motivation | Behavior Matters! - Part 2

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Purposeful Change – 6 steps to help keep you motivated and achieve your goals

Based on new research from behavioral economics, neuroscience, motivation and habit formation…six steps that can help you get and stay motivated to achieve your goals.

We need your thoughts and experiences on change and achieving your goals

We are looking for input from people like you to answer some questions on how you were able to change something in your life or set out and achieve a goal.   We want to understand how you were able to lose weight, get a promotion, start a new hobby, eat healthier, change a bad habit, start a new positive habit, complete a project, etc…).  We are trying to uncover the underlying factors that help people purposefully changed a behavior or attitude.  This research will be used as input to a model of change that we are developing as well as possible inclusion in a book we are writing on the subject.  In the comment section, please share the following:

1) What did you purposefully set out to change or achieve?

2) What was your motivation that drove you to that do this (was their a specific trigger or was it something that you had focused on for a long time)?

3) What were the key actions that you took to achieve that change or result?

4) Did you change things in your environment to achieve this (i.e., move the treadmill into the bedroom or hang a progress chart on the wall)

5) Did you tell people (or a single person) what you were trying to do?

6) Did you set milestones to your goal?

7) Did you measure your progress against those milestones?

8) What was the hardest part about the process?

9) What was the most important part of your change journey?

10) What tips would you give for someone else who is trying to change this aspect of their life?

Leave your response in the comment section 0r send me an e-mail at kurt@lanterngroup.com   – Thank you!

Ignite your motivation

This blog has Ignite your motivatoinbeen kind of quiet lately – partly on purpose and partly because life is busy.

The on-purpose part of being quiet was brought on by a post I read by Derek Sivers blog (http://sivers.org/boring) on whether it is better to focus, entertain or both?  The underlying message being that we sometimes put out content to just put out content, when instead we should be focusing and developing our ideas and build a “path to mastery.”  It is a great conundrum that we all face…as Derek says, “you’ve got a conflict: What’s best for you is to shut up, sit down, and focus. What’s best for them [audience]… is for you to be entertaining.”

That being said, I’ve been working on developing a few concepts that build off of what we’ve done in the past, but reflect a new approach for us.  This required me to shut up, sit down and focus.

As readers of this blog know, we have concentrated on improving employee motivation at an organizational level for years.  We put a lot of stock into understanding the research out there on this topic and not just repeat the same old ideas.  For instance, outside of the original researchers, we have probably done more work on the 4-Drive Model of Employee Motivation than anyone in the country (see here, here, here, here and here for just a sample of our thoughts on this).  We think that this motivational theory offers companies new ways of looking at their reward and recognition framework that is refreshing and helps drive motivation in exciting ways.  We used this and other research (mostly insights from behavioral economics and psychology) to help organizations set up reward and recognition systems that tap into these insights and improve employee motivation and engagement.  We’ve done exciting work with a number of large and small companies helping them do this.

What we hadn’t done is focus on what individuals could do to improve their own motivation.

We had not explored how individuals, such as yourself, keep on task and stay motivated to achieve your goals?  How can we leverage the new research that is out there to help us stay motivated everyday.

So we are shutting up, sitting down, and focusing on that.

And it is fascinating.

Recent work by researchers on habit formation, willpower, and individual change have shed light on a number concrete steps that we, as individuals can do, to help keep us motivated and on task.  We have taken the first strides in  building a process that melds together all this research into a few main concepts that can be framework for a personal motivation plan.  Our initial work has led us to develop a five step process, that we think will not only help people to ignite their own motivation, but also to build ways to maintain that motivation for the long run.  These five steps are:

1) Find your motivational flow

2) Recalibrate your habit triggers

3) Enable your daily environment

4) Socialize your motivational strategy 

5) Track your goal progress

Each step has both research and real actions behind it.

We are still working on this and are looking for collaborators to help refine the process and test our assumptions.  The idea is to create a workshop and support materials that can be piloted. In the near future, we will be testing the model and piloting the process with a few people.  If you want to be part of that group, let us know (leave a comment below or e-mail kurt@lanterngroup.com) and we will put you on the list and you can be one of the first to try it out.

As always your thoughts are appreciated.

Improving performance in uncertain times using non-cash incentives

Change creates an emotional response

Even in the best of times, companies experience different competitive and environmental factors that can lead to organizational change and thus employee uncertainty. In hard economic times, those changes occur at a much greater pace and employee uncertainty can be even greater.   Employee uncertainty creates a number of challenges for organizations as employees often feel anxious, disillusionment, disappointment, confusion, and even anger over their lack of control in an unknown situation.  This often leads to decreased employee motivation, focus and subsequent decreases in productivity and performance.

Companies can employ a number of different mechanisms to help recharge employee motivation in changing environments.  One key mechanism is the use of targeted incentives to help engage employees and focus them on improving productivity.  Because incentives can be structured in a number of different ways and use a variety of reward options, it is important to understand what aspects of incentives will drive the greatest return given the uncertainty and emotional response that is felt by employees during these organizational shifts.

Understanding the psychological response:

The emotional response of individuals to potential negative changes is theorized to go through a process similar to grief.  The Kubler-Ross Reaction to Change[i] cycle shows how employees typically flow through recognized stages when faced with change.

Kubler Ross Change

Initial denial is followed by resistance, then a period of self-doubt and worry, followed by a time of letting go, with acceptance of the change and exploration of options, and finally moving to new commitment and focus.  This is an emotionally charged process that requires time to respond to change.

Organizations need to be able to manage this process and move people through these stages as quickly as possible.  The engagement of the emotional elements of the brain is vital to being able to achieve this. During the high stress, denial and resistance stages, our brains do not process rational arguments as easily or readily as they usually do.  In order to gain a foothold in this emotional cauldron, incentives need to have an emotional hook.  Non-cash incentives achieve this hook through a variety of behavioral economic principles.  First, they provide hedonic luxury escape which is about being able to remove yourself from the current state and imagine yourself with a luxury item or good[ii].  Second, they activate different sectors of the brain associated with visualization (i.e., right hemisphere brain functions) versus the more rational sectors associated with transactions (i.e., money and left hemisphere brain functions)[iii].  Third, non-cash elements do not push employees into a calculative modality in which they equate effort with monetary amounts.  In stressful situations, this calculation is short-changed and often interpreted as “they are trying to bribe me.”  Non-cash awards are evaluated as a separate, non-financial component that is viewed in isolation and not in factors that are associated with other compensation factors.[iv]

Examples:

Many organizations have utilized non-cash incentives in periods of uncertainty and change.  The following are just a few examples of these incentives and the results that they generated.

Y2K Angst

A technology firm out of Des Moines, Iowa was experiencing high levels of turnover and angst with its software programmers because of the uncertainty surrounding Y2K and how their jobs were going to be negatively impacted.   A non-cash incentive program aimed at achieving specific Y2K milestones was implemented across the organization.  AwardperQs (a non-cash point system) were awarded to individuals and teams that achieved specific milestones.   This program provided clear focus and motivation for the software programmers and achieved in excess of 90% of employees engaged/ participating/hitting one or more milestones.

Sales Force Integration

A leading medical technology company was moving from a product-centered sales philosophy to a customer-centric team approach.  This involved a realignment and adjustment to the sales force that created significant uncertainty in the field about their jobs and roles.  A six-month incentive program was developed that rewarded people for sales that required integration of two or more product groups.  A fixed award pool created a sense of urgency and engagement in the incentive.  The client realized a return of more than 300:1 on this program.

Realignment

A pharmaceutical firm was going through a major realignment of territories and product allocation due to a large product soon to come off of patent.  Many sales representatives had new managers, new doctors and new products that they needed to work with.  A short-term team based award was put in place that offered teams the chance to earn from selected merchandise if they were in the top 20% of districts across the nation.  Quota achievement across the division came in above the stretch goal, even with the distraction of realignment.

Other Factors

Obviously there are other factors that influence how quickly organizations move their employees through angst to engagement in situations that are stressful or uncertain.  While this paper does not expand upon those, two key factors that relate to incentives include:

  • Incentives should be short-term to allow for readily available goal progress particularly when dealing with uncertainty.  By providing short-term incentives and tracking to that, individuals will achieve a sense of progression towards goal which increases the perception of certainty in the program.
  • Communication is key.  Incentives cannot be viewed of as a bribe or they will be summarily dismissed.  The tone and narrative of the communication needs to be set up to have the most positive impact and create a separate interaction with the incentives that sets it as different from the cause of the uncertainty.

[i] Kübler-Ross, E. (2005) On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the Five Stages of Loss, Simon & Schuster Ltd.

[ii] Kivetz, R. (2010) Rewards Hierarchy and Hedonic Luxury, presentation at BIW Forum

[iii] Jeffrey, S., (2006) Cash or Hawaii: The benefits of tangible non-monetary incentives, dissertation

[iv] Jeffrey, S., (2008) The benefits of tangible non-monetary incentives, Incentive Research Foundation

Are you spending more on office cleaning than staff motivation?

There was a recent blog from HRZone UK that claimed, “Blog: Most employers spend more on office cleaning than staff motivation.”  I cannot vouch for the accuracy of this statement or info in the article.

That being said, accuracy is not the point.  The point is, you get what you pay for – right?  So what is it that your organization is paying for?

How is your company spending its money?  Is it on it’s people or on systems?  Is it on sales or is it on customer support?  R&D or discounts to suppliers?  The money often points to where the focus is for your company?

Two things that I often do when working with companies trying to improve their employee motivation is 1) interview key leaders to understand what the key drivers of the business are and 2) conduct a total rewards audit.   I use step one of this process to get at the underlying drivers of the business.  This often isn’t the first thing that comes out of leaders mouths.  In fact, it usually requires me to probe with them to really get at the root cause.  This understanding of the key drivers is vital to being able to motivate the appropriate behaviors and performance.  What we find in step two of this process is that the company’s Total Rewards are NOT in alignment with the key drivers.  In other words, companies are often spending their money on things that are not key to driving their success (similar to the clean office analogy in the HR Zone article).

This is not a good way to spend money.

Hopefully your company isn’t doing this.  But a simple way of finding out is to look at where you are spending money and then seeing if that aligns with the key drivers of the business.  If it aligns, you are doing well, if not, you have a problem.

Here is a link to the HR Zone article if you care to give it a glance: http://www.hrzone.co.uk/topic/managing-people/blog-most-employers-spend-more-office-cleaning-staff-motivation/119615

Have a great day!

Top 5 survival tips for small businesses – guest blog by Paul Schoening (3 of 3)

The following is the final blog of 3 posts from our guest blogger Paul Schoening, President of Plan C.  He is bringing a unique perspective on what it takes for a small business to survive.  In his first two posts (here and here) he talked about the difficulty of starting a business based on passion and how that passion is both good and bad.  He discussed how entrepreneurs need to look at building a sustainability plan and not a business plan.  In this blog are his final two tips.  Let us know what you think.  Enjoy!

4. Continually learn: I’ve mentioned education already but I need to stress how it’s important to stay ahead of the competition.   To do that, you need to carve out time to learn.  It doesn’t matter how you learn, but you must be constantly learning.  I’m not saying that you need to take classes – but you do need to keep up on things.

Read, attend conferences, sit through webinars, go to the library (I know – old fashioned but it works), find a mentor, network and learn more about your business than you think you will ever use.  Using the internet to learn is easier than ever – enter a topic in google and you have thousands of links to explore.  Subscribe to websites that help you learn and stay up on leading thought in your industry.  University sites offer a lot of free classes via the web (see here).  Apple even has iTunesU that you can get on your iPhone or iPad and learn while you are on the go.

When you are starting a business, finding time to learn can feel like you are taking away from other important aspects of the business – but it is key to long term survival. You’ll need to prioritize your time and make critical choices which will allow you to learn and grown your business at the same time…including how to more efficiently sweep the floors! Engaging your new employees through continuous learning is also a key factor in retaining the talent you need to succeed. Rick Osborn, president of the Association for Continuing Higher Education says, that’s a mistake.

“It doesn’t make sense,” said Osborn. I understand that when businesses are looking to make cuts, these are the kinds of programs that are the first to go. In the short term, those kinds of cuts might work for a business. But, in the long run, you’re going to have to restore the cuts.”

Businesses that offer professional development often have a strong track record for employee retention. In fact, employees cite continuing education programs as the No. 2 reason they stay in their jobs, said Susan Porter Robinson of the Washington, D.C.-based American Council on Education.

Source; www.bizjournals.com December 7, 2009

5. Connect, connect, and connect some more: Get connected with people in your industry, other small business people, and anybody else that could potentially be of benefit to your business.  Do this so you can understand the challenges, opportunities and resources available to be successful.   Research by the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center indicated that the effects of networking and connecting with other people have a long term positive impact.  The research found that 9-months after a networking “mixer” event, participants rated the top five benefits as

  • Being networked professionally
  • Feeling energized by the interaction
  • Gained a business insight
  • Established a collaboration opportunity and
  • Had found professional inspiration

Source: Enhanced Professional Networking and its Impact on Personal Development and Business Success, 2006

While every social engagement is not a sales call, it can be a potential opportunity to talk about your business and what you do.  Join Linked-In groups, start a channel on You-Tube, expand your twitter accounts.   Utilize your network of friends, family and acquaintances.     Make the effort.  You never know where the next sale is going to come from.  Don’t leave anything on the table, this is your livelihood!

Let us know what you think – leave a comment below.  Join in the discussion!

Behavior is what matters

For all my passion and research into motivation I have to respectfully admit that motivation by itself is shit. By itself, motivation doesn’t do anything. The most motivated people in the world sometimes still just sit on their butts.

What is needed is behavior.

It doesn’t matter if motivation is intrinsic or extrinsic. It doesn’t matter if my motivation applies to the A Drive or the D Drive (or the B or C Drive for that matter). If I don’t start or stop doing something (i.e., behavior) then the amount of motivation I have is a moot point.

Motivation is important in that it leads to behaviors. Motivation is one of the key elements in achieving behavior change (starting or stopping something). But it is only one part. The guys from Vital Smarts, Patterson, Grenny, Maxfield, McMillan and Switzer came out with a book called “Change Anything” not too long ago. It sheds light on this problem. While it mostly talks about individual change, but their insights can be applied to all motivation. They state that when we fail to change, “…when it comes to personal change, we think first of our own lack of motivation.” The problem with this belief is that there are a number of other factors that influence whether or not we actually change.

Change is hard. That is why motivation is important. It is the gas that powers the change engine. We need it to push through the difficult times and persist with our change effort. Again, Patterson et. al., talk about the other influences on whether or not we change – there are social factors and environmental factors. We can be motivated to loose weight all we want, but if we hang out with people who are always going out and eating big meals and just watching T.V. and if we have a packet of Oreos in the cupboard and no carrots in the fridge – it is much harder (and some might say – even impossible) to change.

When we are designing motivational programs for our employees, we need to understand that no matter how good our incentive program is or how well we activate the 4-Drives – our employees will be hard pressed to change if the social and environmental aspects are stacked up against them. If we want greater collaboration and teamwork, not only do we need to design the compensation plan so that it supports that, but we might have to look at how we configure our work space and what activities we allow while at work. If we want to get people out in front of customers more, we need to explore what are the routines that we have our employees do that inhibit this or what are the social/cultural pressures that might get in the way of this behavior.

So it boils down to understanding that while motivation is important, it cannot be the only thing that we focus on. We need to broaden our perspective to understand how motivation fits into the larger behavior picture.

And so while you might be motivated to agree or disagree with me – I’ll only know if you leave a comment (and thus, do a behavior). Click on “leave a comment” below.

Thanks.!

Karma: A few lessons from our ordeal with Hurricane Irene

This past weekend has to be one of the strangest weekends of my life. 

FRIDAY

It started with me coming off of a grueling two-day program that had frankly, stressed me out.  That meeting ended Friday at 2:00 PM at which time I headed straight home and got ready to drive two hours to a wedding.  When I got home, I quickly changed, gave the au pair marching orders for delivering our 20-month old to the grandparents, and took off my wife and 5 year old son for the trip to Mankato where the wedding started at 5:30 PM. We were on the road by 3:30 PM.

So far so good.

Then the text from Orbitz came, “MSG: DL 848 to BOS cancelled.”

Oh oh.

See, I was supposed to be flying out to Boston along with three other facilitators on Saturday to do a program on Sunday for a client.  We had known that Hurricane Irene was closing in on the east coast, but the reports that I had seen didn’t have it near Boston until Sunday.  Apparently Delta had some different information.

I  had two main client contacts – I called them both up.  No answer – so I left messages.  I then e-mailed the clients from my i-phone with this message “Flights Cancelled.  I just received a text saying our flight is cancelled due to hurricane Irene.  I am checking on getting a different flight.”  It was about 4:30 PM.

The message came back from the client at 4:41 PM, it said, “Thanks Kurt.”

Huh?  I would have liked a little more information please.

Needless to say, I was working the phone and e-mail.  I contacted Delta and instead of waiting for 42 to 54 minutes on hold, I had them give me a call back when my time was set.  Over the course of the next 40 minutes I traded more e-mails with both clients.  The meeting was still on – it seems like none of the participants were having any problems in getting into Boston (even though they were coming from around the world – Europe, Brazil, China, India and the U.S.).  They must NOT have been flying Delta. I contacted my team of guys who were flying out there with me.  I got a hold of two of them who were offering to help however they could.

So it was now about 5:20 PM and we were almost at the church.   Then I got this text from our Au Pair, “Sitting outside Grandma and Grandpa’s for 45 minutes – no one is home to take baby.”

Oh oh.

I now had another crisis on hand.  Quickly texted back that we’d try to find the grandparents, gave a few unsuccessful calls to their home and cell phones when I received my call back from Delta service (it had been in the 42 to 54 minute range).  The Delta rep searched for another option into Boston and came up with nothing available that could get us in either directly or through a connection.  All the flights were either full or cancelled.

It was 5:33 the wedding was starting.  I sat down in the pew and for the next 40 minutes tried to concentrate on the ceremonies.  Luckily there was no cell phone service in the church so I wasn’t tempted to check e-mails every minute.

Once outside the church I scanned the e-mail and text barrage.  A couple more e-mails from the client stating that the meeting was still happening.   A few more from my facilitators wondering what they could do to help.  A text from the Au Pair that she had gone home to feed the baby because our 20-month old had been hungry and thirsty.

I thought about pulling my hair out at this point but I’m bald – so that didn’t help.

At this point, my wife came outside and we discussed what we should do.  We were prepared to go home to relieve the Au Pair.  We tried calling the grandparents again.  And I was thinking through various options for being able to work the program in Boston – I thought of maybe trying to rent a car to drive out to Boston, finding other facilitators in Boston who could conduct it, try to figure out a teleportation device that could beam us there directly. I was getting a little desperate.

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Changing Behavior – The Real Reason Motivation is Important

I’m a pragmatist.

This means that while theory is nice, what is really important is what happens in real life.

Most of the time when clients hire us, they hire us because we can impact the bottom line through changing the behavior of their employees.  Most of them don’t care about the theory behind that change no matter how wonderful it is (e.g., The Four Drive Theory of Employee Motivation) – what they want is results.

Which gets me to the point of this post – if we are really about changing behavior, why do we care about motivation?

Think about it – motivation in and of itself does not change anything.  You can be motivated and pumped up and rearing to go and still not accomplish anything.  I’ve been motivated for years to loose weight – yet up until a few months ago, I haven’t done anything about it.  In their book, “Change Anything” Patterson, Grenny, Maxfield, McMillan and Switzler (the guys from Vital Smart who wrote Crucial Conversations and Influencer) talk about how motivation is just one aspect that is required to achieve personal change.  Indeed, they talk about the fact that if all we have is motivation, no matter how much it is, we are most likely headed for failure.

To drive change we also need to have the skills, tools and knowledge necessary to achieve that change.  We need to have a social network that supports us in our change efforts and isn’t trying (actively or passively) to derail that change.   We also need an environment that helps us and doesn’t hinder us.  In other words, motivation by itself is not enough.

Yet…

Motivation is vital to this whole equation.  It is the impetus to get us off our butts and start doing something.  It is the pressure that is applied to us throughout the change process – the pressure to continue and not quit when it gets tough.  It is the internal drive and fortitude to keep going and keep pushing oneself.  Without motivation, no change would happen.

And that my friends, is the reason that motivation is important.

Why did you fail to reach a goal?

We wanted to find out why people don’t reach their goals.  Please think about a specific goal you had that you did not achieve (i.e., loosing weight, achieving sales goal, stop procrastinating, etc…) and fill in up to three reasons why.

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