Over the past 18 years I have conducted a team building event called the Electronic Maze® with hundreds of companies and thousands of participants. Sometimes called the “Magic Carpet” the Electronic Maze is extraordinary, not because it is magic, but because of the team behaviors and emotional responses it elicits.
Those behaviors and emotional responses are surprising similar across a wide variety of groups: senior managers, line workers, middle management, cohesive teams, strangers, international audiences, men, women, and every group that we’ve ever done this with.
Those behaviors are also very insightful as to how we perceive the world, work with each other, and get things done.
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.
Here is the link to the webinar I did with Economic Growth Centers (ECG), a 501C non-profit that I’m on the board of. ECG’s mission is to strengthen the economic vitality of the Twin Cities Metro area.
One program that we are working on is to create an electronic small business education curriculum that can be freely accessed from our website by small business owners, managers and employees. Our goal is to have an entire curriculum of educational webinars available free of charge, hosted by various experts in their fields. This type of training or consulting would be cost prohibitive for many of the small businesses we aim to help.
If you would like to donate your time or expertise – please let me know kurt@lanterngroup.com or leave a comment. We are looking for people to work with to create a one hour webinar that would teach small business leaders and employees a key business skill. If you are interested, let us know -we would love to hear from you!
It is technical and it gets into details and isn’t constrained to just one page. It has long paragraphs. Read it anyway.
It highlights how we have come to depend on Power Point and its conventions – even when that medium or those conventions don’t work. And how, in this instance, might have led to disaster.
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.
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:
I am too much of an analytic to play the Lotto much. The odds are just not there for me to spend my money on. I might as well take my dollar and throw it out the car window – at least that way, somebody might find it and get some use out of it.
However, while I don’t play much – on occasion I do.
It is on these occasions that I make it a rule to play a game that I call “The Lotto Game.” It involves spending time dreaming about what I would do with the money if I won. Would I go out and buy a bunch of things? Would I take a trip around the world? Give it away to charity?
I can spend hours visualizing what I would do with my millions. This way I feel that I am getting something for my money – the entertainment value of the dreaming.
Are there certain people who just can’t be motivated? Are there Wally’s who render the motivation fairy powerless? While I would like to believe that isn’t the case, I have to wonder…
Motivation is Personal
One of the core beliefs that I have is that motivation is very personal. People are individuals with different motivational triggers and drives. While there are basic underlying motivational drives (see 4-Drive Model), those drives impact each of us differently and create a unique motivational profile.
This implies that if one can understand that motivational profile of a person, one should be able to understand what to do to motivate them…right?
That is the implication…however I believe reality is a little different.
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.
