. Like, Hey, this isn't six months ago. This is what was happening two weeks ago, right here in theater. That kind of thing.
Kasie Whitener (12:16):
Is there a, so when you, I love that you said that about the Army having that, uh, competency there.
Paul Bliese (12:20):
Yeah.
Kasie Whitener (12:20):
Is there apparatus or is there some kind of process that says, we can do this faster, we should do this faster, and should there be, should our academic research be operating faster? I mean, is that a thing?
Paul Bliese (12:32):
Well, I think academic,
Kasie Whitener (12:34):
I'm not in any way throwing our friends under the bus
Paul Bliese (12:42):
I think you could universally say, even among our academics, you know, that we should, you know, the academic research should be faster.
Kasie Whitener (12:49):
Okay.
Paul Bliese (12:49):
I mean, I think there's almost no doubt. I mean, it's not even controversial. And I think a part of it is that in academics there is, you know, some of the motivation is to get the peer reviewed publication.
Kasie Whitener (13:01):
Sure.
Paul Bliese (13:01):
And this is also, you know, this is a tension that we had in the Army with it because we held ourselves to the same standards of, uh, you know, academics in there. So we were doing this work, but we were also doing peer reviewed publications in it because we wanted to go back to senior leaders and say, you know, we're just on par with academics.
Kasie Whitener (13:20):
Right.
Paul Bliese (13:20):
We can do the same kind of work on there. You know, to your first question, I mean, I, I was totally impressed with the Army because they, they developed this in-house resource. So before we were deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan, I went to just operations sometimes in Asia that were just training exercises over there.
Kasie Whitener (13:39):
Sure.
Paul Bliese (13:40):
I went to Haiti, you know, because we had an operation there in the mid to later nineties on there. And we sent teams into Bosnia. We sent teams into Somalia. So we kind of just developed this, this capability and refined it before we ended up in a wartime scenario.
Kasie Whitener (13:57):
Okay.
Paul Bliese (13:58):
And then when the war happened, suddenly we had this capability and we could just execute it on there. So, you know, my hope is they'll continue to do this.
Kasie Whitener (14:06):
Right.
Paul Bliese (14:06):
You don't, don't really know when wars are gonna happen. And the ability to just reach out into your own asset and deploy soldiers that are in uniform who are scientists and say, you know, we need this kind of data, I think was a great foresight that they had.
Kasie Whitener (14:21):
Yeah I, I agree a hundred percent. And what's interesting to me too is there's a lot of conversation right now about the military not being what it used to be. Um, and part of that is because it's changing based on what it knows about itself and what it knows about the theaters that it's entering and what it knows about its soldiers. Right. Like, so when you're learning things, you're going to change. Right. And the, the idea that the Army has that ability and that they're intentional about that ability, I think is actually really encouraging. Yeah.
Paul Bliese (14:49):
And it was, yeah, I was, I mean, and I also think it was important for the Army to hold us to the standard of academics. So the reason why I could transition from working in the Army to here is because for professors it is the academic publications. Right. Right. I mean, if I hadn't had any academic publications over my 22 years, Rob would, even though he liked me and he'll drink a beer with me.
Kasie Whitener (15:11):
Right.
Paul Bliese (15:11):
I mean, he wasn't gonna say, Hey, come down and be part of the faculty.
Kasie Whitener (15:15):
Right.
Paul Bliese (15:31):
So I do both research and, you know, teaching on here, one of the things that was nice is that the army was, uh, able, I was able to set up an agreement between the University of South Carolina and the Army that allowed me to use these big data sets that have been collected for instructional purposes.
Kasie Whitener (15:51):
Oh, that's great.
Paul Bliese (15:52):
And this was, this was also, you know, the army, when we did this kind of work, they had a institutional review board, IRB. And the way that this worked is that when we went into theater and we gave a survey to soldiers, we put a mark on there and say, you know, we're collecting this information because the, you know, the, the commanding officers wanna know this stuff.
Kasie Whitener (16:12):
Sure.
Paul Bliese (16:12):
On here. But we put a thing on here and said, you know, if you don't want your data to be used for research purposes after this, just, you know, let us know.
Kasie Whitener (16:22):
Right.
Paul Bliese (16:22):
We will honor that. So these days, most, like 80% of the soldiers, they, they I think appreciated. Like I said, that we were asking these questions.
Kasie Whitener (16:30):
Sure.
Paul Bliese (16:30):
'Cause they wanted to document what was happening there. So 80, 90% of them would say, that's fine. And so we could set up this agreement. And this means when I teach the students over here for the master's in the PhD program, is primarily, I teach statistics over there. I can use these data sets. So rather than some, you know, questions about how many sixes do you get if you roll a dice 10 times?
Kasie Whitener (16:55):
Right.
Paul Bliese (16:55):
And these probabilities that kind of put people to sleep, you know, that I can, I can actually say, here's a real data set, you know, collected in, you know, a combat zone or this, and let's just analyze it as though it's real data, the kind of thing that companies and others would. So I find, I think the students find that a lot more engaging when we do that kind of statistics training.
Kasie Whitener (17:14):
Well yeah. And they feel, I, I would assume that their there sense of, okay, I'm getting real information. I'm looking at real knowledge that's being uncovered, that's being discussed. Right. It's not a pretend scenario. This is, you know, how people really did experience their combat, uh, experience.
Paul Bliese (17:29):
Exactly.
Kasie Whitener (17:31):
Alright. So tell us about what do you teach? What are the actual classes that you teach? Who are the people that you're spending time with?
Paul Bliese (17:35):
So, I teach, uh, well, right now I teach the PhDs for almost all of the departments in the business school. Not all of them. A couple of them are holdouts on it. But I teach first year PhD students for a whole year on there. And then I teach a master's level class for our MHR program, which is, you know, one of our kind of jewels, you know, great program over there.
Kasie Whitener (17:58):
Right.
Paul Bliese (17:58):
And that the master's program is a self-selected one. Right. So I take about maybe 10 to 15 students who wanna do this. It's like a, a optional one for 'em. And so that, and that's one where we use data and we actually in the last few years have been teaming up with the Army again as a client and just saying, you know, let us run some analyses with you on that one with it.
Kasie Whitener (18:20):
Research statistics.
Kasie Whitener (18:21):
Research statistics.
Kasie Whitener (18:21):
Yeah. Specifically trying to understand what does the data say.
Paul Bliese (18:24):
Yeah. And this would be, and the idea being that these master's students are gonna go into, you know, shell, Exxon, AbbVie, I mean these companies that are parts of our boards.
Kasie Whitener (18:34):
Sure.
Paul Bliese (18:34):
And many of them will be working with data engagement data. So this gives them the opportunity to take something similar in the Army, have a client think, how would we analyze it, present results on that with it. So.
Kasie Whitener (18:47):
I like that you use the phrase, uh, engagement data. And I think that's, it's a little bit of a buzzword. Can we unpack it just a little bit? Why is it important for organizations to understand the engagement of the folks that they're, I mean, they pay you, so you show up and do the work. Like, that feels like the most basic piece. Like, I get paid, so here I am and I'm going to do the work. I was, you know, paid to do. But there is a lot of nuance around that word engagement. Can you unpack that just a little bit? Like, why do people care about this? Why does it matter?
Paul Bliese (19:14):
Yeah, usually they care about it is, uh, like an early warning sign for turnover.
Kasie Whitener (19:20):
Okay.
Paul Bliese (19:20):
Right. I mean, so what they're looking at here is they're trying to see just, are they gonna run into some problem? Are things happening in the firm that are an indication that people are likely to start, you know, quitting on them?
Kasie Whitener (19:31):
Right.
Paul Bliese (19:32):
Pretty quickly on there. So it's almost, I won't say, well, I'll say it's almost always, uh, leading indicator of in, of turnover. So they would much prefer, look at this and get a heads up before the turnover occurs.
Kasie Whitener (19:44):
Right.
Paul Bliese (19:44):
Because it's, it's expensive for any company. I mean, the army, we've got Fort Jackson over there. It's super expensive to put soldiers through Fort Jackson to get it traded up. And, and the companies have the same problem. So they'd like to track it on there.
Kasie Whitener (19:56):
And your existing people and the experience that they're having can give you what you need to know in terms of like, how well are they adjusted, how happy are they? How appreciated do they feel? Like all the things that would make it, this is a great job. I show up every day because I want to be here. And also I'm getting paid versus like, okay, but I show up just 'cause I'm getting paid, but I can't wait to go somewhere else.
Paul Bliese (20:18):
Yeah, and I think also, like in the Army, it can be a bit of a warning sign. So what you can see, because many of the companies look at this and they look at it by direct reports. So they'll say, let's look at manager by manager on here. Sure. And so if you've got a manager that's just kind of, you know, going off in some like, uh, not such a great way. Right? I mean, this comes up in it, you know, you have the direct reports to that manager kind of indicating their problems in here. And so that can be an indication that hey, you know, if you value those employees under that manager, then maybe it's time to step in a little bit on here. And in some way that's kind of equivalent again to what we did in the Army. Like it was, we're in theater, we're looking at this. We weren't really reporting out by brigade or, you know, lower, we're trying to get the whole theater on there.
Kasie Whitener (21:07):
Right.
Paul Bliese (21:07):
But the idea is just to track this thing and see do we need to intervene in some way or what could we do?
Kasie Whitener (21:13):
And the level of morale certainly.
Paul Bliese (21:15):
Exactly. Yep.
Kasie Whitener (21:15):
Alright. Talking to Paul Bliese about engagement research and human resources research. On the other side, we're gonna get even deeper into the corporate side. It's Kasie, it's Moore Impact. Don't go away.
Kasie Whitener (21:36):
Welcome back to Moore Impact. Kasie Whitener here, your host with me, Dr. Paul Bliese. We're talking a little bit about engagement research and understanding organizations based on how the employees and your frontline folks are responding to the environment that they're in, the leadership they're being given the managerial interference that they're seeing. Um, and then providing that feedback and whether or not the leaders are taking that feedback seriously and then moving forward with it and making decisions based on it. And some of your research is in the area of groups and how organizations rely upon influ groups influencing each other and inside the group how individuals are influenced by the people on their squad, on their team and that kind of thing. Can you talk about the parallels between our military research and our corporate research as far as group dynamics are concerned?
Paul Bliese (22:24):
Yeah. Great question. The, uh, you know, so when I was in graduate school, I took a class on small group influence.
Kasie Whitener (22:30):
Okay.
Paul Bliese (22:30):
And I just thought, this is neat. Right. And, and then I didn't, I ended up, of course joining the military and I was like, wow. I mean, this is no longer theoretical. This is actually, you're seeing it day to day. And the way that I think about it is we think of a lot of things in our lives like our health, our wellbeing, things like that are all just because of us. And we can show in data how much of that is influenced by the group. So take something like morale and you can ask a soldier how his or her morale is, and you get some indication. But what you find is it's very much influenced by what's happening in the group on there.
Kasie Whitener (23:08):
Let me ask you about this real quickly. From how do you recognize that that's the influence? Is it that multiple people are reporting the same thing? And so you say, okay, well if five people in this group are all saying the same thing, it's likely that that is true, number one. That's true. But then number two, they're influencing one another.
Paul Bliese (23:26):
Yeah. Well that's a great question. That it gets kind of, it gets pretty statistical. But it, there was a neat thing that happened in the late nineties with this, uh, some statistical models that came out that really, I mean, the fundamental is exactly what you described.
Kasie Whitener (23:40):
Okay.
Paul Bliese (23:40):
What you're looking at is that you're looking at people in a group who are responding very similarly, and then in another group they have a different value, but they're also responding very similarly.
Kasie Whitener (23:49):
Okay.
Paul Bliese (23:50):
And so, across thousands of groups or hundreds of groups, we can run these statistical models and they'll give us one magic number,
Kasie Whitener (23:56):
Right.
Paul Bliese (23:56):
That says, hey, you know, these are the influence of it. So we can compare it on there with it. So that was, so the military was a great environment to study this and to study. Well how much of an individual's depression or morale or PTSD symptoms or, you know, any of these things, how much is influenced by the group and how much is theirs individually on there with it. And we see pretty much the same dynamic when we look at engagement survey data in organizations. So the group influences are a hundred percent there on there. And corporations, businesses, I mean, they understand this and that's why they often, the military was good about this. And corporations are good about this because they understand that to influence the most people possible, you actually have to influence the group. Right?
Kasie Whitener (24:46):
Right.
Paul Bliese (24:46):
And that often means
Kasie Whitener (24:50):
Right.
Paul Bliese (24:50):
So one toxic leader can, you know, wreck a lot of havoc for a lot of members, you know, with it. And so tracking this kind of thing and realizing that individual responses are highly influenced by the group gives companies this ability to leverage it and say, you know, I'm not gonna work person by person. I'm not gonna put some wellness program in. I mean, it might be a good thing.
Kasie Whitener (25:12):
Sure.
Paul Bliese (25:13):
But for each person, it's very expensive to do. It's a lot more bang for the buck to like look at the data and say, you know, I'm gonna try to weed out my toxic leaders and I'm gonna try to understand why these groups are having the problem and send somebody to take a look. It might not be the leader, it might be something else.
Kasie Whitener (25:29):
Right. Like, um, it's interesting to think about that from a trend perspective and whether or not corporations are then aware that there are these kind of individuals that no matter where we put them, you know, the group was fine before they got there, and then this person showed up and things started changing. Right? And that, that research exists. Or that there are companies who are like highly aware that there are individuals in their ranks that are toxic individuals.
Paul Bliese (25:53):
Well, and I think that's why some companies have done, like, you know, the engagement surveys. These are things that are typically done a year, some are done every two years.
Kasie Whitener (26:02):
Right.
Paul Bliese (26:02):
So that might not be a big enough window to do it. So you do have companies now doing pulse surveys, so they'll do very, very short, you know, these might be four or five items on there. And they'll just do 'em quickly. So someone logging into their computer might get a pulse survey and get that information.
Kasie Whitener (26:17):
Right.
Paul Bliese (26:18):
And I think that has more potential to be directly intervenable, if you will.
Kasie Whitener (26:24):
Right.
Paul Bliese (26:24):
When you get that kind of data.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
And that hits the speed we were talking about before.
Paul Bliese (26:26):
The speed That's right.
Kasie Whitener (26:27):
In terms of if it's only four questions and you're just gonna hit a small sample of the group, because we're just trying to get an understanding of exactly what's happening here. It seems like you could get that a lot faster.
Paul Bliese (26:36):
Right. And you don't need like, super complicated questions. I mean, these can be pretty simple, pretty short. And they can just go out there, someone can take like 30 seconds, 15 seconds, you know, click, click, click, click.
Kasie Whitener (26:48):
Right.
Paul Bliese (26:48):
Then move on. But if that data's really looked at and paid attention to, it can help the organization manage their employees pretty well on there. So I, I think there's a lot of potential. There continues to be potential to do that kind of work.
Kasie Whitener (27:01):
As long as people are responsive to the data.
Paul Bliese (27:03):
That's what Yeah.
Kasie Whitener (27:04):
Yeah. I gotcha. Tell us a little bit about the difference. What kinds of things have you noticed that's different on the academic research side or the corporate research side from what you experienced in the military? I mean, are there vast differences? Things that are like, man, this I just was not prepared for this, or I've learning a lot more stuff because of this. Or is it like, no, this looks pretty much the same.
Paul Bliese (27:22):
I mean, in some ways it really does look pretty much the same.
Kasie Whitener (27:26):
Right.
Paul Bliese (27:26):
But I mean, the thing that we have in the military was that if you think about the Bain thing that you would do to protect the health and wellbeing of soldiers, it would be, well, like, don't actually get into war.
Kasie Whitener (27:39):
Right.
Paul Bliese (27:39):
'Cause I mean, it's, it's extremely stressful. I mean, you physically can be hurt. I mean, there are all these things on there. And in the civilian world, of course that's not, you know, I mean, it's not a nation,
Kasie Whitener (27:49):
The stakes just aren't that high.
Paul Bliese (27:50):
The stakes aren't that high right on there with it. But there are, you know, there's studies that are showing that, like exposure to toxic leader almost has the same degree of psychological impact as combat exposure in some of these. So if you've ever experienced working with a terribly toxic leader on there, you can almost appreciate, you know, just how intense that would be.
Kasie Whitener (28:12):
Right.
Paul Bliese (28:13):
On there. So these are, those are why I kind of keep coming back to this leadership thing on there. 'Cause I know in the civilian world, I mean, you don't have these leaders, you know, you're not exposing people typically. I mean, there's, they're jobs that are very, they're dangerous. Right?
Kasie Whitener (28:27):
Right.
Paul Bliese (28:27):
I mean, it's not like the military's the only place of dangerous jobs.
Kasie Whitener (28:30):
Right.
Paul Bliese (28:30):
But you know, this, I do think there's a high, relatively high prevalence of toxic leadership, uh, a lot of times because leaders just don't quite know what to do.
Kasie Whitener (28:40):
Right.
Paul Bliese (28:40):
I mean, again, this is where I think the military did a very good job, probably better than what I see in many civilian organizations of trying to prepare leaders before they became leaders.
Kasie Whitener (28:52):
Sure.
Paul Bliese (28:52):
Right? So there was just, there's a huge investment in leadership development before you take a leadership position and maybe only 20% of it sinks in.
Kasie Whitener (29:01):
Right.
Paul Bliese (29:01):
But that 20% helps as you take over a leadership thing. You know, some of the light bulb comes in the back of your mind and you, you know, you kind of remember these phrases from the military. Like, you know, when in charge be in charge.
Kasie Whitener (29:13):
Right.
Paul Bliese (29:14):
Like, oh yeah, I actually have to make a decision 'cause I'm now the leader. Right?
Kasie Whitener (29:17):
Right, right, right. Well, it makes me think too that, uh, in our corporate world, not only are the stakes a little bit lower, right? We're not being shot out. It's not combat. Um, but on top of that, we, there's, there's this maybe corporate malaise around, like the leaders will emerge, right? And so, um, they're, they're not as intentional about grooming and growing and training their leaders as much as they're sort of expecting that the ones who want those roles, that ambition is gonna kind of win out in a corporate environment. There's a little bit more like, let the competition do its job as opposed to like, let's be intentional about choosing people and bringing those people forward. Do you think that's still true? Or are we seeing people, or are we seeing companies try to be more intentional?
Paul Bliese (29:55):
Well, I think they're trying to be more intentional, but I think there's a lot of potential for development in it. The other course that I didn't mention, when you asked what courses I was teaching, I went down the stats line.
Kasie Whitener (30:05):
Right.
Paul Bliese (30:05):
And I haven't taught this for a year or so, but I was teaching the MBA's leadership a leadership course.
Kasie Whitener (30:11):
Sure.
Paul Bliese (30:11):
On there. And one of the first things that we talk about in that is we just talk about how the first leadership experiences often fairly, I won't say traumatizing, but it's often fairly, it's extremely difficult for leaders.
Kasie Whitener (30:22):
Right.
Kasie Whitener (30:22):
'Cause they have in their minds how this is supposed to be. And they have kind of an idealized version of what it's gonna be like to be a leader. And then they get into that position and it's a whole different, you know, can of worms for 'em.
Kasie Whitener (30:36):
Right.
Paul Bliese (30:37):
In there with it. And it's fun because in the MBA class, I've got some experienced leaders, and then I've got some newbies who've been leaders. And it's just, when I start talking about it, the newbies are kind of looking at me like, really? And the experience, the ones are like, oh yeah.
Kasie Whitener (30:53):
Yeah.
Paul Bliese (31:28):
Yeah. We have, you know, so at the Moore School, we've got these exec ed programs that do a really good job of doing leadership development, right? But these are for individuals that are not in school. And so we just were thinking what could we do for our undergraduates with the idea that few of our undergraduates are gonna step into a leadership role right
Kasie Whitener (31:48):
Right away. Right.
Paul Bliese (31:48):
I mean, they're gonna go in, but it's very realistic to think that within two or three years, if they're doing a good job, if they're in finance or marketing or wherever, if they're doing a good job, corporations will typically be like, oh, here's the next guy to be the leader.
Kasie Whitener (32:03):
Right.
Paul Bliese (32:03):
right on there. And they'll start out as a small team leader, you know, on there. And so we wanted to put together a course that was just to help them make that transition, because it's a, a fairly significant transition.
Kasie Whitener (32:16):
Sure.
Paul Bliese (32:16):
But if you kind of fail at that transition, then you're not gonna get the opportunity typically to go for the next transition. Right?
Kasie Whitener (32:23):
Right.
Paul Bliese (32:23):
So we, we consider that a real one. And this is where, um, you know, my thought, again with the experiences in the Army is that they're probably only gonna remember, you know, 20, 30% of what we try to teach 'em.
Kasie Whitener (32:36):
Right.
Paul Bliese (32:36):
But that 20, 30% is better than nothing. A lot better, you know, when they get in there and they can, even if they just kind of keep in mind the big themes like, Hey, this might be a lot more difficult than I think it was gonna be going into it, or a few things about that. So, so yeah, we're excited to put that program in and to get our undergraduates that type of, you know, practical hands-on real training about what to expect when they become leaders, you know, on there.
Kasie Whitener (33:02):
I think it's, uh, long overdue. And I think it's exciting to think about our students. I mean, they, they're already leaders in their own student organizations. You know, many of them, once they get into their junior and senior year, they have taken on the leadership of their sorority or their fraternity or the clubs that they're members of. Um, and then they get into the corporate space and they're back to the, you know, to the bottom of the pool again. And don't necessarily have that opportunity. But if they go into their community and they volunteer, or if they're in their church and they're volunteering, they can lead fundraisers, they can lead committees, they can lead, there's all these opportunities for them to build out their leadership in the community while they're working through their sort of corporate ranks. So I love the idea that we're equipping them with the skills and the confidence to be able to do that. On the other side, we're gonna talk about the warehouse research, which is some of the most recent stuff that you've published. And, uh, yeah. It's, it's Moore impact. Kasie and Paul Bliese we'll be right back.
Kasie Whitener (36:32):
Welcome back to the final segment of the show. It's Moore impact. Kasie Whitener here with Paul Bliese. We've been talking about using research to make data-driven decisions in both the army experience, but then also in corporate experience. And using that corporate research to help to, uh, indicate which direction should our company go in and how should we move into, you know, strategically toward the things that we're wanting to accomplish. And we were talking about some of the small group research, which is your particular passion. And this has led to this conversation. I mentioned. I just like teased the warehouse thing. So tell us a little bit about this warehouse research that you've conducted. And this is here, is it in South Carolina? Have been your research subjects?
Paul Bliese (37:11):
It wasn't in South Carolina.
Kasie Whitener (37:12):
Okay.
Paul Bliese (37:13):
No. We had an opportunity to team up with a researcher from another university.
Kasie Whitener (37:17):
Okay.
Paul Bliese (37:18):
Actually from Indiana. And he had, uh, so he had data that was from kind of a typical warehousing situation on it. I won't mention the company, but I mean, they're in employees in there.
Kasie Whitener (37:30):
Sure.
Paul Bliese (37:30):
They work in shifts and in those shifts they're filling orders.
Kasie Whitener (37:33):
Okay.
Paul Bliese (37:34):
Okay. On there. And the, the reason why this was interesting to me in particular is kind of a somewhat interested in small groups, is those jobs are designed to be entirely based off of individual performance.
Kasie Whitener (37:49):
Right.
Paul Bliese (37:49):
So if you and I are on a team working on this thing, in theory, it really doesn't matter what you do. Right? But I can see your performance.
Kasie Whitener (37:57):
Right.
Paul Bliese (37:57):
So we're in this warehousing situation and I can actually see exactly how well you're performing on day-to-day basis. You can see how well I am, but I, it doesn't matter. I'm paid by how well I do. It doesn't matter at all what you do right there. And so we were just kind of curious in that situation, do people adjust their own performance to the performance of others? 'cause they, there's no logical, rational reason for 'em to do so.
Kasie Whitener (38:23):
Right.
Paul Bliese (38:24):
They should maximize their own performance. Get paid as much as they can.
Kasie Whitener (38:28):
Yeah.
Paul Bliese (38:29):
Do that. So we analyzed this data, we were looking at newcomers and then people who'd been there for a long time.
Kasie Whitener (38:35):
Sure.
Paul Bliese (38:36):
With it. And uh, I guess the surprising thing that we found is that newcomers adjusted their performance somewhat. And we expected this. Right? You're new to it. You wanna see if I'm new and, uh, you've been here for a while. I wanna see, I wanna kind of adapt my performance to years.
Kasie Whitener (38:54):
Right.
Paul Bilese (38:54):
You know, maximize it, you know, what's going on on there. But what we saw is really the incumbents, people who'd been there for a long time were just really kind of completely in sync.
Kasie Whitener (39:05):
Okay.
Paul Bliese (39:05):
So some days they were performing really well, some days they weren't performing. They seemed to be adjusting their performance to others quite a bit. And to us, it's just, we find this interesting because here you have companies that are trying to design jobs that take the whole social aspect out of the jobs. Right? 'cause it's not required at all.
Kasie Whitener (39:26):
Right.
Paul Bliese (39:26):
Most jobs have a social aspect. That's why people like to go to work. Right?
Kasie Whitener (39:30):
Right.
Paul Bliese (39:30):
'cause they like hanging out with their friends, their coworkers.
Kasie Whitener (39:33):
Sure.
Paul Bliese (39:34):
They're doing things together as a team. I mean,
Kasie Whitener (39:36):
Sure.
Paul Bliese (39:36):
It's attractive. But here we have a whole different set of jobs where none of that's required. And yet we still find it's virtually impossible to take out the social factor of jobs. Just some big influence of the, what's happening within that.
Kasie Whitener (39:50):
This is fascinating. It's fascinating. 'cause I'm thinking about when I was waiting tables, when I first went to Charlotte, after I got my bachelor's degree, we were living in Charlotte. We were, there were 22 servers on staff. And 18 of us had college degrees. Uh, that's how the job market was in Charlotte.
Paul Bliese (41:44):
I mean, and and it's just interesting 'cause like you said, they, they really adjust up and down.
Kasie Whitener (41:48):
Right.
Paul Bliese (41:49):
So some days they're adjust. Maybe some days they come in with.That's what I mean, we just had the data.
Paul Bliese (41:55):
Right.
Paul Bliese (41:55):
So we didn't have a chance to interview 'em. But maybe a couple of them have some pact and they will compete with each other.
Kasie Whitener (42:00):
Right.
Paul Bliese (42:01):
Right? So they come in and like, I'm not gonna let Kasie beat me today. I mean, so they're like totally going. And other days maybe, I mean, who knows exactly what happens,
Kasie Whitener (42:09):
But that matters too, like is at the end of the month when they have to hit certain quota. Right.
Paul Bliese (42:13):
That could be it too.
Kasie Whitener (42:14):
Yeah. Where it's like, Hey, we haven't done exactly what we were supposed to do, but here at the end of the month we're really gonna crush it and we're gonna meet the, the numbers, you know, at the last minute.
Paul Bliese (42:21):
Yeah. That could definitely be happening with it too. Yeah. It, you know, it's an interesting environment to do the research in because it's, there are skills that you learn. Like a lot of times as a newcomer, the two things are you're trying to figure out what skills do I actually have to do skill acquisition?
Kasie Whitener (42:36):
Right.
Paul Bliese (42:37):
I gotta look around and try to figure out
Kasie Whitener (42:38):
How do I actually do the job?
Paul Bliese (42:39):
How do I do the job? And then the other part of it is the social part of it. Like I'm going to, I'm gonna do my job, but within the norms of what everyone else is doing.
Kasie Whitener (42:49):
Right.
Paul Bliese (42:50):
And this is kind of the typical thing that you would think. And so the thing about the warehouse job is the scale acquisition, at least from our observer who was doing this job was pretty low. They said it wasn't a lot required. I mean, I'm sure in the first few days you could look around at someone who's been there, pick up some tips.
Kasie Whitener (43:07):
Sure.
Paul Bliese (43:07):
Someone might do that, but within a couple weeks or something, you had the scale part of it down.
Kasie Whitener (43:11):
Right.
Paul Bliese (43:12):
And you knew what to do on there. So it means that if they were adjusting their daily performance and this was the company was, had given us the data in part 'cause they were just wondering why does it vary so much from day to day?
Kasie Whitener (43:23):
Right.
Paul Bliese (43:23):
Like why, you know, why do we see an individual do so well on one day and then lower and what are the factors? And so we really go back and say the group is exerting a lot of influence.
Kasie Whitener (43:34):
Yeah.
Paul Bliese (43:35):
It's a one practical thing for the company. We say if you have new employees that are coming in, I know you're typically gonna sign them to wherever there's a gap. Like somebody isn't in there. But maybe think about not putting new employees in groups that are kind of historically underperforming.
Kasie Whitener (43:52):
Right.
Paul Bliese (43:53):
Like if you wanna keep that employee, maybe move them around, give them the experience of working, even though it's supposedly all individual based.
Kasie Whitener (44:01):
Right.
Paul Bliese (44:01):
There's too much social influence. So try to manage that social influence a little bit.
Kasie Whitener (44:06):
Sure.
Paul Bliese (44:06):
When you go into it. So.
Kasie Whitener (44:08):
Yeah, I can see that. I love it. And so, as you guys are, when you do this research, when you do this corporate research in the human resources field where you're trying to think about what are employees experiences and then how did those experiences translate into performance for the overall organization, the recommendations that the research makes, how often do you see that the companies that you're making these recommendations for, they're like, yes, this is exactly what we're looking for. Thank you so much. And how often are you seeing companies that are like, yeah, that's great, we appreciate it, but you know, hit, hit the road
Paul Bliese (44:46):
Yeah. I think, again, this just comes back to the, you know, many of us who are working in business schools and this others, I mean, we do this, uh, like it could be a consulting project that then leads to the publication.
Kasie Whitener (44:58):
Sure.
Paul Bilese (44:58):
By the time the publication comes out, I think the company's like, yeah. Forget it. You know, it's like two, three years later.
Kasie Whitener (45:04):
Sure.
Paul Bliese (45:04):
This is what we talked about earlier with the Army research.
Kasie Whitener (45:08):
Yeah.
Kasie Whitener (45:08):
The reason why it's impactful is because it was right away.
Kasie Whitener (45:10):
Sure.
Paul Bliese (45:11):
So the ideal model in is for many people in business schools work with that is to do consulting with a company. That say, listen, I'll analyze this data, I'll give you an answer in two weeks.
Kasie Whitener (45:22):
Right.
Paul Bliese (45:22):
Or something. Right? And it's because I know you don't want it in two years on here. But then if the company will also agree to let the data, a lot of times we de-identify, we don't say what the company is.
Kasie Whitener (45:33):
Sure.
Paul Bliese (45:33):
But then we can do the peer reviewed publication. So then that ultimately shows that we gave a recommendation, but then we had this external group of scientists look at it and they're kind of given the thumbs up or thumbs down.
Kasie Whitener (45:46):
Sure.
Paul Bliese (45:47):
And again, ties back to what the army did. Like we did the theater, we'd go into theater with the surveys, but we always published this stuff. And that was where we got the, you know, scientific criticism that would say, you need to improve this or this. And we took that to heart.
Kasie Whitener (46:02):
Right.
Paul Bliese (46:03):
So I, I think both parts of that. So sometimes, you know, criticize it, ah, it takes two years to get the research out.
Kasie Whitener (46:08):
Right.
Paul Bliese (46:09):
But really a lot of times we're doing the consulting upfront and then the two years later the publication is the validation that we were actually doing good work.
Kasie Whitener (46:18):
Well, and we talked, Orgul and I talked about this last week in terms of the slow pace of the process and sort of the validity in that is that there are multiple people who have expertise in the same space that are looking at what was the method that you followed? Was this method asking all the right questions? How are the questions phrased? How are they? And then the responses that you got, are those really the responses that you're telling us? You know, is, are these the logical conclusions? And so getting your peers in, in academia to review that, that idea of being a peer review paper is to say, this really is new knowledge. It's something we did not know before and now we do. And all of these folks around have said yes and fact, this is new knowledge and it is valid. And I think there's, of course that takes time. There's a whole community that gets around it and, and wants to ensure that it's being done the right way.
Paul Bliese (47:06):
Yeah. And I think some fields, like in medicine and these others, they realize that they need to have that peer review even faster.
Kasie Whitener (47:13):
Yeah.
Paul Bliese (47:13):
You know, on there with it. But I, I a hundred percent agree that with Oracle on this one, that you have to, you wanna have someone independently review your work. 'cause as a researcher, you can be really blind. You can get so excited about something and miss something completely obvious.
Kasie Whitener (47:28):
Right.
Paul Bliese (47:28):
And then somebody, somebody points it out. And I've, over my career, had several of those where I just shake my head and think, how did I miss that?
Kasie Whitener (47:34):
Right.
Paul Bliese (47:34):
Why would I see the review on there?
Kasie Whitener (47:36):
Right. And we wanna make sure we're getting to the right conclusions as well.
Paul Bliese (47:38):
That's right.
Kasie Whitener (47:39):
I mean, we, don's simply wanna expose ourselves to information and be like, oh, that's the truth. Yeah. Well, let's, let's dig a little deeper and like really think critically about this and make sure that what we're getting is, is accurate and, and relevant. Alright, this has been great. I hope you didn't mind being here.
Paul Bliese (47:52):
That was wonderful.
Kasie Whitener (47:53):
Alright. Good stuff.This has been Moore impact. When you learn more, you know more, when you know more, you do more. Thanks for listening.