How can you stop free riders and games of chicken? Try changing the game

Here is some advice you can take to the office: if you aren’t winning the game you are playing, consider changing the game.

If you find yourself yelling at people, please stop and think about why people are acting that way. Just asking people to change is hard. Rational people respond to incentives afforded in their daily life–it’s a survival mechanism. It will often be easier to change the game they are playing to increase good behavior.

Here’s a story along those lines. My friend works at an entry-level consulting job in small office. About a year ago, his office had a problem because the administrative staff could not handle all incoming phone calls. It looked terrible that calls from clients went to voicemail during normal business hours.

So a new system was put in place: calls from the main line would roll over to all entry-level employees after the first two rings. At the outset, the system seemed great because administrators would pick up most calls as usual, and the safety mechanism meant entry-level employees (an additional five people) were available to answer. And yet just two days after the installation, an important call was missed.

The resulting investigation was embarrassing. It turned out there were two entry-level employees who could have answered the phone. The administrator was furious and scolded them for not picking up the phones. Was it right to yell at them? As a game theorist, I point the finger back at the system, which created improper incentives.

Let’s consider how an employee might react when the call rolls over. The person will probably use the following logic, “Well, I know the phone is ringing, but I don’t want to be bothered now. After all, there are four other people who might pick up the phone. I think I’m going to wait and see if some one else might pick up.”

This kind of logic is the result of two important (and dangerous) characteristics of the game:

1. There are free riders.

Free riders are people who get the benefits of a common good without contributing to the cause. In the phone game, all the office cares about is if the phones are answered. If the phones are always answered, the entire office looks good. People who never have to answer the phones are free riders because they get the benefit without exerting effort.

2. Answering the phone becomes a game of chicken.

The classic game of chicken involves two players driving at each other at high speeds. Players can either “swerve” or “maintain course.” If both players swerve, they are both called chickens. If both maintain course, they die in a crash. But if one player swerves while the other maintains course, the swerving player is a chicken and the other is a proud winner. The strategy is that each player will claim that she will never swerve and is even willing to die as a means to get the other player to swerve. The structure of the game induces players into this dangerous behavior.

And so it is with the phone game. When the phone rings, each worker wants to convince the others that he will not answer it. The office looks bad if no one answers, so each player wants to hold out and see who is more chicken. And inevitably some calls will be lost during this game.

Now, to solve the phones

The phone system created a chicken game with free riders. The structure of the game made it natural for people to avoid answering phones. Will yelling at the employees make a difference? Probably not! The game structure will be the same: people respond more to incentives than to the yelling, which caries a negligible penalty.

The administrator could change the game by assigning individual responsibility. For instance, make a schedule where each person covers the phone for one or two hours a day. If someone has to attend a meeting, make it his responsibility to find a person to cover. This new game eliminates both the free rider problem and the game of chicken, and I bet few, if any, calls would be missed.

So before you start yelling at some one for their behavior, see why they are acting that way. Are there free riders? Are you creating a game of chicken? Can you assign individual responsibility?

Change the game instead of the people and every one wins.



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  • http://www.mawsoft.com/blog RohoMech

    Oddly enough the free-rider problem comes up in emergency situations. Recently I was witness to an accident at a park. Someone jumped in to help the biker who’d smacked into an obstacle, leaving the crowd to call 911 for help.

    The person responding could have yelled out “someone call for an ambulance” but instead pointed at someone holding a phone and told them to call 911, which they did. I looked around and noticed others were on the phone, but they all could just as easily have done nothing.

    Now, the phone system could be modified in the same, phone calls could be routed to specific people randomly, which gives a single person responsibility. Thus, if a call is missed or mishandled, only a single person can be held responsible.

    Your post also reminds me of the whole “mob mentality” and “group responsibility”. While your two points about chicken and the free rider problem apply really well to the problem, I also see the employees acting as a mob, and since they are acting as a group to ignore the calls, they feel anonymous and protected.

  • Joe P

    Often times, you will run into personalities that are immune to the game of chicken. Those that would rather take a portion of the blame than ever contribute to the common good. How do you handle those people? If you pick up the slack for that party you are only enabling them to continue their behavior, rather than changing it for the greater good. In a perfect world, you can get those people off the bus (to paraphrase Jim Collins)…but the reality I see in my industry and in many others (sports, etc.) is that as a whole we are willing to make allowances for exceptional talents. At what point should the line be drawn?

  • http://www.mindyourdecisions.com Presh

    @Rohomech: Yes, the free rider problem comes up a lot just like your accident example.

    @Joe P: I completely agree there are assholes who don’t care–they should be fired via my discussion of “The No Asshole Rule”.

    The point is you don’t want to handle the assholes or even try to change them–you simply want to avoid creating the game of chicken when they are around. If there is a common task, divide up responsibility and make decisions on individual performance. If possible, do not create situations for the assholes to flourish.

  • Joon

    How does yelling at them not solve the problem? Won’t they pick up the phone next time to avoid being yelled at?

  • http://www.mawsoft.com/blog RohoMech

    @Joe – So, game theory is also assuming rational people are being dealt with. I believe Presh had a previous post about crazy people and how they break negotiations. Like, if you’re working with someone who’s fine with getting fired…That’s going to change that person’s work dynamic.

  • http://www.mindyourdecisions.com Presh

    @Joon: Glad to asked because it gives me more chance to clarify.

    Yelling will absolutely NOT solve the problem in the best way. The game of chicken still exists, and as Joe pointed out, assholes will never pick up the phone. They will never pitch in.

    By changing the game, you solve it without yelling by giving individual responsibility.

    When I was a counselor, there were students that disobeyed camp rules at the beginning. Instead of yelling at them, which would have accomplished nothing, we changed the authority and conflict structure.

    We set up competitions with other camps, so that our whole camp was on the same team. If campers disobeyed me, they were hurting the whole camp. Aligning their incentives with mine changed the game, and they really stopped misbehaving.

  • http://trueblue0213.blogspot.com/ Christina

    I laughed when I scrolled down and read your comment about camps, because I was just thinking thats EXACTLY what I applied this article to in my head. I was a program director this summer, and quickly learned that if nobody was accountable for something, it didn’t happen – or it happened because of only one or two people who, after awhile, got sick of always being the ones doing the work, and deteriorated in attitude. Just make sure that when you choose people to be accountable, you don’t always choose the same people or they begin to feel punished because they’re reliable. (the routing the phone is good if you make sure to route it to everyone approximately the same amount of time)

  • http://www.mindyourdecisions.com Presh

    @Christina: I agree that you have to rotate who is responsible. On that note, I’ve personally found that slackers can be made to work if it would be more embarrassing to fail than to do the work.

  • A Lazy Worker

    Typical economist’s solution…Always about money instead of enjoying the benefits of lax work habits.

    A smart entry-level employee could instead start answering only some of the phones and attempt to coordinate on a better mixed equilibrium strategy, and thus avoid getting chewed out by the boss for coordinating on a no-answer equilibrium. And also avoiding the potential for more work entailed by a more instutionalized game.

    Or…an even smarter employee would start wearing headphones and playing halo–thus signaling to the less sophisticated employee that she can’t or won’t answer the phone and thus forcing the non-sophisticate to answer the phone.

    There’s always a solution that allows one to avoid working and enjoy life…it’s just takes a bit more creativity to find it.

  • http://www.mindyourdecisions.com Presh

    @A Lazy Worker: Though I was emphasizing a planner’s perspective that you need the work to be done, I like your alternate solutions from a worker perspective. In fact, my friend cleverly found a way to get removed from the phone list without other people knowing and never answered the phone–so yes, there are other solutions.

    I actually try not to emphasize money and instead focus on preferences as the root (see my post about how personal finance is not about money.)

  • http://easybib.com Neal

    The microfinance industry commonly employs a group lending methodology, which seems related to this topic. Villagers are responsible to repay their loans as a group. This for one forces individuals to ally themselves with those who are trustworthy and dependable, and two, provides social incentives to repay their part of the loan, as a default would sour relations with those whom they shared the loan.

    As food for thought, I wonder if microfinance institutions claim some sort of securitization or collateral if loans are defaulted. This also would provide proper incentives to repay any debt.

  • http://www.mindyourdecisions.com Presh

    @Neal: You raise an interesting related topic. From the limited information I’ve heard, microfinance is about creating incentives for small communities in developing economies. It appears the topic is highly politicized. One big topic is if microfinance is successful, it questions how much of a role government should have in improving welfare.

  • Anand

    Great blogs! Just spent an hour reading through all the posts. Just in the discussions you’ve had, I see applications which I will experiment with.

    Keep Posting. Completely related to the Indian Food post.

  • jack

    My first reaction was that “chicken” was a poor choice for the interaction since it did not describe the “too cool/important” reasoning for not answering the phone. Many people (in their dedicated private or business phones) will not answer on the first ring whereas some will only answer on the first ring and so forth. The reasons differ but many people at work want to appear too busy to answer immediatly (on the first or second ring). Certainly this would carry over to to a shared commitment to answer the phone…many would not want to seem immediatly available to answer (presuming they had other primary tasks).

    However, as i thought about it a primary outcome (goal) of the chicken player is to be “cool”. Look no further than the popular 80′s movie “Footloose”. A major turning point in the movie was when Kevin Bacon’s character was coerced to play chicken on tractors with the town “tough”. By a twist of fate Bacons trouser got tangled in the peddals so he was unable to stop but nonetheless it made him look very COOL and won him the friendship of others (especialy the girl). So considering the desired effects of winning chicken (it makes the winner feel too busy or cool to respond quickly) I would wholeheartedly agree with its use for this gametheory example.

  • Ernst

    It’s a nice theory if it actually worked. But like most theories, the variables and computations are much more complex, just as people are. If you put forth this program, the people who were “too cool” to answer the phone would not be put on the “responsible” list anyway, because offices are only concerned with getting the work done in the most professional and economical way (as it should be – after all, it is a business) possible. What really should happen is people should be asked to help out since not all people can be available all the time. Hopefully, everyone is working for the same result (better products and services to keep the customers happy and the business growing) and they would want to help out, when possible. If people are found to not be working for the benefit of the team and the company, then it is simple, they must go. Team environments must remove as much ego as possible and sometimes that means, gasp, firing someone. Now that is asking everyone to take responsibility, sounds good to me!

  • http://www.mindyourdecisions.com/blog Presh Talwalkar

    @Ernst: Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I agree that team environments should remove egos, but I still think there are practical problems to asking people to help out when they are playing a game of chicken.

    The problem is that that incentives are not always aligned like we want them to be. The entry level employees told to answer phones are probably paid on a salary and leave in a few years. They might not care to spend their time promoting long term relationships with clients. And there is a problem with firing people: whom do you fire if there are five people around and no one answers the phone?

    I think people would act as though they were responsible if you assign clear obligations and penalties, say, by using a schedule with one person’s name per hour. Maybe if someone gets three strikes they are fired. That would send a message that big egos are not tolerated, and I think it is pretty economical and professional.

  • Ernst

    Not practical. Anyone who works in an administrator role is pulled in many directions and is not able to allot their time, in most cases, like that. Priorities shift throughout the day (sometimes many times in an hour) and they need to be fluid and to limit their ability to adjust to changing needs would cause more issues than it would solve.

    I do agree that the majority of phone calls should and will be answered by those hired to do so and if you have an on-going issue with regards to them not answering the phone, then you go through the normal poor-performance corrective steps in order to help them perform better.

    One issue you don’t want happening is a 100k salaried person answering phones all day, that would be an expensive use of your available talent. But, with that said, everyone should and could help out when necessary.

    If someone is “playing a game of chicken” it will not be limited to answering the phones and in reality, you just have a management team not willing to resolve a staff issue which will mushroom into something much worse than not helping out to pick up the phone.

    Avoiding staff issues is a disaster waiting to happen. Make everyone accountable for their ability to pitch in and help out when necessary. Some days people can’t, but it is very easy to spot those who help out and those who need to work somewhere else.

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  • Steggs

    If 5 people won’t answer the phone, fire one at random. The attitude of the others will change dramatically.

  • Alex

    The issue with your solution is that if you NEED 5 extra people to handle the calls, then scheduling individuals to help out is effectively increasing your phone answering group by 1, which is hardly enough. It is a problem that would be easy to fix with better technology, but without it each ring is a turn of a prisoner’s dilemma variant which looks like this:

    2,2 | 2,4
    ———-
    4,2 | 0,0

    You have two Nash Equilibria at B and C, but because of imperfect information and the fact your “daredevil” personalities (those which will gamble getting nothing, on the possibility of gaining more, instead of taking the safe guaranteed route) count against the total of “Helpers.” (If you have 5 “helpers” and two are daredevils, you effectively have 3 helpers, since the daredevils can be counted on to ignore the phone.)
    The only proper solution is to identify your daredevils and eliminate them from the game or change the stakes of the game to make the gamble to severe for any rational actor.

    …

    Which is just a long version of the comment above:
    “Fire one of them, that’ll fix it.” (Don’t do it at random though, you are unduly punishing the innocent in that case.)

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