Few months ago, I was working on an urgent and important client deliverable. Towards, the fag end of the assignment, the underlying premise of the deliverable got revised. This means that the entire month of activities to be reworked in less than the next 5 days. My team and I took this up as a challenge.
During the course on the next 5 days, my senior would call me 8 to 10 times a day to check whether we are on track and that assignment is progressing. After 2 days, I told him the quantum of time I am devoting on updating you about assignment is far greater than my time to work. I will keep you posted when I need your support.
To this he replied, I understand that this is affecting your work, but I have to inform management about the progress, so please bear with my calls …
I was wondering when he understands that his behavior is creating hindrances in timely deliverable, still he insists on continuing his behavior. Has he lost his moral code, his sense of right and wrong, why is he simply obeying?
I got my answer recently when I read about an experiment conducted in 1961 by Yale psychologist — Stanley Milgram
The experiment was relatively simple. In each enactment, there were two volunteers scientist. One would play the role of the teacher and the other would play the role of the student.
The teacher would ask questions to the students. If the student got the wrong answer or refused to answer the question, the teacher was to flip a switch on the console and administer an electric shock to the student. Before the start of the experiment, the teachers were administered a mild shock of 15 volt so they could have a sense of what it felt like.
On Console, there were 30 switches — labeled from 15 volts to 450 volts And it was made very clear to the teacher that with each switch the shocks would get increasingly more severe.
To make sure that the teacher understood the implications of the increasing severity of the shocks, there were also labels placed above certain ranges — Slight Shock, Moderate Shock, Strong Shock, Intense Shock and Shock” until the voltages reached “Danger: Severe Shock” The final range 435 to 450 volts, was painted red and marked simply“XXX.”
There were several variants of this experiment. I would like to mention — two variant
- the teacher was unable to see the effects of the shocks on the student, they could hear the student’s protests and screams,
- the teacher could neither see the effect of shock on student neither hear their scream, they could only hear thumping on the walls
As expected, as the experiment progressed, all the teachers expressed concern. As they realized they were causing pain to the student, they would look up to the scientist, standing next to them in a white lab coat. The first time the teacher expressed a desire to stop the experiment or no longer be a part of it, the scientist would say, “Please continue.”
When the teacher expressed a desire to stop a second time, the scientist would always say, “The experiment requires that you continue.”
As they went further and further down the line of switches, some of the volunteers started to get nervous. Upon the third request to halt the experiment, the scientist replied coldly, “It is absolutely essential that you continue.” After a fourth protest, the scientist responded simply, “You have no other choice, you must go on.”
The experiment concluded and the result -
- the teacher was unable to see the effects of the shocks on the student, they could clearly hear the student’s protests and screams — 60% refused to continue
- the teacher could neither see the effect of shock on student neither hear their scream, they could only hear thumping on the walls — only 35% refused to continue. That means 65% of volunteers were able to go through the entire experiment, even when they knew that they were causing serve damage to students and could have killed someone.
Upon the conclusion of the experiment, despite believing that the student may be hurt, the volunteers expressed concern — insisting that they should not be held responsible. They were just following orders of the scientist in a white lab coat.
The questions that we need to ask our self are — if someone who outranked us, someone in a position of authority, ordered us to do something entirely counter to our moral code, our sense of right and wrong, we would simply obey?
The story about experiment is adapted from book Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t by Simon Sinek
