Archive for Motivation
The Flogging Will Continue Until Morale Improves
Posted by: | CommentsI played in a regional bridge tournament recently and stopped in my tracks when a man walked by wearing a T-shirt that said: “The flogging will continue until morale improves.” I laughed, but it wasn’t really funny. Flogging employees doesn’t happen anymore, but verbal abuse and unreasonable demands are all too common in many companies. (Unfortunately, punishment by flogging is still prevalent in less civilized societies).
The company shall remain nameless, but I once worked for a CEO who would simply phone senior executives with the command “get over here.” No hi, how are you. Oh, and he once threw an ash tray in a meeting. Don’t think this doesn’t happen anymore. With the bad economy, some companies are getting away with mistreating employees, who need to hold onto their jobs. But things will get better in time, and then employees will flee.
Arrogance Doesn’t Cut it Anymore
In a recent issue of Business Week in an article entitled Twelve Signs Arrogance is Running Your Company leadership expert Alaina Love with Purpose Linked Consulting recounted the story of Joe, who astonished the CEO of his company by resigning because his cautions about the company’s direction fell on deaf ears. Joe was a key player and nobody wanted him to leave so they brought in Love to try to talk him out of it. As Love writes in her bylined article, “The significance of Joe’s impending departure was enormous, I realized. He’d grown up in the company, starting first in sales and eventually working his way up to a leadership position in marketing. Losing him would mean a tough blow for the organization, one from which recovery would be difficult and lengthy, if not impossible. With him would go years of irreplaceable institutional wisdom and history.”
Joe’s Reason for Leaving
He told Love, “We’re not positioning ourselves for ongoing success, and I just don’t think this way of operating is sustainable. I’ve done everything I can to convince leadership we should adopt a different approach, but they’re not listening. They won’t even sit down long enough to learn about the suggestions I have for changing things.”
Employee engagement has become the new mantra for forward-thinking companies, but, alas, too many CEOs take the position of Joe’s. “We don’t need somebody around here who doesn’t embrace our way of doing things,” the CEO said to Love. In other words, it’s my way or the highway.
How shortsighted. As I’ve written before, the economy is bad now so employees are staying put. But in time the job market will improve and those companies that value their employees will be rewarded by their loyalty. Companies like Joe’s will experience an exodus of employees who don’t want any more floggings.
Don’t Mistake Motion for Progress
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Let me out of here!
Leave it to Seth Goldin to come up with one of his pithy blog posts in which he said, “As the number of apparently significant digits in the data available to us goes up (traffic was up .1% yesterday!) we continually seek causation, even if we’re looking in the wrong places…data is not information, and confusing numbers with truth can help you make some bad decisions.”
Well said. He reminded me of one of my favorite sayings, “Don’t mistake motion for progress.” I’m not going to point any fingers, because I’m guilty myself of filling my schedule with things to do every day. Write my blog, do a little prospecting, add a little networking, do some client work, yada, yada, yada.
But does all this motion equate to making progress in reaching my goals? Busy-ness is OK if you can see the finish line. But I think many of us feel like the rat endlessly running on an exercise wheel – we go faster and faster but it’s still the same old circle.
In my New Year’s blog last year, I made the following resolution, which I will renew this year:
- No more coulda, shoulda, wouldas. I coulda done that if I tried. I shoulda done that and it would have made such a difference in my life. I woulda done that if only I had (fill in the blank). But I intend to add another resolution for 2011 –
- Don’t mistake motion for progress. Progress means you actually accomplished something. Motion is spinning your wheels on unproductive activities. There’s a difference.
If I want more exercise I’ll go to the gym. Happy New Year!
Feeling Safe: A Good Boss Watches Your Back
Posted by: | CommentsA couple of recent studies confirm that one of our most primal needs is safety. We want to feel safe – at home, in our city’s streets and especially at the office. Reuters came out with a report today that ranked cities on how safe they are for children. I’m proud to say that my hometown, New York City, ranked first along with Louisville.
Feeling safe -- he's got their backs
Another study by McKinsey this past summer discussed the importance of a boss making his employees feel psychologically safe by watching their backs. This intrigued me because feeling safe isn’t usually found on the wish list of employees. A good salary, a secure job (maybe that does equate with safety), meaningful work and a sense of community usually rank high.
So why is it important for a boss to “watch your back” and provide psychological safety? According to the McKinsey study, “Why good bosses tune in to their people, “Good bosses spark imagination and encourage learning by creating a safety zone where people can talk about half-baked ideas, test them, and even make big mistakes without fear of ridicule, punishment, or ostracism.”
An Absence of Safety Can be Deadly
An absence of psychological safety, in concert with fear of the boss, can be dangerous or downright deadly….one study showed that when pilots faked mild incapacitation toward the end of a rough and rainy simulated flight, their copilots failed to take the controls 25 percent of the time—resulting in simulated crashes.
To lock in your team’s loyalty, boldly defend their backs, says the study’s author Stanford management professor Bob Sutton.
Fear Stifles Creativity and Productivity
Who wants to take a chance and suggest a new way of doing something and risk the wrath of the boss? Says Sutton, “The best bosses invent, borrow, and implement ways to reduce the mental and emotional load heaped on their followers — followers who enjoy such protection have the freedom to take risks and try new things.”
Fear can be a motivator – of the wrong kind of behavior. A fearful employee keeps his head down, does what he’s told and expected to do but rarely ventures out on the edge of the board. I once worked for a CEO who screamed and tossed ashtrays. He even resented the clack of his secretary’s fingers on the keyboard. Do you think anyone voluntarily went to his office with a new idea? Not on your life.
Always Try for That Extra 10%
Posted by: | CommentsWhen Seth Godin’s daily post came today, it literally transported me back in time. It’s like that moment when a familiar fragrance sets off a memory of a loved one, or you bump into your favorite college professor on the street after many years (this actually happened to me the day after I was married, and it seemed prophetic at the time).
Today, Seth makes the point about how important it is to put that work into the last 10% of quality. I was brought back in time to my childhood. My father continually exhorted my two brothers and me to “always try for that extra 10%.”
Coming to this country as a poor immigrant, he never reached the pinnacle of business success, even though he was one of the smartest men I’ve ever known. He could discuss current affairs with Ph.D’s and talk them under the table. I can still hear my father’s voice intoning “extra 10%, extra 10%, extra 10%.”
Seth Godin can always say things better than almost anybody else, so I am reproducing his post here:
Seth Godin
In most fields, there’s an awful lot of work put into the last ten percent of quality.
Getting your golf score from 77 to 70 is far more difficult than getting it from 120 to 113 or even from 84 to 77.
Answering the phone on the first ring costs twice as much as letting it go into the queue.
Making pastries the way they do at a fancy restaurant is a lot more work than making brownies at home.
Laying out the design of a page or a flyer so it looks like a pro did it takes about ten times as much work as merely using the template Microsoft builds in for free, and the message is almost the same…
Except it’s not. Of course not. The message is not the same.
The last ten percent is the signal we look for, the way we communicate care and expertise and professionalism. If all you’re doing is the standard amount, all you’re going to get is the standard compensation. The hard part is the last ten percent, sure, or even the last one percent, but it’s the hard part because everyone is busy doing the easy part already.
The secret is to seek out the work that most people believe isn’t worth the effort. That’s what you get paid for.
