“So, if not bonuses, how do I get my team motivated to perform, to get the results we are looking for?” Alicia asked.
“It’s NOT your job, as a Manager, to motivate your team, cajole, persuade, or manipulate,” I replied.
Alicia was almost startled. “I’m not? It seems like that’s what I spend half my time doing?”
“Do you remember the contract that Joe has with his team?”
Shaking her head, she protested, “Yes, but that’s just a logistics crew. They drive trucks.”
“What’s the contract?”
“Joe’s contract? He just tells the guys, that he expects them to do their best. That’s it.”
“Yes, that’s the contract,” I confirmed. “Each day, they are required to show up for work and do their best.“
Asking employees to “do their best” everyday, in every single way, is all that you can reasonably ask of anyone. the other part of the issue is management responsibility to make sure they have the right players on the bus, the wrong players off the bus, and have those right players in the right seats on the bus!
bk
Tom,
OMGoodness!!! Just when I think this story is done and I have learned all I can, it keeps going. This has been the finest example of education/reminder of what we need to be doing. Thanks for taking the time to post these.
Greg Geller
Tom, you keep me a bit hungry.(but that’s the whole point of the blog, right ;-)) I think we all agree that employees should do their very best all day. But how do we measure/allign this according towards our companies deliverables? How do we translate the “best” towards real life results?
The aswer is probably: ‘Be patient my boy, the hour is near…’ ;-))
‘The best’ is relative. How to align it: see what your (internal) clients needs. Do your best is then: work as efficiently as possible to give the client a little more than he needs.
‘The best’ can be misleading. “Sometimes people settle for a downgrade,” I heard a local guru once say.
It’s all about knowing the priorities of whom you work for and levelling your work efforts in that direction.
So, the more you know these priorities, the less hungry you’ll get I guess 😉