Counter-intuitively, organizations tend to find difficulty prioritizing their employee engagement efforts during challenging environments. In fact, during this recession many have executed a status quo strategy, which communicates to their single greatest resource that you are “damn lucky to still be here”. Take a moment to think about this – has this been your organizations approach to engagement?
Therein lies the issue! If we tell our recession survivors they’re lucky to have a job and yet we label them our greatest remaining resource, we are sending mixed messages.
Olivia Mitchell is one of the best experts on the web when it comes to presentations and public speaking.
She gets it.
I have been following her for over a year now and have been constantly amazed at the quality of her posts and her use of research to back up her statements. In this post, she talks about three myths of public speaking – read it and let me know if you don’t change your mind after reading this.
After reading it, I started to think about how these myths often get in the way of effectively communicating incentive and compensation plans to people as well…
Myth #1: It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it
I read “Sales Comp Demands a Deep Sales Dive, Not a Best Practices Quest” by Ann Bares on Compensation Force yesterday – the article really resonated with me. The basic premise of the article is that companies should focus on understanding their sales force and not depend on best practices. Ann states it best when she says, “the problem with the notion of best practices in HR is that it too often leads to a blind search-copy-cut-paste effort whereby we simply lift popular program elements (out of professional journals, books, studies, etc.) and implement them, without sufficient thought as to their fit and strategic applicability.”
It resonated because it is right-on but also because I just completed an assignment for a company where they were looking for “best practices.”
I didn’t give them any (we’ll not really – more on that later…).
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.
While this is funny, it is also a little sad. Sad because it actually happens – and not just at Microsoft, but across the board in industry today.
In our striving to add more and make sure things are clear and understandable, we “muck up” stuff. I’ve witnessed this type of “editing” many times in the work that we do.
The intent is always good. Clients saying, “we need to add in the eligibility rules to the PPT” or “the graph isn’t to scale and can we add some arrows in to show how people should read it?” or “can we just put an earning example in here?”
However, in the end, what started out as a simple, memorable, and I would say engaging piece – ends up to be just another jumbled piece that doesn’t elicit any emotion or change any behavior. We tend to put too much in and don’t leave enough out. I understand that compensation communication (or other “important” communication) needs to have the details – I just think that they shouldn’t be on the box (or in most PPTs or overview documents).
This means that some of our communication pieces are the “packaging” – they grab our attention; they create a feeling or expectation. Other communication needs to be the “set up instructions” – these are the simple how to use directions; the easy to understand graphics that show you how to plug it in. Finally you need the “warranty and trouble shooting information” – those legal parts that get into the nitty gritty; the details of how things work so that those few who really care can understand.
Watch this and laugh – but think about how it applies to you and your business communications. How much do you try to cram in? Is it too much?
I am a big believer in the motto – simpler is better. I also believe that emotion is more memorable than logic. So make sure that you don’t create a Microsoft package when you could make an Apple.
Have you ever had this happen to you? Give a comment and let us know.
Salespeople who are engaged in their roles, who are motivated to succeed, and who’s goals are aligned with the organizational goals have been shown to have a significant impact on helping an organization succeed (Badovick, Hadaway, & Kaminski, 1992). Successful organizations understand this and try to keep their sales employees motivated and engaged through a variety of motivational methods – mostly involving extrinsic rewards.
While much has been much written about how extrinsic rewards may have a detrimental effect of on a sales person’s intrinsic motivation (Deci & Ryan, Kohn, or Pink – note: there is also a lot of research on how this extrinsic/intrinsic effect can be mitigated) there is little disagreement on the short-term impact that extrinsic rewards can have on a company’s performance . The short-term benefit of extrinsic rewards assures us that these rewards will be used in businesses no matter what Dan Pink has to say on the topic. However, this does not mean that these types of programs can’t be improved.
Successful organizations and leaders of the future not only need to focus on the optimization of extrinsic reward programs but also on moving other levers within the organization that can drive sales motivation. Using the Four-Drive Model of Employee Motivation (Lawrence and Nohria, 2002) provides a clear framework for how to do this.
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.
I had a question poised to me in a group that I’m in regarding which is more effective/important, recognition or incentives? It got me to thinking about how we tend to try to simplify things into easily digestible answers (i.e., make the world black and white). It isn’t so simple. In reality, a truly effective motivational program needs to include both. It also needs to include a focus on intrinsic motivators (i.e., the three other aspects of the 4-Drive model: Bonding & Belonging, Challenge & Comprehend, and Define & Defend). When we look at motivation holistically, we have a number of levers that we are able to pull as leaders. The fact of the matter is, there is no one silver bullet. Everyone has a plethora of motivators that drive them everyday.
That being said, it is important to understand what those key motivators are. Asking people is obviously a key component of that, but I’ve found that often what people ask for, isn’t really what motivates them the most. It is important to get beyond the surface to the underlying motivators that people have. For instance, research that I’ve been part of shows that the majority of sales people will ask for cash if given the choice for an incentive reward (roughly 74% of the time), yet, we typically see a larger increase in sales performance for non-cash awards (on average about 15 – 25% better). Because of human nature, we don’t always know what really motivates us or we have been conditioned to respond in a particular manner to these types of questions. The difficulty is being able to identify what those real motivators are.
My belief is that incentive programs have to get more individualistic. That companies need to provide managers with more tools to be able to determine real motivators and set up individual programs for their teams. Of course, this is easier stated than done. The first step however is asking them. The second step is identifying peoples underlying drives. The third aspect is to ask them again after assessing their motivational profile, using probing questions to get at peoples real motivation.
Would love to hear people’s thoughts on this topic. What have you seen in your own business on recognition or incentives? How do you optimize them?
Employee motivation, in my view, is key to creating long term successful companies. While there are no magic bullets out there, here are 9 tips that we’ve gathered over the years that can help any manager improve the motivation of the people working for him or her.
“Damn Lucky”
