Hiding From Managers Can

Increase Your Productivity

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Harvard Business School Assistant Professor Ethan S. Bernstein explains why

decreasing workplace transparency can increase productivity.

by Carmen Nobel
Companies all over the world have striven for transparency in the workplace,
literally tearing down walls in an effort to let managers and employees observe
each other. Take, for example, one of the 14 key principles of The Toyota Way,
Toyota Motor Corp.'s managerial philosophy: "Use visual control so no
problems are hidden."
But recent research proves the virtue of letting employees do at least some
work unobserved. In a series of studies, Harvard Business School Assistant
Professor Ethan S. Bernstein shows that decreasing the observation of
employees can increase their productivity.

WHAT MANAGERS WERE SEEING WASN'T REAL. IT

WAS A SHOW BEING PUT ON FOR AN AUDIENCE
What's more, in a curious phenomenon dubbed the Transparency Paradox, he
finds that watching your employees less closely at work might yield more
transparency at your organization.
Bernstein uncovered the paradox while studying the manufacturing floor at a
leading, technologically advanced global contract manufacturer's plant in
Southern China, where tens of thousands of workers assembled mobile

devices under close supervision. The plant for years had operated myriad
identical assembly lines, spaced closely together to facilitate visibility. The idea
was that watching the workers would help managers improve operations and
replicate innovations on one line across others, thus increasing productivity
and driving down production costs.
A research team found the opposite was true.

WHAT MANAGERS SAW WASN'T REAL

In the summers of 2008 and 2009, when he was a doctoral candidate at HBS,
Bernstein hired a team of five Chinese-born Harvard undergraduates to be
"embeds" at the plant. They lived in factory dorms and worked alongside
employees, who assumed that the embedded students were actual
employees, too.
During the first summer, the embeds quickly

discovered the crux of the transparency problem, which Bernstein recalls in

his paperThe Transparency Paradox: A Role for Privacy in Organizational
Learning and Operational Control, which won the 2013 Best Published Paper
Award from both the Academy of Management's Organization and
Management Theory Division and Organizational Behavior Division. "First the
embeds were quietly shown 'better ways' of accomplishing tasks by their
peers-a 'ton of little tricks' that 'kept production going' or enabled 'faster,
easier, and/or safer production,' " he writes. "Then they were told 'whenever
the [customers/managers/leaders] come around, don't do that, because they'll
get mad.' "
Rather, veterans advised embeds to perform tasks strictly by the book
whenever a manager was in sight, in order to avoid calling attention to

themselves. As such, the researchers noticed that production seemed to slow

down whenever the employees knew they were being watched. The level of
workplace transparency meant that just as managers could see their
employees more easily, the reverse was true as well.
The official company practices happened to be less effective than the tribal
tricks of the tradetricks that the employees hid from the higher-ups, thus
thwarting the goal of learning by observing. Bernstein says that there was no
ill-intent or cheating behind such hiding behavior, but merely a rational
calculation about human behavior: Operators were hiding their freshest, most
innovative techniques from management so as not to "bear the cost of
explaining better ways of doing things to others."
In the paper he recalls a worker telling an embed, "Even if we had the time to
explain, and they had the time to listen, it wouldn't be as efficient as just
solving the problem now and then discussing it later. Because there is so
much variation, we need to fix first, explain later."
Said another worker: "Everyone is happy: Management sees what they want
to see, and we meet our production quantity and quality targets."
"We assume that when we can see something, we understand it better,"
Bernstein says. "In this particular environment, and perhaps many others,
what managers were seeing wasn't real. It was a show being put on for an
audience. When the audience was gone, the real show went on, and that
show was more productive."

Similar results bore out in a follow-up

quantitative field study at the same site the following summer, this time
tracking the production of 3G USB mobile data cards. The research team
studied 32 production lines for five months. On one set of randomly chosen
lines, the employees worked out in the open, as they always had. On another
set of lines, however, each production line was concealed behind a curtain,
out of management's view. The researchers found that simply hanging that
curtain increased production by 10 to 15 percentmajor information for a
competitive industry that operates on razor-thin margins.
In terms of respecting boundaries, it's important that managers consider not
only individual privacy but group privacy as well, Bernstein explains. The
curtain boosted productivity for a few key reasons: It provided privacy to tweak
(and improve) line operations as temporary issues arose; it prevented
unproductive distractions and provided workers with increased focus; and it let
the line experiment with new ideas prior to explaining them to management.
Indeed, the workers did purposefully share ideas with their supervisors after
testing and perfecting them.
"There was a pride in ownership leading to the desire to share," Bernstein
says. "And so they did. But only after they had data to support their new
approach."

Hence, the transparency paradox: broad visibility of employees at work may

induce secretive behavior, thus reducing real transparency, whereas
boundaries may actually increase it.

THIS RACE TO FULL OBSERVABILITY ON

EVERYTHING CAN HAVE CONSEQUENCES.
Bernstein hastens to add that not every company should erect walls or hang
curtains. "I would never suggest that what works in one setting is necessarily
going to work the same way in another," he says. "The message actually that's
more important to me, which should be more important to managers, too, is
that this race to full observability of everything can have unintended
consequences."

TRYING NOT TO LOOK TOO WEIRD

The field study findings also offer an important message to employeesthat
productivity can depend largely on how well they manage their managers'
attention.
"On the manufacturing floor, the workers were trying to manage the attention
of the managers," Bernstein explains. "They knew that if they did something
that looked weird, it would draw attention and, quite frankly, would disrupt their
current work process. If they didn't look weird, then that wouldn't happen. And
they knew that just for the sake of getting the production numbers, sometimes
it would be good to attract attention and sometimes it wouldn't."
Bernstein elaborates on this concept in the paper "Seeing Too Much: Too
Much in Sight or Too Little Insight?" The paper was chosen for inclusion in the
Academy of Management's Best Paper Proceedings in September.
He explains that when a person starts paying attention to something or
someone, it happens in one of two ways: executive control (that person
deliberately chooses what to focus on) or attentional capture (the attention is
captured by a stimulus in the person's sensory field of vision). Effective
management requires a healthy balance of the two.

"Focus too much on executive control and fail to attend to the unexpected
crisis in your peripheral view," Bernstein says. "Give attentional capture too
much weight and you spend the entire day as a slave to your own curiosity
and every little out-of-place thing around you."
At the factory, the workers were essentially "managing up" by protecting their
managers, themselves, and their company from unproductive attentional
capture. The findings indicate that it may behoove managers to acknowledge
that when it comes to attentional capture, their employees may know best.
"Those managers who believe they can restrain themselves from becoming
captured by something that looks weirdwhen that attention won't be
productivewould likely prefer to see everything and then make a choice as
to whether to attend and get involved," Bernstein says. "But maybe we aren't
as good at battling curiosity or being overloaded by visual stimuli as we might
think. The frontline people who perform a particular task 12 hours a day may
be the best people to determine whether that task needs the attention of
others.
"If you wanted to design a more productive organization," he continues, "you
might actually think about actively putting the agency for attention in the hands
of the people who are doing more of the frontline work."
After all, they may already be controlling your attention anyway.
Note to managers: Are you interested in finding out whether the ability to
observe employees helps or hurts productivity in your organization? Ethan
Bernstein is pursuing additional field studies in non-manufacturing settings.
For more information, please visit The Research Exchange.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Carmen Nobel is senior editor of Harvard Business School Working Knowledge.

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COMMENTS

ZULFIQAR DEO

FOUNDER, WWW.BIZSTUFF.CO

I feel light touch management also allows the employees to be more creative and make greater use of
the tacit knowledge they build up.
Look forward to other comments

ETIENNE DOUAZE

MANAGING PARTNER, JEREMY CONSULTING

This article confuses control with transparency. Transparency in the workplace involves
communication, openness and accountability. It does not imply direct and constant
observation/supervision.

PATRICK O'NEILL

CONSULTANT, MISSION AUSTRALIA

I don't know why we need academics to find out what has been obvious to us lesser peons for
thousands of years. It's called 'delegation': ie living with the fact that others may do things differently
from you, while still being productive. I'm sorry, but managers are not & never have been, the source
of all wisdom, particularly when they try to 'micro-manage'.

JUAN AGUIRRE

PROFESSOR, UNIVERSIDAD LATINA

The findings are interesting and show the ability of human to adapt and survive control.

REBECCA MOTT

MANAGER

I agree that there is little value to constantly watching employees. Processes should be designed in
such a way tht employees have the freedom to innovate with safe boundaries. Hiding innovative ideas
can not only hamper transparency within the organization, but it can also pose a risk and hinder longterm productivity and knowledge transfer. Also, changes in any system has impacts, and failure to
openly discuss changes in processes can lead to problems and frustrations that management are not
able to explain based upon their knowledge of what they believe the process is. So the next question
is how do managers get employees to be transparent about what they are learning and innovations
they are making? We have to put a process in place to allow that transparency to happen.

DANIEL SETZ

O
The kind of production environment, as described in this article, where control seems to be more
based on military principals than modern management practices, are generally more common in the
emerging markets. As they will progress in their management practices they will understand that
delegation, empowerment and motivation will increase productivity and output.

HARI

DM, INDEPENDENT CONSULTANT

We have said that team work (sharing each other's strengths and weaknesses) improves productivity.
Now we are saying do not be visible to managers with what we are doing?

PAUL NICHOLAS

DIRECTOR, SOUL-CHAPLAIN CONSULTANCY

Remember the "Three B's" theory of creativity? - that some of our most creative moments come in the
warm zone between dreaming and wakefulness - often experienced in bed, in the bath, or on a bus.
Creativity and innovative thinking in a workplace require time and space - sometimes with feet up,
sometimes staring at the ceiling. This invariably looks bad and thus tends to be done when no-one is
looking. A manager 'looking over one's shoulder' can be extremely disruptive to truly uninhibited and
creative thinking. If you do manage by walking about and see someone staring into space with their
feet up, come back later and ask what they were thinking about.

DR A JAGAN MOHAN REDDY

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR[HR], INSTITUTE OF PUBLIC ENTERPRISE

Very insghtful article indeed. One of the main criticism against the Hawthorne experiments was that
employees being aware of the survey displayed such behaviour which might not be true.The real
takeaway for todays Managers is that this race to full observability of everything can have unintended
consequences. Thank you so much for sharing.Happy knowledge sharing.

GREG ANTHONY HAWOD

BUSINESS ENTREPRENEUR

Another interesting question sparked by this article is: "Why do employees don't share their innovative
ideas to the management team?"
One of the answers I found here is the burden to bear the cost of explaining later on. Employees may
be hesitant because whatever they say may be taken against them if the management found that they
don't like the premises used by the employees.
Another reason could be that they fear management will nip their ideas in the bud if there are no solid
result. As a consequence, employees conceal these innovative ideas do it right away. If there are
good results and the managers found out, they will be in better position to explain.

ROBERT NG

DIRECTOR, ERGOWORLD PTE LTD

My personal experience confirms the finding is true and this evolves from different skill of worker and
their willingness to share with others either individually or team. Manager needs to consider allocating
time to work on floor levels to gain this trust of sharing better ideas from workers.

TEMA FRANK

CEO, FRANK ONLINE MARKETING

It seems to me that there may also be a cultural element here. In a culture where conformity has been
valued and individualism punished, of course people are afraid of being seen doing something
different.
But in a culture where employees are encouraged to find better ways of doing things, I don't think
you'd see the same impact. (Or at least, it would not be as strong. I think there's still a signalling value
in allowing some privacy: it shows your employees that you trust them, and that is always motivating.

NATASCHA THOMSON

CEO, MARKETINGXLERATOR

Carmen:
Great article and ample food for thought.
From my experience, there will always be a bit of a dog and pony show in front of superiors in any line
of work.
The challenge I see is that most managers cannot handle any kind of uncertainty and - despite lip
service to the contrary - are afraid of risk taking.
Hence, employees keep their innovative approaches to themselves as opposed to having to defend
themselves or even being told to "stick to the existing process".
Especially in companies that are very consensus driven, do individual mangers not want to stand out
as non-team players or rookies. But to have to get buy in from a "committee" on every decision is
painful and time-consuming.
As somebody already said,it's better to get proof that your idea works before floating it with
management. The manger who can just listen as a sounding board is so rare. Maybe because, as
infered by another comment, mangers think adding value means having an opinion on everything, and
thinking they know best.
Regards, Natascha

MARK GONSKA, AMERICA'S CAREER COACH

EVP, DISE & COMPANY

Being invisible to your manager(s) is also a great way to lose a job. Ask the thousands who believed,
"my work will speak for itself."

TOM DOLEMBO

FOUNDER, NEW NORTH INSTITUTE

In a lean conversion project, we have found that major long-term production issues were presented as
a barrier to further management involvement. A completely failed data acquisition system allowed
operators to innovate without having someone counting their errors during the learning period. Once
the production innovations worked, the data system magically became a non-issue. Hiding in plain
sight was a brilliant tactic .

DOMENICA PIGA

PROJECT MANAGER, BLACK BELT, THE JOINT COMMISSION

While there are some interesting points made in the article I think they misrepresent transparency. In
the article Berstein explains transparency as watching, observing and monitoring employees. I

disagree with this concept in regards to increasing productivity. No one wants to be watched! Of
course this behavior would make the employees put on a show for the managers. Employees are
number one at figuring out how to get around managers when they do not feel trusted, empowered or
appreciated. Transparency should be about showing the numbers, data, and how we are improving or
falling behind. The embeds where shown the real standard work, how the work is really done when no
one is watching because they were trusted among the other employees. They became part of the
team. If managers actually trusted their employees and empowered them, while working with them to
increase productivity they would see a culture shift. No one comes to work (mos tly) thinking they are
going to screw their organization. But managers treat employees this way this is the behaviors they
get. Its not about privacy its about trust. And of course the employees know how to increase
productivity better than managers. They are the ones doing the work. They live the work every day!
Managers, learn to trust and give up the "power" of control. You don't have it anyway. You are only as
strong as your team.

DOMENICA PIGA

PROJECT MANAGER, BLACK BELT, THE JOINT COMMISSION

While there are some interesting points made in the article I think they misrepresent transparency. In
the article Berstein explains transparency as watching, observing and monitoring employees. I
disagree with this concept in regards to increasing productivity. No one wants to be watched! Of
course this behavior would make the employees put on a show for the managers. Employees are
number one at figuring out how to get around managers when they do not feel trusted, empowered or
appreciated. Transparency should be about showing the numbers, data, and how we are improving or
falling behind. The embeds where shown the real standard work, how the work is really done when no
one is watching because they were trusted among the other employees. They became part of the
team. If managers actually trusted their employees and empowered them, while working with them to
increase productivity they would see a culture shift. No one comes to w ork (mostly) thinking they are
going to screw their organization. But managers treat employees this way this is the behaviors they
get. Its not about privacy its about trust. And of course the employees know how to increase
productivity better than managers. They are the ones doing the work. They live the work every day!
Managers, learn to trust and give up the "power" of control. You don't have it anyway. You are only as
strong as your team.

PETER LEE

REMUNERATION CONSULTANT, REMUNERATION DATA SPECIALISTS PTE LTD

Interesting. What is missing is contextual details i.e. what sort of material or non material incentives
when prodn quotas are met or not met or exceeded. I suspect that employees were not properly
rewarded for exceeding quotas; i.e. if prodn goes up mgmt may raise the bar further without
commensurate rewards so employees see this an an disincentive.
Obviously trust is also a factor & the working environment is probably far from conducive in respect of
organisation-sharing and collaboration (except among close colleagues - good thing Berstein used
embedded researchers otherwise such details would not have surfaced).

STEPHANIE LEPP

STRATEGIST, BBMG

This is not about transparency but about freedom. Curtains wouldn't matter either way if managers
gave employees the freedom to experiment and innovate.

KAPIL KUMAR SOPORY

COMPANY SECRETARY, SMEC(INDIA) PRIVATE LIMITED

Transparency is necessary, undue overseeing and close watch/control is not. Yes, achievement of
tasks and goals is important. The manager needs to watch performance from a distance without
pestering the employee who be allowed to develop creatively. Much good is ultimately the outcome of
such an approach. If you carry control too far the employees feel annoyed, frustrated and dejected.
They will try to show off a working style which they would realize the manager likes. However, this is
not to the ultimate good to the organization.

SALLY APPLIN

DOCTORAL CANDIDATE, UKC, UK - CENTRE FOR SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

AND COMPUTING

(Applin and Fischer 2013), "Watching Me, Watching You. (Process Surveillance and Agency in the
Workplace" might be useful here as well.
Our paper describes the human response to a management structure and often software driven
mandatory business process environment.
Here: http://posr.org/w/images/0/0d/ApplinFischerISTAS13PREPUBDRAFT.pdf
and
Final version (paywall) here: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6613129&url=http
%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fiel7%2F6596466%2F6613092%2F06613129.pdf%3Farnumber
%3D6613129

JACKSON DANIEL LAMME

HACK, DISHWASHER, FARMER, JACKSONSPRINTS.COM JACKSONL.BIZ

JACKSONDANIEL.NET

Very promising findings generated in the study, I enjoyed reading.

I've been at my job for 3 years so management has pretty much stopped breathing down my neck, but
that anxiety of them looking for errors will drive you to perform poorly no doubt.

Bosses do it on purpose, for personal satisfaction, and as a form of dominant, agonistic behavior; they
think they're head of some kind of a quasi religious, worship centered cult group.
People in social settings in their leisure time will engage in similar behavior that "throws you off",
causing nice guys to stumble over words, experience panic and generally finish last.
That quest for intimidation (academic credibility) is what drives people to use words like "myriad"
without a preposition, because they know it's chic in the rough and tumble world of academic ferocity
to do so. It also causes our peers to "leave us hanging" after we ask a question; they want just that
little bit of posture to feel secure in their person against us.
I think the article overstates to some degree what I see as a tricky contrivance to allow the politically
correct presupposition that if we all sing cumbaya and dance around the fire, both sides win out in the
end.
The "tribal" practices aren't always gold potted rainbows; I think the fact that managerial acceptance
of the employees own methods, not the companies, would constitute 1 type of increased transparency
to a degree, but it won't always work out like that, a boss finding out could result in the creation of an
environment with less transparency, and les job satisfaction, whether that policy is good or bad for the
company. It's far from : "What managers were seeing wasn't real. It was a show being put on for an
audience" he didn't discover the holy grail or philosophers stone, I've worked jobs where literally
nothing was done on site, we sat for hour upon hour with boredom racking our minds, then demanded
a juicy paycheck and felt justified doing it.
The politically correct individuals will just jump on board the opinion (or scientific conclusion) ship and
sail off into whatever horizon will gain them the most profit socially or monetarily. They won't push the
envelope out of fear of the agonists. That's why when you remove the observing boss from the
equation, they still fear the boss and work hard, but, exactly as the article points out, they spend more
time thinking, and less time doing, and so have a slight increase in productivity for a time (while still
being subject to countless extraneous factors in these presumably inadequately designed
experiments)
How's that for TRYING NOT TO LOOK TOO WEIRD

ANONYMOUS

O
The article is interesting. However, the findings here in my opinion is not conclusive. Because, what is
true in one particular industry will not be true for another.
I worked in power and desalination industry as an engineer before i completed my PhD in finance and
i found the opposite. I worked with different people from different countries everyone has his own
believes (based on their culture) and from those believes they act.
I think it is better that an organization motivate (ethically) its employees to do their best despite they
been supervised or not.

RUSSELL G. BROWN, PH. D.

FORMER ROBOTICIST, CURRENT MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGY STUDENT,

LOYALIST COLLEGE

I am indeed intrigued by the results reported here though, as others have pointed out, there is a
significant difference between observability and transparency as regards workplaces and productivity.
I think these results primarily point to the problems inherent in not being able to trust one's
management. In general, I think we want our managers to (i) understand what we're doing, (ii) be able
to lead (not command, not order, not rule, but LEAD), (iii) be honest with us, (iv) defend us, as far as
reasonably possible, from external threats (starting with the next level of management), and (v) not to
slow us down without good, honest reason. It's clear that the employees in the initial study didn't
believe their managers were doing more than one or two of those things with any reliability, if that.
Transparency, in the sense that's important here, includes being able to see the manager's agenda
and knowing if they, in fact, HAVE an agenda beyond making themselves look good.
I am curious why Jackson Daniel Lamme thinks "myriad" needs a preposition, since it can function as
an adjective, but perhaps he means to refer to the abhorrent class of manager who goes around using
words like "surveil." Perhaps suitable immunity to the temptation to use buzzwords should be item (vi)
on the list above.

ATHULA DHARMAWARDHANA

O
Is it correct saying work under observation or not improve creativity? Under observation some
instances productivity may go up if workers fear of loosing the job. Other instances no observation
may increase productivity if workers feel no stress due to observation by the supervisors. Thus, the
reason for improving productivity may be due to how workers feel and the situation they work on.

DEAN MARC CO

PRINCIPAL ADVISER - ENGINEERING | DESIGN | INNOVATIONS, DUNGEON

INNOVATIONS

As always, it is insightful to read a rigorously contrived essay based on rigorously done research
along with the essential conversation that ensues from everyone.
This very dynamic reflects the necessary dynamic in most circumstances involving social and
communication dynamics among people.
Context and circumstances set the stage that drives a lot constraints in how we go about things.
But not all shows on stage are good.
This puts emphasis that context and how one utilizes it has to be treated with equal importance.
I agree that we may be correlating transparency with control mistakenly.
Just like there is good management, the opposite is prevalent. The problem is not transparency (while
too much of something has its repercussions). It is simply ineffective management and leadership.
But we must not forget that even with the presence of ineffective management that stifles productivity,
some of these successful companies are well, successful (perhaps not as successful as it can be but
successful nonetheless).
Identifying and driving towards the right metrics of what matters is critical.

But in the end, people matter more, for ill or not.