“It doesn't need to make sense to you.”

One of the hardest things for a parent to do is allow their teenager to make a mistake.  We want to protect them.  We don’t want them to make the same mistakes we made.  (Actually, we expect them to be learning at a much faster rate than they are demonstrating, and thus, not making repeated mistakes.)  I am not talking about big, life-threatening mistakes.  I mean the relatively small mistakes associated with everyday activities.

The train wreck is coming; it is as clear as Aruban waters.  There is no way to make him see the eventual outcome.  He continues to march down the same path…

“I told you your mother is always right.  Why are you arguing with her?”

“Because I know she is wrong and I must correct her.”  [Choo, Choo]

“You need to finish your laundry and do your journal.”

“Ok.  I am going to work on my foreign language.”  [Bright Light, Bright Light]

“Maybe you should work ahead on school work since you have time right now.”

“That’s not a bad idea.”

“Are you going to go and do the work now?”

“Nah. I’ll do it later.”  [Clack, Clack, Clack]

“Why are you carrying one little bottle at a time to the table?”

“It takes more energy for me to carry more than one at a time.”

“But you have a bag with you.  Why not put them in your bag and make one trip instead of 4?”

Wait for it.

Wait for it.

“It doesn't need to make sense to you.  It just needs to make sense to me.”

And there it is.  No truer words were ever said from a full-of-wisdom teenager.  So many of their choices only need to make sense to them.  What we see as mistakes, they see as independence, assuming responsibility, decision making, and problem solving.  It really doesn’t matter to them that the outcome will be a front row seat on the cattle guard of a large locomotive.  To them, making a mistake is not a negative.  They only want to have that brief moment of control.

We should let them make more mistakes.  And remember, “It doesn't need to make sense to you.”

Proverbs 12:15  “The way of fools seems right to them, but the wise listen to advice.”

- What is your plan? -

“I Know”

My all time favorite response from my teenagers is “I Know”.  It’s multi-purpose and conveys a complete thought.  It indicates wisdom as the synonyms for “know” are grasp, understand, and comprehend.  Merriam-Webster tells us it literally means “to have knowledge”.  We all know that teenagers have all the knowledge they need.  This is why “I Know” is not only my favorite response, it is also the most frequent.

“You have Spanish homework due tomorrow.”

“I Know.”

“If you know, why don’t you do it now.”

“I Know!”

“The Spanish homework is not going to complete itself.”

“I Know!!”

“If you know, why am I having to tell you?”

(BIG EYE ROLL)

[another favorite]

Sounds like a complete grasp of the situation to me.

“We have to be out the door by 12:15 tomorrow.  You have an appointment.”  

“I Know.”

“You said “I Know” the last time and you were 20 minutes late.”

“I Know!”

“If you know, then what is your plan to make sure you are on time?”

“ahh”

“You need a plan to get up on time.”

“I know.”

[He was only 12 minutes late this time]

“Your appointment was moved from today to next week.”

“I know.”

“How could you possible have known?  I just received the email.”

“ahh”

[gotcha]

He clearly has a complete comprehension of all knowledge.

We have an abundance of “knowing” in our house.  Anybody need a little?

Proverbs 2:10 “For wisdom will enter your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul.”

- What is your plan? -

“That’s not my problem”

In John G. Miller’s book, QBQ!, The Question behind the Question, the message is very clear.  The message is personal accountability.  Personal accountability is, in part, the ability to use “I” statements that indicate your acceptance of responsibility for the outcome in a given situation.

“I messed that up.”  

“I didn’t complete my assignment on time.”

“I failed to treat you with respect.”

A person with a lack of personal accountability will try to deflect responsibility and place blame onto someone else.

“They didn’t do their job.”

“She was suppose to remind me.”

“He didn’t tell me about the next task.”

Personal accountability plays a significant role in defining the problem for any given plan implementation.  If the person identifying the problem lacks personal accountability, he will most certainly identify the wrong problem.  There is a clear link between personal accountability and incorrectly identifying the problem.  Let’s walk through a “hypothetical” situation.

A high school junior is told by his teacher that he is almost finished with the school year.  He looks at the large amount of remaining work on his schedule and concludes that the “problem” is that his teacher obviously lied to him.  There is way too much work to be almost done with the school year.  This junior did not ask the question behind the question.  

The real “problem” was his lack of output or willingness to put in the hard work.  A better response from the junior would have been, “I have a lot of work to do.  I better get to work.”

I think we all need to take responsibility for our output and “get to work”.

2 Thessalonians 3:10 “For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.” “

- What is your plan? -

“That is not what I expected.”

This post is about incentives, and more accurately, unintended incentives.  Have you ever set a plan in motion and the results were 180 degrees out from what you expected?  I bet if you looked hard enough, your plans include unintended incentives.

Plans with incentives involve people and we all know that humans are completely rational.  These “rational” humans can nearly always find the unintended incentive.

Need an example?

(Note: “S” asked that the next blog be about his brother since he didn’t like all the attention from the last one.)

“J” is my other teenage son.  He is at the age that he can shop for himself, and mom and dad see an opportunity to teach him about money matters.  Money matters like giving, saving and spending.  

He has job responsibilities around the house and, for his efforts, he receives weekly compensation.  We also decided to provide him with a small monthly clothing budget.  With this additional monthly income, he would now be responsible for buying his own clothing.  Sounds like a logical approach with obvious incentives.  Incentives like looking for sales, getting only what you need, and learning to budget monthly.

Recently “J” has developed the learned behavior of leaving his wallet at home.  What?  

Me - “How are you going to pay for your stuff?”

“J” -   “You can pay for it, and I will pay you back when we get home.” (which rarely happens)

or

Me - “Don’t forget your wallet”

“J” - “It’s ok.  There won’t be anything I want to buy.”  (repeat conversation above)

We had actually provided an incentive for him to “forget” his wallet.  The incentive was more money in his bank account.

Home is not the only place to watch out for unintended incentives.  How about an example from the workplace?

A couple of weeks ago at work, I helped conduct a large scale data collection effort in an attempt to track the outputs from our organization.  We built a spreadsheet to capture the information and we ended up with over 30 elements of data per line of entry.  We pushed out the instructions and the form with a short turn around time (as always).  The organization responded and the data started to flow in.  Lots of data.  Way more than expected.  We thought this was great support from across the entire organization.  What more can you ask for?  

Next step was data analysis.  We quickly realized that we unintentionally baked incentives into our data collection.  The category titles and selection choices provided enough indicators to drive the responders to a “preferred” choice.  

The results indicated that not one of our outputs was generated from a self-initiated project.  This is highly unlikely for my type of organization.  I suspect this is the same for others organizations.

Was this gaming the system?  Was the problem related to self reporting?  Maybe.  I think it had more to do with unintended incentives.  

It really doesn’t matter if you are dealing with a teenage boy or some other “rational” human, look for the possibility of unintended incentives in all the plans you set in motion.

Proverbs 16:3  “Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and he will establish your plans.”

- What is your plan? -