challenge | Behavior Matters! - Part 2

Tag: challenge

South Dakota

I just spent the last week in South Dakota with my family.  It was a needed break from the day-to-day stuff that has been going on for the last six months.

A time to unwind and relax.  A time to reconnect and think.  A time to focus on things other than work and obligations…

Buffalo

Buffalo at Wind Cave National Park

REFRESH

I’ve talked taking time off before in order to recharge ourselves (see here: refreshabbatical).  I’ve realized that it is very important that we do this – and yet it is so hard.  I wanted to take the time off completely – without checking in or doing any work.

Oh well…

I ended up needing to be on some conference calls, figuring out a problem with one of our rental units, and checking back into see how an issue was being resolved at work.  As a result I was up way earlier than I wanted to be while on vacation.   Putting it mildly, that sucked.  Setting an alarm for 5:00 AM while on vacation to take a conference call is not my idea of fun.

But by doing it early,  I was able to spend all day with the family – every day.

And I didn’t check twitter, or my blog, or the internet or even the news.  It was almost blissful!

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What Drives Meaning?

What is it that drives meaning in work?  True, real meaning that goes beyond the obvious “completed this project” or “achieved that goal”?  I have some ideas, but would love to hear what other people have to say first.  I’ll keep a track of the responses we get and put up another post on this with some ideas at a later time.

So please, leave a thought in the comment section!

Do you have wisdom you could share with small businesses? We need you!

As noted before – I am on the board of the non-profit Economic Growth Centers in Minneapolis (http://www.egcmn.org).  We are looking for experts and leaders who have some wisdom to share.

Economic Growth Centers (EGC) is focused on strengthening the economic vitality of Twin Cities communities and neighborhoods.  We do this through helping small businesses grow and prosper.

Small companies are the engines of economic growth for the USA – yet they do not have many of the human or economic resources that larger firms do.

Our goal is to create a library of on-line training presentations that can be accessed at any time for free by small business owners, managers, and employees.   By providing small business leaders and employees with the skills and information that they need to prosper, Economic Growth Centers is helping them grow revenue, increase buying, add employees, and build out infrastructure, thus increasing the economic vitality of the Twin Cities Metro area as well as other communities across the country.

We are looking for  experts in various fields to volunteer to host our training seminars. By volunteering your time and expertise you are helping these small businesses grow and prosper.   The library will be focused around key developmental areas that small businesses need to grow:

  • Marketing and Sales
  • Human Resources
  • Financial
  • Strategy
  • Legal / Regulatory

The success of this endeavor depends on ensuring that we have a robust offering of meaningful courses – I would encourage anyone who is interested in presenting to contact me at kurt@lanterngroup.com or at 612-396-6392 to get further information.

Please share this with people you know who you think might be a good fit.  Thank you!

Kurt

Why I Hate Training Wheels

Riding a bike

My 4-year old son just got his bike a few weeks ago.  He is in heaven.  Ask him what his favorite thing in the world to do is, and he will tell you, “Ride my bike!”  He wants to ride it everywhere…which is fantastic. He is definitely motivated!

I have one problem…he won’t ride it without training wheels.

We tried.  The first four days I was out with him every day, running up and down the sidewalk, holding on to the bike as he peddled.  But he was too scared.  He would stop peddling anytime the bike tilted.  He would always look back to make sure I was there (which caused him to turn the wheel and tilt the bike to one side and then stop peddling).  He would stop and say he wanted to go slower.

And the problem was he was actually doing a good job riding on his own.  He was able to go a fair way with me just running beside him and not supporting the bike.  I would let go and he would be riding just fine.

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More on the Drive to Challenge & Comprehend

Why we do the things we do

I was reading an the transcribed copy from a conversation between Ira Flatow and Dr. Paul Bloom on the NPR show Science Friday.  This show was titled, “Why we like the things we like” and I think it highlights some very interesting insights that we could all learn from.

The following excerpt is a great example of the Drive to Challenge and Comprehend.

FLATOW: Well, you led into a topic I wanted to ask you about, and that is the pleasure of just learning about things. It’s – you know, just knowing more. I mean, I find that extremely pleasurable, and I’m sure a lot of our listeners do, or else they wouldn’t be tuned to this program.

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3 Tips to Increase the Drive to Challenge & Comprehend

Challenge The 4-Drive Model of Employee Motivation’s 3rd drive is the Drive to Challenge and Comprehend.   The drive focuses on our innate desire to learn more about the world around us and to not be bored.

I like to call this the “4-year old drive.”

If you’ve ever tried to get a 4-year old dressed quickly, you know what I mean – they want to do it themselves.  It is the challenge of being able to button their shirt or put on their own shoes that they are striving for.  Or think about a 4-year old sitting at dinner with a group of adults who are talking (i.e., boring) and think of the trouble that they get themselves into trying to add some excitement (or learn something new).  For instance, my 4-year old was bored and decided to see what meatballs in a glass of milk would taste like…you see what I mean.

So here are three tips to help increase the C drive:

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4-Drives: A simple story about how one manager got motivation right!

This was our most viewed slideshare presentation with over 14,000 views – I’ve now turned it into a 4-minute youtube video….with music and everything.  Hope you enjoy and please forward on to anyone you think would benefit from watching.

Four Drive Model: New Theory on Employee Motivation

The Four Drive Model of Employee Motivation was presented by Lawrence and Nohria in 2002. The model is a holistic way of looking at employee motivation beyond the typical “pay” model that is prevalent in the corporate world today. I will not go into detail regarding the model here, but just give  an overview and how this model presents a new way of thinking for organizational leaders (see here for how leader’s can impact performance using it).

The Four Drive theory is based on research that shows four underlying drives – the drive to Acquire & Achieve, to Bond & Belong, to be Challenged & Comprehend and to Define & Defend.

Each of these drives are important if we are to understand employee motivation. While companies typically focus on the drive to Acquire & Achieve (i.e., base pay, incentives, etc…), the other three drives play an integral part in  fully motivating employees. Thus, the new theory provides a model for employers to look at when they are trying to find ways to increase employee engagement and motivation.

For instance, companies often pay lip service to team building as they don’t see how it really impacts performance. The Four Drive model shows that team building relates directly to the drive to Bond & Belong – which in turn can influence an employees motivation. Thus conducting a team building session should no longer be just about having fun for a few hours, it should help a company’s employees positively build and enhance the bonds they have with their co-workers.

The drive to be Challenged & Comprehend  highlights the fact that we perform better when we are not bored or “not challenged” and learning on the job.  Instead of trying to automate and simplify all work, leaders should look at how they can enhance or create challenges for employees and provide them opportunities to learn and grow.  With this in mind, organizations must look at how they are structuring their jobs, their projects, their incentives.

Organizations do not typically think of the drive to Define & Defend when they are thinking about motivation. The Four Drive model indicates that a company’s reputation, its moral bearing, the culture and what it does can all be significant factors in how motivated employees are. Think of the different motivation an employee would have working for a pharmaceutical company that is providing life saving medicines for people or a one that is out to maximize shareholder returns. Which do you think would have the more motivated workforce?

Note: Alright, a theory that is almost seven years old really isn’t new, but theories moving from academics into the real world often require a much longer time to be accepted – so I’d give this a good grade! For more information, please go to www.lanterngroup.com or www.prlawrence.com

A LOOK BACK AFTER ONE YEAR –  6-11-10

We have done much work on increasing our understanding of the 4-Drive Model of Employee Motivation over the past year.  We are in the final stages of development for a 4-Drive Assessment that will help people understand how the four drives influence their individual motivation.  Another area of research for us was to look at how managers can use the 4-Drive Model to create programs, put in place systems, and change their behavior to increase their employee’s motivation.  All of this work has helped solidify our understanding of the 4-Drive Model and reconfirmed our belief that this is a very powerful employee motivation model.  We now understand that using this as an underlying architecture for creating a motivational workplace can be very beneficial for organizations.

Our work in this area has also shown that there are some weaknesses to the model.  For instance, “Purpose” isn’t really addressed in the model.  Purpose has been shown to be a key motivator in individuals – highlighted in Pink’s recent work but dating back to research done by Deci, Eisenberger, Locke, Lathum and most importantly Leider.  In the 4-Drive Model we have been forced to put passion under the Define & Defend Drive – but that stretches the current definition for that drive.  We are currently working on a way to integrate Purpose into the 4-Drive Model.

All in all, we still believe that the 4-Drive Model is one of the strongest and most robust models to help understand employee motivation and engagement.  We are working on developing more actionable tools and programs so that managers can both understand the model and be able to use it to increase their employee’s motivation.  It is with great anticipation that we are looking forward to the next year and taking this to the next level.

12/15/10

Please see Rethinking the 4-Drive Model of Employee Motivation for further thoughts on this model and how our thinking has led to new ideas.  Here are some other links to blogs we’ve written about the 4-drives Impact on Leaders here, and other four-drive info here, here, here, here and here.

Kurt

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