Category Archives: Motivation

It’s the Attitude

Leave a reply

“Max, I know how you feel about your team’s attitude toward work. You believe they only show up for the paycheck. You believe, as a manager, you have to incentivise them above their normal pay, with a bonus or spiff to get them to pay attention, or otherwise engage in discretionary effort. Your belief is in line with many employee studies that say most are NOT engaged with their work. So, let’s not talk about your team. Let’s talk about you.”

“Alright, I’m game. But, understand that I am here for the money, too,” Max clarified.

“Yes, you are right, we do have to pay competitive. More importantly, we have to get money off the table. As long as people focus on money, or, because of their circumstance, have to focus on money, employee engagement will be fleeting, at best.”

“Okay, but understand that I am still here for the money.”

“Are you really? I could show you a number of ways that you could make a great deal more money than you are making right, now,” I teased.

“I am all ears,” Max replied.

“If you were willing to sell marijuana, which is now legal in some states, you would make more money than you are currently making.” I stopped to gauge his reaction to this unusual suggestion.

“Yeah, but.”

“But, what?” I interrupted. “You see, it’s not all about the money. People, even you, want work where you can make a contribution to something larger than you. You want work where you can bring your full capability, spread your wings AND receive fair compensation for that work. You want work where your contribution is recognized as important, work that does NOT need a carrot-or-stick for you to get on with that work.”

Max was quiet. He was thinking.

“Max, you are the manager of your team. You get to design that team, select that team and create the environment that team works in. As the manager, you DECIDE the culture of that team. What will be your foundation? Will it be built around spiffs, or accomplishment? I have never known a person to be more competent in their role because they were paid a bonus.”

Is It a Power to Motivate

Leave a reply

“Now, you have me confused,” Max protested. “Yes, the bonus becomes an entitlement, so it loses its power to motivate.”

“Is it possible,” I asked, “that the bonus never had the power to motivate in the first place? Let’s talk about you. You said, that sometimes you enjoy work. Why do you work?”

“I told you. I get a sense of accomplishment. Some of the work, I actually enjoy.”

“Like what?”

“Sometimes, I get someone on the crew, it’s their first job. They become part of a team, working together and I can see a sense of pride on their face. As a manager, I enjoy that. I get my own sense of accomplishment.”

“And, their first paycheck?” I prompted.

“Yes, there is a smile on their face.”

“So, compensation is important, but if that is all there is, your team members will jump to another company for an extra dollar an hour. So, how do you build your system? How do you, as a manager, build your culture? Do you build your culture around a bonus, or do you build it around accomplishment? You only get what you focus on.”

Less Than Their Best

Leave a reply

“So, what am I to do?” Max challenged. “I have to give them a bonus. The work is routine, in some cases, monotonous. I mean, I know, at my level, it is easier to get satisfaction from my work, not total satisfaction, but there are times when I actually enjoy work. I get a sense of accomplishment. But, my team? I can only imagine they come to work for the money. If it weren’t for the money, they would find something else to do. The only way I can get their attention is with a results-based financial incentive.”

“Tell me more,” I prompted.

“Well, it is pretty apparent. All you have to do is watch what happens. I give my team a bonus for hitting a certain production number and it is amazing how accurately they hit that number.”

“So, tell me, their base salary? What is that for?” I wanted to know.

“Base salary is just so they will show up. If I want them to hit a goal, I have to sweeten the pot. Give them a little kicker. It is just the way it is,” Max insisted.

“I want to understand,” I said. “As the manager, you create the system, the environment in which people work. The culture you have created is that, for their base salary, your team just has to show up, they don’t really have to do anything special. They can survive on your team by doing less than their best. And that if you, as the manager, truly need anything specific done, a target, a goal, the only way you can motivate them is with a spiff?”

Max nodded. “That’s pretty much it.”

“So, you hold back a little money, and if, and only if, they meet the goal, they get a bonus?”

“Well, yes, that’s the way it’s supposed to work. But, of course, now everyone expects the bonus, kind of like they are entitled to it. So, sometimes, I have to strongly remind them that the bonus is at risk. That’s what we talk about at the team meeting. If we don’t hit the goal, the team doesn’t get its bonus.”

“So, the bonus doesn’t truly drive behavior. You have to remind them that the bonus drives behavior?”

Not About the Box

Leave a reply

It was a shiny new metal box mounted on the wall. A spiffy sign next to the box announced SuGGESTIONS. Luka was proud of the new addition to the wall.

“Hey, Luka,” I said. “Is your suggestion box full yet?”

“I just put it up,” he replied. “I’m trying to get the team to come up with new ideas. It doesn’t seem like people are very engaged in the work we do. I hope this helps.”

“Which comes first?” I asked. “Do you think the suggestion box will get people more engaged? Or do you think people need to be engaged to contribute to the suggestion box?”

Luka gave me a blank stare.

I smiled. “Engagement doesn’t have a lot to do with the box.”

Who Is Driving This Bus?

Leave a reply

“I’m frustrated,” Pauline pouted.

“How so?” I asked.

“I can’t seem to get my team to see things the way I see them,” she nodded.

“Tell me more,” I smiled.

“The team’s priorities seem a bit misguided,” she replied. “I can’t figure out what drives them. They are casual about showing up for work, they knock off early for lunch, they live for the afternoon break and race out at 5p even if we are in the middle of a run.”

“It sounds like what drives you and what drives the team are different,” I said. “So, tell me, what drives you?”

“I’m not really sure,” Pauline wondered out loud. “Definitely different, but I’m not sure I can tell you what drives me.”

“If you cannot figure out what drives you, how can you expect to figure out what drives another person?”

Incentives

1 Reply

“I’m stumped,” Sarah explained. “I am trying to get my team to do things, to do them my way, and they seem to just go off and do something else. Somehow, some way, I need to focus on motivation. I need to figure out what I can put out there, as some sort of an incentive to get them to perform better.”

“Do you want to be a psychologist, or do you want to be a leader?” I asked.

“I don’t get it,” she replied.

“Psychologists are always convinced they can figure out a way to motivate people. Don’t get me wrong, they didn’t start with people, they started with rats. First they starved them, then put them in a maze and were astounded when the rats desperately searched and found the food. Amazing, isn’t it, that starving rats would go in search of food.”

“What’s that got to do with people?” Sarah wanted to know.

“That’s a good question for the psychologists,” I replied. “They took their findings of rats and generalized them to people. Except people are more complicated than starving rats. Even the rats, once they found and ate the food, stopped searching. Motivation is elusive. We can find short term external motivators that give us the illusion that we are in control, but that’s not the way people work. External motivation is really manipulation, and only works for a short time and usually only when the manager is around. The only motivation that works long term is something inside the person that causes them to behave in a certain way. You have difficulty causing yourself to work in a different way. Why do you think you have the power to cause someone else to work differently?”

Conscientiousness

Leave a reply

Mariana counted on her fingers. “Necessity requires clarity, competence and habits,” she nodded.

I smiled. “Did I mention conscientiousness?.** It’s a mental state related to personal responsibility. You would observe conscientiousness in the things a person feels obligated to do, in their persistence to complete a task, to maintain necessary standards.”

“How will I know, if a person is conscientious or not?” Mariana asked.

“It’s there in front of you to observe. Given a task, the person may have a few questions, but they do not procrastinate. They get right to it and work to the end. They will never ask – Is that good enough? If you were clear in the standard, they will know what is good enough.”

“We started this discussion,” Mariana said, “because you told me the reason my team underperformed is because I had not made the performance standard necessary. Making performance necessary must be my accountability.”

I nodded in agreement, before I added one more thing.
—
**Conscientiousness is a trait measured by the Big Five Assessment, free version here.

Daily Grind and the Grand Scheme

Leave a reply

“They just don’t seem very motivated,” Rafael explained. “I try to give them a pep talk every once in a while, it seems to energize them for a day or so, but then it goes back to the same old grind. I mean, yes, the things we do are repeated day in and day out, so I can see it gets a bit boring. It contributes to turnover on the team. It even gets ME a little down at times.”

“Yes, the grind even infects upper management,” I replied. “Why do you think that is?”

“I told you, it’s the repetitive nature of what we do. Some days are busier than others, but at the end of the day, we just look forward to coming back the next day to do it over again.”

“You produce these products, day in and day out. What do these products do for your customers?” I knew the answer already, but Rafael had not made the connection.

“We manufacture safety products for the construction industry,” he said. “Perimeter flags, traffic cones, safety vests, hard hats. Not very glamorous stuff.”

“And, so you see your work as just an endless stream of orders that come in every day? One after another, day after day? One day like the day before?” I asked.

Rafael nodded. “Pretty much.”

“What if you shifted the way your team sees the work from an endless chain of events, to see the purpose for the products you crank out? When was the last time you took your crew out to a construction site to see the way your equipment is used? Or invited a safety manager from one of your customers to talk to your team about how important your products are and how much they rely on the quality of each piece?”

“Never,” Rafael sat back. “That sounds crazy. We can’t bus a manufacturing team to a construction site,” he explained.

“Really?” I nodded. “Most work is boring and monotonous if all we think about are the events of the day. The only way to truly understand the work is to understand its purpose, how it fits into the grand scheme. Nothing changes about the mechanical assembly of what you do. The only thing that changes is the way you see your impact on the world around you.”

Ran Out of Gas

Leave a reply

“I haven’t heard from you in a while,” I said. “I assume it’s because everything is going swimmingly with your efficiency process.”

“Yes, yes,” Duncan replied. “I’ve been meaning to call you, but we have been so busy. Frankly, I was hesitant to call, because the efficiency process has stalled. But, we have been so busy that we haven’t been able to focus on our metrics. We haven’t even collected our metrics in over a month. If we want to look at our efficiency trends, we likely will have to start over.”

“What does your gut tell you?” I asked.

“My gut says we got a little busy one week and fell behind. Then we got busier and our metrics lost their priority. Now, we are so busy, the project is off the rails.”

“Do you see any connection between your busy-ness and the loss of focus on your efficiency project? There was a guy driving from Chicago to Florida, on a tight deadline. He ran out gas. Said he didn’t have time to stop to refuel.”

Work and Competence

Leave a reply

It’s an innocent question at every cocktail party. It’s an icebreaker question. “What do you do?” is a variation on “What do you do for a living?” The intent of the question may be casual, but it may be the most serious question of the evening.

Why this focus on work? And what of job satisfaction surveys? How important is work in a person’s life? And, why does some work suck, and other work engage?

Each person, based on their internal capability, yearns for work that is just within their highest level of competence. Competence is the combination of capability and skill. Skill is the combination of technical knowledge, application of that knowledge and practiced performance. Both capability and skill are required for competence.

Competence is an integral part of happiness. The invitation for every manager is to create the environment where team members are challenged to their highest level of capability leveraging their internal competence.
—
Watch Tom Foster on Chris Comeaux’s Anatomy of Leadership.