The business & marketing dangers of the ‘Kick the Dog Effect’
We are discussing human behavior and Sejal
tells me something that stops me in my tracks. She tells me the sour constant
and angry complainers aren’t necessarily venting against those on the outside.
They are in fact railing against the unhappiness they harbor deep within. Their
anger is directed at themselves though on the surface it seems otherwise. I
think about it and I recognize ‘projection’
at play and know it’s a common defense mechanism employed by many. It’s a coping
tool that works best for those unwilling to face up to the bitter truth about themselves.
Trying to help isn’t a smart idea in such
cases because getting to an admittance of the problem would probably be next to
impossible. Dealing with unhappy people is bound to take a toll and if you are saddled
with such people in your family or social life, the burden can get to you. What
about at work? Ditto! Unhappy complainers and blamers suck the energy out of workplaces,
and if they are in positions of leadership you can bet the drain on employee motivation
can even be fatal. Expecting an admittance of a problem from such people at
work is a futile pursuit. Katherine Philips, Professor of leadership and ethics
at Columbia's business school when asked why leaders at business firms don’t admit
to mistakes had
this to say, ‘One of the basic kinds of psychological needs of human beings
is to save face - right? - and to not look stupid, and not look like they don't
know what they're doing. And people who are in powerful positions, and in
charge, oftentimes feel that pressure even more so.’
In marketing, the propensity to project marketplace
failures on to external elements and never look within can have devastating effects.
Marketing stumbles when superior value isn’t created and delivered to buyers, A
lack in value in most cases comes from a mismanagement of the marketing elements.
It’s almost always a flaw in either the product, or its availability, or the price
charged, or even the way psychological value is created and communicated to the
target buyer. Smart marketers are those that are finding newer ways of value creation
in a constantly altering marketplace. To ensure they are at the forefront of innovation
as a prime driver of value, marketers regular revisit processes in place to
assess what they do in the light of changing technology and other evolving macro-environmental
variables.
Such organizational and marketing revisits
and redesigns are only possible with a leadership that doesn’t suffer from the
need to project failures on to the outside. That means people who are psychologically
healthy enough to look within and admit to shortcomings when needed. For business
and marketing’s sake, I am hoping the tribe that Sejal described that keeps ‘kicking
the dog’ don’t stay around long enough to inflict irreparable damage within
organizations.
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