managers turn sweet lemon to sour with their decisions. Forgetting about emerging emotional needs are the root causes of turning good performance into a sour one

1. The Bitter Better Factor (BBF)
by Ali Anani
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2. The Idea
The Bitter Better Factor (BBF).
I coined this term to reflect improvements
that look sweet on the outside, but bitter in
the inside. Many business suffer from this
factor. Many promotions fall in this catch.
Many managers fall in this cage. Many
improvements are not improvements; in fact
they are movements to the rear
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3. Bad to Worse
Making things worse is significantly
easier than making them better
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4. Ocassionally Bitter IS Better
Bitter is one of the five flavors our
taste buds can recognize.
Some of the many effects of bitters
include:
Stimulating acid secretion in the
stomach and the release of digestive
juices from the pancreas
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5. Beware Better That Is Bitter
Beware improvements that turn good
to bad.
Beware actions that turn good
employees into bad ones
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6. Examples Are Numerous
Tireless efforts and never being satisfied
with one’s current level of performance can
actually be performance inhibitors. An off
season of extra practice and added
discipline in the gym can create heavy
expectations if an athlete is not careful.
See M. Scott Peck’s Golf and the Spirit for a
rich explanation of this concept.
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7. Examples Are Numerous- 2
Organization make the same mistake. They
forget about the consequences of actions
over time and mainly their emotional content
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8. Examples Are Numerous- 3
Sugar-Coated promotions are
exemplary of this BBF factor.
Promotions are intended to
acknowledge the performance of
employees hoping their performance
will excel
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9. Examples Are Numerous- 4
Promotions change the emotional
values of people. A newly-promoted
director has new emotional needs
such as new status and social
acceptance
The financial burden of the new
emotional needs may often exceed the
financial ability of the new director
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10. Examples Are 5
Promotions create physical benefits
that instead of turning into emotional
benefit do exactly the opposite as they
turn into emotional loss
Emotional
Benefits Physical
Benefits
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11. Examples Are Numerous- 5
The result is unhappy director.
Happiness is directly linked to
productivity
The performance of the director
worsens because we considered the
immediate benefits with disregard to
the emotional benefits over time
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12. Incentives Are Not Different- 2
Incentives aim at encouraging good
performance
They often fire back.
We see with the close range lenses
and forget about long range emotional
benefits
We turn the sweet lemon to a sour one
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13. Emotional Selling
Emotional selling and emotional
marketing
In the process we forgot that
employees are internal customers and
their emotional benefits must be
addressed as well
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14. The Lesson
Never turn good feelings of promotion
to bad feelings of unmet and emerging
emotional needs
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15. From Rational to Irrational
Rational decisions of today may turn to
be the most irrational decisions
tomorrow.
Beware of the emerging emotional
needs under the iceberg of physical
benefits
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16. Management with an
emotional heart is what
we need
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17. Moving from Physical Needs to
Emotional Benefits
Managerial decisions
should take this factor for
the current situation and
emerging emotional needs
in the future (See next
slide)
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