I was down in London recently to give a Robertson Cooper-sponsored webinar on the strategies organisations can use to reduce stress and increase workforce well-being. I picked up one of London’s remaining free newspapers and was struck by a curious, and timely, story on page eight….
The headline read: “I can’t trade now, my bracelet’s red”. Reading on, I was amazed to read that a leading electronic goods manufacturer (Philips) and traders at the global banking corporation ABN Amro have together come up with a ‘gizmo’ called the ‘Rationalizer’. The biofeedback system works by wearing an ‘EmoBracelet’ on the wrist which measures your pulse and sweat levels and sends messages to the ‘EmoBowl’, an electronic, pulsating ‘bowl’ sitting on your desk. When pulse and sweat levels reach a certain point, the EmoBowl turns red, indicating that stress is being experienced and that the trader would be wise to turn off his/her computer and stop trading. The thinking is that if the trader continues to trade, the decisions he/she makes might not be as rational as they could be.
At the moment, this is just a prototype and whether it is actually ever mass-produced and used across the Financial Services Sector remains to be seen. However, I do have reservations about the thinking behind such a device. As if using the word ‘emo’ in the title wasn’t bad enough, the idea that frazzled traders will actually heed the advice and stop trading because a machine tells them they’re stressed sounds slightly ludicrous to me. If The Bank of England can’t stop them, the regulator can’t stop them and Gordon Brown can’t stop them – can this gizmo? Does anyone else see a fundamental flaw in this idea?
On the other hand, I think there is definitely a place for biofeedback systems and the Rationalizer is not the first of its kind. The research into the physical responses to stress is well established and certainly these systems can help people to learn to recognise their own signs and control their reactions. But this device appears to muddle the thinking around the whole issue of pressure, stress, decision-making and motivation. I really can’t see traders closing down their computers when they’re notified that they’re ‘stressed’. The perception of stress results when we perceive that the pressures we are under are too much to handle. Stress is not just about our physiological reaction or the intellectual understanding we get when we’re told we’re stressed. Traders, by their very nature, are driven by the particular pressures and rewards of their jobs….especially the rewards. Often, they are willing to operate under the stresses and strains because they think that the risks are worth it. If we want to change traders’ behaviour when it comes to ‘risky trading’, it will take total paradigm shift and not an ‘EmoBracelet’.
(For the uninitiated, a webinar is a virtual seminar! It was recorded and you can ‘attend’ by visiting the following site: http://www.wtgwebinar.com/w_detail.asp?webid=63.)
The Rationaliser…
The problem with these gizmos is that they forget that business is about how to perform under high pressure and make good decisions while at the same time and avoiding burnout.
The best thing for the traders to learn is how to handle stress and high pressure and still feel good so that they act in a coherent way. They have to learn to be in the ‘zone’. Many opera singers, athletes, business people have learned how to do it. Much better than getting the sack because they’re doing what their gizmo says…
The Rationalizer…My immediate thought is that I would become more stressed if I could not do the deal I was about to do. A closure, bad or good, is still a closure and, as such, a cognitive ending.