Daily Archives: February 21, 2010

Dissatisfiers: Why John Quit

21 Sunday Feb 2010

Posted by in Club Leadership, Communication, Customer Relations, Customer Service, Employee Retention, Human Resources, Lessons of Life, Management Practices, Membership Retention, Public Relations, Relationships, Rotary, Rotary@105, Social Media Relations, The Tipping Point

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by Paul Kiser
USA PDT [Twitter: ] [Facebook] [LinkedIn] Skype: kiserrotary or 775.624.5679]

Paul Kiser

Why Did John Quit?
In my years in management, human resources, and service club involvement I have watched many people leave organizations and periodically someone in the organization starts throwing around the ‘R’ word: Retention. What follows are committee meetings, calls for surveys, and finger-pointing. The search usually turns up discovery of a plausible single cause for the problem based upon limited evidence, followed by a shrug of shoulders because the alledged cause is almost always determined to be a reason that is out of control of the organization.

Finding the real reason for attrition for any organization is elusive because there is almost never just one reason for someone to quit. The decision to quit is typically after the person has accumulated multiple ‘dissatisfiers‘ or negative experiences that finally caused the person to make a change by leaving. Dissatisfiers can be issues about pay, benefits, or other tangible reasons; however, most negative experiences are intangible acts that weaken (or fail to strengthen) a person’s perception of belonging to the organization.

A Dissatisfier may be something small, like a person not getting thanked for his or her contribution to a special project, or something more significant, like a lack of a desired promotion. As each Dissatisfier is added the person gets closer to the decision that the organization is not meeting his or her needs.

While a group or organization may be unaware of their actions that cause a Dissatisfier for an individual, people often consciously use Dissatisfiers to drive away a member or employee from a group because it is a subtle form of discrimination that is difficult to detect and easy to blame the victim as being overly sensitive. We learn this tactic at a young age and often as a byproduct of sibling rivalry when one child torments another by subtlety annoying them until they react violently. In adults, the behavior is rarely as overt, nor does it result in violence, but can be very effective in weeding out diversity in the group.

When the Dissatisfiers are not the result of a conscious effort against a person, but rather the failure to include the person, the result can be the same. Over time the person may ultimately decide to quit for a better opportunity, or, in the case of a volunteer organization, leave for no other opportunity.

The Perfect Environment to Study Dissatisfiers
Volunteer organizations are an ideal environment to study the effect of Dissatisfiers because the issue of compensation and/or benefits (tangible rewards) can be ruled out as factors for attrition. While some may conclude that because there is no tangible rewards for a volunteer, his or her involvement is tenuous all the time; however, often an individual has a deeper commitment to a volunteer organization simply because they are involved for more meaningful reasons. That reason may be as simple as wanting to be a part of an organization that seeks to do good, but for many people who need is often more powerful than monetary gain.

Members of a volunteer organization should feel that the work they perform not only gives them a sense of accomplishment; but also gives them a sense  of worth, belonging (or friendship) and pride. For a member to leave that organization means that the group failed to provide or connect the member to the key rewards of volunteer service. Attrition in a volunteer organization is often blamed on a single external factor (a bad economy) or the person (not in the organization for the right reasons) rather than examine the Dissatisfiers that they might have been able to address that would have retained that member.

To improve retention organizations need to stop looking for the single factor for attrition, and start looking for the list of Dissatisfiers that led to the decision to quit. In volunteer organizations, a member’s involvement is to fill a need of belonging and attrition can only be attributed to internal Dissatisfiers, not external factors.

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Global Warming According to the Village Idiot

21 Sunday Feb 2010

Posted by in Science

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I always cringe when I read or hear someone remark, “I just cleared six inches of Global Warming off my driveway.”   It sounds clever, but I when I read or hear this from someone I find myself hoping that the person is trying to make a joke about themselves, and not that the person is trying to make some political statement that they have proof that contradicts real science.  Suffice to say that even the most unsophisticated person should know that an observation at any one location is not a valid measure of global change; however, there is more to this issue.

First, the term Global ‘Warming’ is a poor description of what would better be referred to as Global Energy Retention.   What most people know about the Sun is that it is bright and hot and therefore anything to do with the sun is a light or a ‘heat’ issue.   The fact is that the Sun’s output is energy, and light and heat are merely the forms of energy that we can see and feel.   The major player in ‘Global Warming’ is infrared energy, which is a type of energy we can’t see but that we can feel as warmth.   The problem is that carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere causes some infrared energy to bounce back to the Earth and the amount of CO2 has dramatically risen in the past 100 years.    Because infrared energy is associated with ‘heat’ it would seem to make one believe that this is an issue only about higher temperatures, but it is not.

We don’t ‘feel’ visible light; however, visible light can turn into infrared energy by hitting a dark colored surface.   The ‘heat’ we feel off of asphalt is visible light energy that has been converted into infrared energy.    This is an important distinction because while we associate infrared with ‘heat’, other types of energy can be converted into infrared energy AND infrared energy can be converted into non-heat energy.   For example, the energy that is absorbed in the ocean can evaporate water that can create clouds.  Likewise, the energy absorbed by the oceans and the land can cause air to heat and begin moving causing wind.   In both situations infrared energy becomes the energy that is converted from ‘heat’ to another kind of energy.   This is why it’s so important to understand that Global Warming is not just about ‘heat’ but it is about the Earth retaining more energy.

It is likely that the reason that Global Warming was coined as the term to describe the retention of more solar energy was to help non-scientists and politicians to better understand the effect.   The problem with the term is that it creates the impression that with every new day, month, season, and year we should be observing higher temperatures than we remember from the previous year.   But because energy can be converted, the retention of more infrared energy does not necessarily mean higher temperatures as some of the excess infrared will be converted into wind and storms.

So where is all this extra energy now? It seems much of the extra energy is being transported (by the oceans and air over the oceans) to where Earth is coldest, the poles.   We are seeing a major change in the Antarctic ice shield which makes sense as the Southern Hemisphere is predominantly oceans.   We are also seeing more hurricanes and major storms (including snow storms) that indicate ‘Global Warming’ is powering up the weather dynamics across the Earth.   The point is that ‘Warming’ is a misnomer when we discuss the impact of Earth’s Energy Retention because the end product is not always ‘heat’.

However, even if there were no issue on energy retention, the idea that a person can judge global weather patterns from what the amount of snow on their driveway is pathetic.   It is akin to standing in the kitchen with the refrigerator door open and saying the house is cold.   There is no doubt that 1) we have more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than we have had in millions of years, and a dramatic increase in the last 100 years, and 2) more carbon dioxide means more absorption of infrared energy.   The situation is real and while the long term impact of Earth’s energy retention cannot be fully understood it never will be a political or a laughing matter.