The Fourth Behavioral Principle and Blue Bell Ice Cream

You’ve likely read some of the stories linking Blue Bell Ice Cream to three deaths and up to 10 listeria cases.  But did these events have to occur?

Seemingly workers repeatedly informed management about housekeeping-related concerns and the issues were apparently poorly addressed. 

Well, I can’t help but think of an old video I reviewed years ago that highlighted the four basic behavioral principles: positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, punishment, and extinction.  I believe the great Albert Bandura hosted this black and white video while working at Stanford University.  The fourth principle is largely about ignoring some action or activity that will eventually fade to zero because it was not reinforced in some manner.  Seemingly the leaders at Blue Bell got this principle wrong – maybe they thought that ignoring the employee concerns (or letting workers know their complaints needed to stop) would cause the health and safety issues to go away, but in reality it caused the upward-feedback to fade. 

Ultimately, ignoring the workers and their feedback was a bad move – the all-important feedback went away, but the problems reportedly got worse.  Maybe there was a little less initial pain to not hear from the workers, which had likely led to a bit of negative reinforcement for management – but not the type of reinforcement leaders should have been experiencing.

In no way I am trying to beat up Blue Bell and maybe we've all gotten this part of the story wrong.  I'm just citing one side of the occurrences that have been in the press.  And I’m sure there are other explanations for what happened at Blue Bell – surely there are many good leaders there.  Nonetheless, listening and acting is critical to the health of every organization. 

Asking, listening, and acting on important upward-feedback is crucial. And listening well to the people closest to the work makes really good sense. Just query a few leaders who chose to use the fourth behavioral principle in the wrong way.