Escape from the Red Zone

Naylor and Crittenden are equal partners in the company and have contributed equal parts to the whole. When they give a seminar they take the stage for equal amounts of time. Crittenden emphasizes the practical application of the techniques. Naylor diagrams the theoretical underpinnings of the program. Some people warm up to Naylor; others prefer Crittenden. In a world of change agents and motivational gurus trailed by support staffs, the Naylor-Crittenden partnership is a working research and development lab for the system itself. In their program they stress cooperation and teamwork instead of domination and subservience. They also happen to live it in the operation of the business.

The program is built on a set of assumptions about the unchanging emotional mechanics that drive all productive work. People are motivated by either "red" emotions -- anger, fear, greed -- or "green" emotions -- genuine enthusiasm and confidence. Either sort of fuel gets results. Yet one set of emotions gets results as it slowly destroys people; the other can actually improve people's quality of life.

All organizations in the contemporary world manipulate emotion, warp it, force it into the red zone, hindering productivity and destroying people as a matter of daily business. Naylor and Crittenden say that all contemporary organizations are sick. A few, and only a few, are struggling to get well.

Most managers don't want to hear this sort of thing. Any talk about feelings smacks of therapy and leg-warmers from the human resources department. Most business operates on the assumption that it doesn't matter how people feel about their jobs, as long as they get the work done without going postal.

"But what happens?" Crittenden asks. "You may make lots of money. But in the long run productivity falls off. Quality suffers. People don't show up for work. They drink. And those are the successful ones. The failures don't have that luxury. They get downsized. We have a way of managing emotion. A way to help people pay attention to it without letting it take control. And that's the whole key. People can't just go around doing what they feel like doing. And yet how they feel about the job is almost all that matters. If you don't understand that, it's like trying to build a car without understanding internal combustion. Emotions and feelings make the whole thing work."

Their alternative model for organizational life and the politics of emotion has simple ground rules: No flattery. No advice. No criticism. No motivation whatsoever. No telling people how to do their jobs -- outside of a genuine training environment. Never. At all. Period.

"Flattery, advice, criticism, and motivation rob workers of their freedom and ignore the essential emotional current that runs through encounters between manager and subordinate," Naylor says. Nine times out of ten, that emotional current is red: a Molotov cocktail of anger and fear, grounded in feelings of subjugation.

The logic goes something like this: The person on the receiving end of flattery or advice or criticism feels manipulated. The person giving advice assumes the worker can't do the job alone. Criticism presumes failure and weakness. Motivation fires up workers, but turns them into obedient machines. Flattery is manipulation, unless the flatterer turns the gesture into a true compliment by making it absolutely specific -- in which case it emphasizes the achievement without creating a dependency on the praise. As a consequence of these techniques, workers feel obligated, compelled to take action -- they feel as if they have to do something.

"You can get things done through 'have to'," notes Crittenden, "but people get revenge. It just takes different forms -- sick time, missed deadlines, absenteeism."

Most management, in other words, triggers what Naylor and Crittenden call a person's Red Box: the most primitive survival, fight-or-flight reflexes hardwired into the deepest and oldest layers of the brain. Most people work, not because they're genuinely willing to work, but because they're afraid not to. Management as it's now practiced is one of the most primitive forms of human behavior.

Naylor is standing in a windowless conference room. Facing him are three dozen facilities managers at one of the largest cancer center in the world, The University of Texas M.D. Anderson, in Houston, Texas. The cancer center is part of the Texas Medical Center, which is virtually a small city unto itself, employing 50,000 people with annual revenues of $8 billion. Everything about Naylor is unexceptional: medium height, gray suit, white shirt, conservative tie. He has the face of an older soap opera character actor. It's his message that burns.

"You aren't going to want to hear this," Naylor begins, addressing the stone-faced Texas managers. "Organizations today are like the Flat Earth Society. We're telling you the world is round. You'd think people would be so happy to hear this. The world is round! This idea will expand your horizons!" he says and then grows quiet. "But how do people respond?"