Are you Holding up Change?

There are a lot of things in an organization that can hold up the change process.  The first and most important is commitment.  If you are not committed 100% to doing everything within the power of your organization to planning and executing changes, don’t do it.  Going into the process without that level of commitment will frustrate you, your stakeholders and make changing in the future much more difficult.

 It is more than acceptable to go into the change process without knowing anything.  I little fear and a little apprehension are good things and will actually help you along the way.  If you are too afraid to move forward, don’t.  While a little fear is natural and can serve to protect your organization, too much will make you tentative and incapable of being adaptive or agile within the process. 

 

Objectivity is the key to success.  Some might call it pragmatism, but either way, having an open mind and looking at things in a sensible and realistic manner will keep the process flowing and keep emotion out of it.  Emotion is a great tool when celebrating victories or acting as a cheerleader for a process, but no matter how you are attached to an organization or the outcome of a change plan, infusing emotion into your decision making or management process will usually result in bad decisions and bad management.

 

The beauty of a well-crafted and executed change plan is in its simplicity.  While the process seems complex, it follows a rational thought process.  Complex problems only seem complex until a solution is found.  Breaking things down to their most simple form not only allows a wider understanding of the solution, but gives an organization a wider range of resources to use for the execution of a change plan.  If you run up against a difficult problem to solve, break it down into smaller pieces and then eat one at a time.

 

Pervasive actions and thought processes that retard or derail the progress of organizational change:

 

1.     Time – Thinking you don’t have the time to do it.

We make time to do the things we feel are important and try to find time to do those things we don’t.  If you can’t make time to plan or execute your changes, you are not placing the amount of importance on them that needs to be there.  The other time issue is the difference between doing work and doing your job.  If you are spending more time doing work than you are doing your job, you need to focus on ways to switch that around.

2.     Ego – You don’t think you need it or think you have all of the answers.

There is a considerable difference between being confident and having an ego.  Confidence is the ability to make a decision with the humility to realize when someone else has a better idea.  Ego is about thinking you do or should have the answers based on your role or title.   Ego is a business killer.  Leadership ego kills morale and discredits the organization and its leaders.  Ego is also not trusting the people your surround yourself with to do the job you hired them to do.

3.     Unrealistic Expectations – Setting goals and expectations that aren’t planned within the process, or being unwavering when the process pushes expectations in a different direction.

Determination of goals can be a precursor to a change plan, or can be discovered during its development.  Either way, the plan should push the goals and goals should be adjusted based on what you determine as realistic within the scope of the plan.  Expectations for results should be based in possibility not estimation.   Attainment of a goal is based on modifying the behaviors that affect the

4.     Misplaced Loyalty – Thinking it is more important to make your employees happy than to make needed changes.  You can have both, but you have to do it the right way.

While it is important to take people’s feelings and emotions into consideration when planning or implementing a change plan, having that as the sole reason to stall execution or excuse someone from completing a required task will make your execution inconsistent.  Loyalty in an organization needs to be to the whole and not to the part.  Worrying about not doing the right thing for your business because it might upset one of its parts is another example of ego-centric leadership (see #2).

5.     Mistrust – Thinking that you have people who will fight the changes or aren’t capable of making them.

If you hired employees that you think are incapable of changing, that is much more your problem than theirs.  Much of the mistrust that happens in an organization comes from an ego-centric leadership (See #2).  People will follow a plan they understand and are prepared for.  The duty of an organization is to provide support to their employees prior to, during and after any change plan is implemented.  More often than not, poor employees or poor employee morale is due to lack of support and understanding much more than to the quality of the person.

6.     Inconsistent Execution – Sometimes you hold people accountable, sometimes you don’t.

There is no room for hierarchy in the execution of a change plan.  Yes, there needs to be people to lead the process, but the rules have to apply to everyone from the top down.  If you allow people to circumvent or ignore the process based on their role or title, you either have too rigid of a process, or a bad management philosophy.  Execution must be consistent to work.  Without consistency, you can’t determine the difference between a mistake and an issue.  This takes away any intended agility within the process.

7.     Structural Issues – Not having something in place to keep the process moving and allowing for adaptive changes to take place within the timeline and flow of the changes.

No plan should be set in stone.  That being said, if you don’t have a structure in place to ensure the process continues to move, or allows it to adapt, you will spend a lot more of your time planning than doing, and results don’t come from a plan, they come from its execution.  Ensure that you have ways to inspect your expectations through a consistent management process. Moving ahead with a change plan before you have the internal structural integrity to support it will magnify its lack and cause undue stress on the process and the people involved in it.

8.     Lack of Autonomy – Expecting people to do their job without having the ability to make necessary decisions to get it done correctly.

An effective organization gives it employees the information they need to make decisions, the authority they need to follow through with those decisions and the autonomy to correct any complications arising from them.  Expecting employees to perform their job duties or execute a plan without all three of them will be an exercise in futility.  Not every employee needs full autonomy, but once the parameters are set, they need to be allowed to work within them.

9.     Obstacle Paralysis – Giving up, giving in or not moving forward when obstacles present themselves.

 

No plan is perfect in either its inception or execution.  As soon as begin its implementation, you will encounter obstacles.  No matter their size or scope, they can stall or stop the change process.  How you react to them will determine their net effect on the results and the process in general.  Thinking that because you hit an obstacle means your plan is flawed is not the right way to look at it.  Thinking that your people aren’t capable because mistakes happen is also a sure way to derail your plan.

 

10.            Reactive Hierarchy – When your people, especially managers spend more time working than doing their job.

People are led though changes, not managed around it.  If your culture is one where your managers react to problems when they occur instead of foreseeing potential problems, you will have a difficult time with any change process.  The intent of a change plan, and its underlying ability to be nimble is to curb the necessity to react to obstacles.  Mistakes need to be coached around and issues resolved.  Treating every issue like the world is ending is a reactive and detrimental course that should not be traveled.

Luck is not a good business strategy

The word success is a ubiquitous part of every businesses vocabulary.  Unfortunately the reality of success is becoming more of a rarity.  When a business talks about success, what are they really talking about?  More often than not, they are referring to the attainment of company goals, which in some respects can be a barometer of successfulness, but without the knowledge of how you reach them and the ability to sustain and repeat your success, attaining your goals would be based on luck.

In my experience, I have seen two basic types of corporate strategy with some organizations caught between the two in one form or another:  Luck based and Success based.

While it is nice to be lucky once in a while, trying to build a sustainable organization based on being lucky will eventually result in its downfall when the luck runs out. 

Core	Luck Based	Success Based
Knowledge	Tribal Knowledge where infrastructure is built on the way things have always been done.	Legacy knowledge where infrastructure is built on written documentation and consistency of content
Strategy	Business strategy is based on historical data and basic underlying needs.  Strategy is determined by a few individuals and pushed to stakeholders.	Strategy is simplistic in its design and based on future needs.  Strategy is determined based on the needs of the stakeholders and is pulled from them.
Data	Data is either limited in nature or over abundant without clear intention or attention to it integrity.  Data is used to determine results instead of driving changes.	Data is concise in nature, being vetted before being presented.  There is a culture of data integrity and data is used as a predictive tool instead of a reactive one.
Goals	Goals are developed on a macro-level and are often limited to financial milestones or results.  Goals are also limited in scope and when quantitative are difficult to adjust within the flow of the business.	Goals are developed on a micro-level with each person knowing and understanding their role.  Goals are designed based on the modification of behavior instead of affecting results.
Leadership	Management is developed to maintain the status quo and given limited power of information, authority and accountability.	The roles of a leader are more clearly defined, and each is given the ability to build their part of the business without limitations on information, authority or accountability.

 

Being truly successful is a sum of everything you do.  Success is an understanding of not just the attainment of goals, but an in-depth knowledge of what it took to get there and what it will take to sustain it.

Success isn’t something we sit back and get, it is something we have to go after and hunt down.

Keys To Success

“Action is the foundational key to all success.” – Pablo Picasso

1.    Reaching a Goal

2.    Tracking your Methods and Progress

3.    Repeating what you did

 Setting a Goal

The ability to understand what your goals should be is the first key in being able to reach them.  There is a difference between a goal and a dream.  A dream is something you desire if everything falls into place and you get to sit back and watch it happen.  A goal is a tangible desire you can attain if you understand what the goal is comprised of and are willing to work to reach it.

“Aim Small – Miss Small”

Goals should always be quantifiable and be simple to understand.   Every goal should have a date of completion, and in some cases, this date may serve as the quantifiable part of that goal.  Goals should also be seen as a part of a bigger picture and each goal should lead to a larger one.

Reaching your Goals

 Once you have set your goals, it is time to get to work on reaching them.  Reaching your goals is dependent upon all of those involved knowing and understanding the following items:

1.       What are the goals? – each individual within a group must know and understand exactly what the goals are.

2.       What are their roles? – once you have established the goals and communicated them to everyone involved, they need to know and understand what they can do to help with the attainment of those goals.  Specific expectations must be laid out to each member of the team responsible for reaching the goals.

3.       How are they doing? – make sure to give consistent and regular feedback to the people involved in reaching the goals.  Everyone needs to know on a regular basis if they are meeting their expectations and tracking to their goals.

 Communicate Expectations

So much of what we do as people and as employees revolves around communication.  We utilize this word so often that sometimes it begins to lose some of its luster and a lot of its meaning.  Communicating expectations in regards to being successful is about ensuring that each part of your team not only has a responsibility in reaching a goal, but understands thoroughly and completely what they must do to do their part.

Communication is an ongoing process.  Just because you wrote it down and handed it out doesn’t mean everyone can or will stay on task.  Continue to provide information and feedback.  Let them know that all of the work you put into coming up with a plan wasn’t just words on a piece of paper.

Empower your Team

Now that you have come up with a plan and communicated the plan and each team member’s responsibilities and expectations, let them do their part.  Empowerment is about trust and without that trust, you can’t hope to be successful.  Everyone who has a part in your success needs to feel that their actions matter, and that they have some control over their involvement and outcome.  Be there to teach, mentor, and assist, but trust the people you have to do what you need them to do.

One of the biggest obstacles to the success of any business is to have parts of your team feel like they don’t have any control of their destiny or don’t feel like they are an important part of the big picture.  A company should be led from the top, but powered from the ground up.

Negotiate Obstacles

No plan, or nobody involved in a plan is perfect:  understanding that basic truth is a key to being able to negotiate obstacles.  There will be speed bumps or obstacles along the road to success.  Each time you reach one of these, you must determine the crucial piece of information to move forward.  Did the obstacle stem from a mistake or from an issue?

Mistakes – Yes, people make mistakes, and the only way to avoid that is to hire perfect people.  If an obstacle arises because someone made a mistake, the best thing to do is to use it as a learning and coaching example so that those mistakes can be abated going forward.  If someone continues to make a mistake, then you have the decision on what to do with the employee.  A periodic mistake doesn’t a bad employee make.  Mistakes are a great way to show your support to your people, your reaction ability to your customer and a way to determine the quality of your process.

Issues – Issues are different from mistakes because they stem from the process instead of the person.  You may have a combination where a person makes a mistake that points out an issue or oversight with the process.  If it is determined that your obstacle stems from an issue, it is necessary to adjust the process to keep them from recurring.

Track your Progress

All goals have an 11^th hour or a point of no return.  There will come a time that no matter what you do, or how hard you work at it, there is nothing you can do to reach them.  The way to ensure that doesn’t happen is to know where you are in relation to your goal, how much further you have to go, and what has been working to get you there.

Start Again

This is both the easiest and the most difficult part of the process.  If you have truly succeeded at all of the points before this one, it will be easy to repeat what you did well, and learn from your mistakes.  If you didn’t learn anything, or weren’t able to make a distinction between what worked and what didn’t, you are more than likely doomed to repeat your failures.

Even if you hit your goal, if you weren’t able to track it throughout the timeframe and competently repeat it during the next cycle, you were lucky, not successful.

Needs Hierarchy

Needs Hierarchy

 

Continuous improvement has to start somewhere.  In order to ensure that you are not only starting in the correct place, but that you are moving in a direction that is in line with the needs and desires of the organization and all of its shareholders, you must first understand the basics of what your needs are. 

The above needs hierarchy is based on what research has found to be the main needs for an organization and their stakeholders.  Above all, sustainability is the most important need for any business.

The hierarchy is built in a pyramid to not only illustrate the level of importance for each section to the benefit and well-being of an organization, but because the implementation of continuous improvement projects, company goals, etc. must follow the same structure.  A focus and emphasis on Gain without having the other four sections of the pyramid properly maintained and grown, will result in a top heavy structure that will eventually topple.  Much like the construction of any tall building, you can’t start at the top and then hope to build a structure underneath it in any sort of efficient or effective manner.  You have to make sure the base is solid before you build on top of it.

 

Gain

This is the ultimate goal for any organization. Gain means that you are in a position to continuously move forward.  You have taken care of the basic needs of your business and stakeholders and now can move forward.  While this may be the ultimate goal for any business, it comes at the top of the hierarchy in based on a level of importance for keeping a business alive versus growing it.

Efficiency

Efficiency is the ability to have an efficient and effective operational environment that is capable of supporting and sustaining organizational change through a systematic progression. 

While efficiency is important in all levels of business development, improvement and structure, its importance in the over the others is diminished by the need to maintain first.  Efficiency by its nature is a growth oriented theme.  As it pertains to this hierarchy, while it adds to the basic needs of a business it doesn’t provide a pathway to meet them.  Because the needs for the first three levels must be met first, efficiency needs will be sidelined in favor of them.  Efficiency models seldom work when the other levels have not met the expectation of the ownership or leadership group.

Engagement

In order for a business to become successful, they must have stakeholders that are engaged in their success.  These stakeholders include partners, clients, customers, employees and vendors.  All of which provide a value to the overall organization.  Getting these stakeholders engaged is the third level in the needs hierarchy.  This is the first place where an involvement is required outside the ownership of the business.  For the first two levels, it is about ensuring immediate survival.  This level is where sustainability becomes part of the need.

Risk Management

Businesses must constantly assess their risks in order to ensure that there is no major concern in regards to the health, safety or well-being of their organization or shareholders. This process of risk management includes a desire to maintain a degree of status quo.  In regards to maintaining the physical health of the business risk management is the second level of needs in an organization.  The adage of preparing for the worst but expecting the best is part of this level.  Risk management includes compliance, avoidance of litigious circumstances, insurance, succession planning and other factors in relation to ensuring the overall health of the organization.

Profitability

When it comes down to it, the bottom line is the bottom line.  A business can’t hope to survive without the ability to handle their bills.  Businesses fail when they can’t afford to do business any longer.  Cash flow is the lifeblood of a business.  Like food, shelter and air to their shareholders, profitability is the sustenance that is required for survival.  While an organization can get temporary reprieve from lenders, banks, etc. profitability must at some point be reached and maintained. 

Defining the Culture of an Organization - Step 1

Is Your Leadership Ready for Culture Change?

There is often a large gap between how an executive will define their corporate culture and how their stakeholders define it.  The easiest way to determine the perception of your culture is to ask.  That may be the hardest thing to do in an organization for two reasons: you don’t want to hear the answer and you aren’t ready to make any changes.

If that is you, you are not alone.  Culture is one of those topics that many like to dance around.  It is often the elephant in the room at executive meetings.  When it is brought up, most will agree that there are some cultural issues, but as a topic of conversation it rarely rates an in-depth look.  Culture is a reflection of leadership, and leadership doesn’t want to look in the mirror and see a monster staring back at them.  Nobody likes to feel like they are causing issues in the company, especially if it is their company. 

Defining culture can be an evasive task.  If someone asked you to describe your personality, it would be almost as difficult.  We can all use relatively ambiguous words to describe ourselves, or we choose words that are fitting to the conversation.  The difficult thing about defining a culture is trying to quantify that definition.  We hear all day long about using data to drive change, so how do you empirically define your culture.

The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem.  I realize that sounds a lot like a twelve step program, but it holds true here as it does there.  All of the tools in the world won’t help you fix your problem if you aren’t able to be honest with yourself that it even exists, much less plays a major role in your organization.  Even admitting the problem won’t help if you aren’t ready to understand the depth of the issues or prepared to develop strategies to change them.   Before any culture change can happen, there are hard, honest and often difficult conversations that need to happen.  If you can’t make it through that step, you won’t go any further.

The good news is that for all of the bad press that corporate culture gets, there is a path to improvement.  This path takes you on a journey through different phases with the end result being a direct reflection of the honesty and desire you have when you start your journey.

Enlightenment – This is the first step on often the most difficult of the journey.  If this phase bounces back and forth between enlightenment and denial, don’t feel alone or bad.  Keep pushing until you are ready to continue.

Discovery – This is the stage of the journey where you find out just how big of an impact your culture has on your stakeholders.  You will need to ask the questions that you are sure you are ready to hear the answers to and be prepared to make necessary changes.

Engagement – To truly engage your stakeholders, the most important thing you can do is become credible.  If any of them feel that you aren’t being honest, candid and self-aware, you will have a much more difficult journey.

Delivery – You know you have an issue, you are aware of what that issue is and your stakeholders are ready to support you.  Now is time to deliver.  Show the stakeholders that you mean what you say through your actions.  Bring your plan to life and work through those issues.

Like any other change, this isn’t a solo act.  This is one of the most difficult things to do, and trying to do it alone can lead to frustration and potentially deeper issues.  Find an expert.  This is one of those things that requires objectivity.  Align yourself with an advocate that isn’t involved with your day to day activities.  There is nothing wrong with asking for help, especially if you mean it.

Nimble Strategy

The Importance of Maintaining Strategic Initiatives through Agile Processes

“No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact…”  Helmut von Moltke.

The need for strategy in a business environment is predicated by the desire and need for ongoing success.  With the globalization of our markets, and the technological improvements we have seen recently, the desire for a more strategic approach to business has become more necessary and more prominent in a wide variety of industries.  With these environmental changes, strategic planning processes and platforms need to evolve as well.  Continuing to operate on long term strategic plans without the ability to maintain and adjust for changes becomes difficult to do. 

Strategy is by definition “a careful plan or method for achieving a particular goal usually over a long period of time.”  The problem in today’s economy is that particular goals become harder to determine and the long period of time is a relative phrase that is in actuality becoming shorter and shorter.

For years, strategic planning was based in large part on using data and information to determine best practices and a better approach to move forward.  A large part of that process was coming up with the right information.  Now, almost all of the information we need is at our finger tips at a moment’s notice.  In fact, there is so much data that it sometimes becomes difficult to figure out what to use and how to use it.    The trick is not succumbing to the analysis paralysis that seems to grip so many companies as they struggle to adapt to so much additional information.

Strategic thinking is to a large degree intuitive, and requires the practitioner to understand data points as well as their utility in the process.  Data alone won’t build strategy, it has to come with someone, or a group of people that understand the numbers, but can also use their instincts and experience to build a platform that can adjust for variables and can be adjusted as things vary. 

Being truly agile means that you aren’t stuck with the information you have in front of you.  Agility means you can stretch your limits, can move quickly from place to place, topic to topic or goal to goal and that you can do it all without causing injury to yourself.  Having an agile strategy means you have a nimble business.  For so many years, we are taught to stay the course and stick to our targets.  We have been cautioned that straying from the plan is inefficient and ineffective and that keeping in our swim lanes returns the highest rewards. 

Times have changed, and the ability to adjust goals, change direction at a moment’s notice, and become more instinctual are the building blocks to building a more comprehensive yet nimble strategic environment.  The benefits of this type of strategic plan are that you are constantly redefining your business, you are evolving instead of just changing, and surprises truly become opportunities instead of roadblocks or hurdles.  Agility requires active participation from everyone involved and encourages by its nature a more engaged and task oriented business environment. 

A nimble strategic environment requires everyone to know exactly what their role is.  It also requires everyone to know what they are accountable for and how they can get it accomplished.  Having true agility in a business environment means you are constantly asking why you are doing it that way, how can it be improved, what else can we do and how can we engage our stakeholders even more.  With agility, size doesn’t have to matter.  Small, medium or large, if you are willing to put in the work, you can make it happen.  You don’t have to be a gymnast to be agile, I’ve seen some 350lb defensive linemen perform some pretty impressive feats.

 

 

The Five Components of a Nimble Strategic Model:

 

1.      Engagement – Strategy isn’t driven by one group or one person, it is driven by the business and all of its stakeholders.  Everyone has an active role in determining what direction they want the business to go, and how they want to get there.

2.      Dedication – To win the war, you may have to lose a few battles.  Dedication isn’t about staying the course or keeping your plan intact, this dedication is about developing an ongoing evolutionary environment, and dedicating the proper resources to each problem. 

3.      Analysis – The analysis component is two parts.  The first is having the information to properly analyze the direction you want to go.  The second being able to track the actuals to make sure you are getting there.  The analytical component also includes the ability to know which critical variables are important in strategizing and which are just there for information.

4.      Timing – The thing that separates the haves from have nots is often the timing.  It is the timing of their ideas (innovation), timing of their efforts (entrepreneurship), and timing of their implementation.  In this environment, being able to be timely plays a large part in its success.  Having the ability to make in time decisions requires the ability to receive timely information.  Being able to make timely decisions is only relevant if you are able to have timely actions.

5.      Efficiency – Efficiency in this environment is the string that holds the rest of these components together.  While being proactive is the sign of a healthy environment, being efficient when you have to react becomes a sign of a highly successful environment.  Putting together the tool boxes you may need in an emergency means when it happens, you will be ready for it. 

Vision Statements and their place in a Strategic Plan.

I don’t disagree with the effect a positive vision statement can have on an organization.  To be clear, vision on its own is an integral part of all levels of strategy while a Vision Statement does not necessarily carry the same weight.  Vision statements are important, however, where that vision statement fits, and when it should come into play is where I disagree with others in my field.

Vision statements are purposely both ambiguous and defined.  Vision statements should evoke emotion, but very seldom stimulate internal action.  Having a vision and making that vision a reality are too very different things.  Anyone can put fancy words on a piece of paper and call it a vision statement.  Even the best vision statements, with their clarity of goals, focus and attachment to values do little more than provide ambiguous statements that could be the same goal as every one of your competitors.  We all want to a little healthier, or a little less stressed, etc.  Telling someone that our vision of our lives is to be healthy and happy while we smoke a cigarette and cry about someone hurting our feelings gives mixed signals. How does the adage go?  “Actions speak louder than words”.

A vision statement should be not only about what is paramount within the organization, but also what is possible.  That realm of possibility has limitations based on so many different aspects of a business.  You can’t have a vision statement to be a world leader in anything, if you have no access to the whole world.  It could be argued that vision statements should be best case scenarios or end results and that the strategy is going to be chronologically segmented to eventually lead to the final result.  Of course that would add a degree of finality to the organization and nobody really wants to involve mortality into an organizational strategy. 

Vision statements or Mission statements have a place in business and a place in their strategy.  If nothing else, they are a rallying cry for the organization to gather to when faced with critical decisions or a cross road in their business.  While important to defining what a culture should look like, and how those within that culture should act, they will only serve the purpose they intend to serve.  Statements in an organization should always be in the background of any plan or action, but when they become more than white noise, not only do they become less effective, but their power abates significantly. 

I have read numerous articles or posts in regards to vision statements being anchor points or cornerstones to organizational strategy.  Each time I read them, I seem to get more and more swayed towards believing the opposite to be true.  Like buzzwords, adages, clichés, etc. things can have a tendency to become overused.  The concept of improvement or growth is aligned with the concept of effective organizational change far more than with the ability to have a great vision statement.  Goals and values are a large part of the organizational change plan, and statements provide guidance for those goals, but shouldn’t be more than that.

Mission and Vision statements look good on marketing brochures, effective organizational management looks good on a balance sheet.  While I would agree that good marketing is a necessity to a good balance sheet, the strength of the balance sheet isn’t entirely predicated on how good that marketing is.  Statements in an organization have their role.  Perhaps instead of a cornerstone or anchor point to a good strategic plan, they should be looked at as more of a halo or dome covering the organization under which all actions and plans are determined.

While this may seem to some an issue of semantics, I would argue strongly that positioning your statements in the right place has an effect on your ability to run your organization.  You can rally your team to “remember the Alamo”, but if you haven’t equipped them to win the battle, you end up with a bunch of patriotic dead people.  When you have effective tactics, empowerment and leadership under the umbrella of solid values, your chance at success becomes exceedingly higher.   Knowing where you want to go is important figuring out a good path to get there is imperative.  Understanding how to use a statement in your organization is more strategic than having one.  Strategy and vision have to be mutually exclusive.  One without the other is either a plan with no purpose or an idea with no action.   Using one to create the other will become an unending circle with no results.

You Can't Motivate Your Employees

than not, these discussions come at a time when the business is faltering or having difficult times.  A business needs to push ahead, increase revenue and profitability, grow market share or any other number of growth ideals.  In order to do that, they need to get the most out of their employees.  At this point, a business must make that difficult decision on how to get their work force to be more productive.  What is the correct way to motivate your employees?

As the title of this post says, you can’t motivate your employees.

If you’ve gotten to the point where you need to determine how to motivate your employees because your business needs immediate growth, more likely than not, looking to motivate your employees may be too little too late. 

Every employee at every company is capable of doing more and doing it better than they are currently doing.  This is not a quantifiable fact, but a theoretical one based on the logic that humans by nature are capable of extraordinary effort when they are in a situation where they are motivated to do so.  No sane person would jump in front of a moving vehicle just because someone asked them to (unless they are a Hollywood stuntman), but put their child in the way and the vast majority of them would risk it to save their child.

I’m not saying you need to put your employee’s children in front of moving vehicles, but the point of the analogy is that employee motivation stems from the individual, not the company.

I’ve seen a number of different ways that corporations have tried to motivate their employees:

-          Give them more money – This might be a short term fix for some of the more financially motivated employees.  The problem with this motivation is that you are giving more money to an employee who more than likely has learned to live on what they are already making.  Giving them more money and then asking them to do more will more than likely mean you will have higher paid employees doing the same amount of work.

-          Threaten them – While this sounds very old school in the business world of today, it happens very often.  Telling an employee that if they don’t improve they will lose their job will most likely result in an employee doing the bare minimum to keep their job while they search for another one.  Most of your employees have had jobs before they came to work for you, while having to go and look for one isn’t a great prospect, it’s not a gamble you always want to take, and more often than not, it ends up with you getting a little more effort in the short term and then having to find someone to replace them.

-          Appeal to their loyalty – Companies seem to have a pretty big ego when it comes to dealing with their employees.  Asking an employee to dig deeper in a time of need because they company needs them to may work for a small group of employees, but the majority of them will start looking for reasons that they aren’t the ones who caused the problems and it’s your job to make sure they still have a job tomorrow. 

-          Dangle a carrot – Companies can’t always afford to give employees raises or promotions, so they do the next best thing and tell the employees if they can get them through the tough times, the pot of gold will be waiting on the other side for them.  What you are really telling your employee is that their worth is only based on the how well the company is doing and not the value they believe they are adding on a daily basis.

All of these methods have one thing in common.  They make the employee feel like an employee instead of being part of something. The employee is not given control of their own destiny.  You could argue that  The other common side effect is that you are excluding them from your circle of trust.  Making a companywide decision on how to motivate all of the employees within that company is making a blanket statement that you know better than the individual how to motivate them.

Motivation is an employee based ideal, not a company based one.  A business is defined and carried out by the individuals they choose to employ.  Making a decision about what motivates them has the same detrimental effect to a company as trying to tell your customers what they want and how they want it.

Effective businesses understand that when they say their business is employee based, they mean it.  No business can make all of their employees happy all of the time, but when the majority of them feel like they are part of the decision making process and have a close relationship with their employees, the employees can motivate themselves into putting in the extra effort needed with nothing more than a request.  In great companies, the request doesn’t even have to be made because the employees are in tune with what is going on and have their own accountability and motivation to push forward.

These same businesses know that the motivational process and the involvement process begins with the hiring process.  Understanding who you are hiring, what they are looking for in a job, and what motivates them as an individual is key in the development of an employee based, self-motivated work force.  Having this information, and using it during the training process, employee reviews and on-going coaching is an excellent way to stay in touch with the needs and requirements of your employees.