Learning Ideas

I recently had opportunity to comment on a discussion in which the answer revolved around motivation. This discussion was related to Performance Management on Berchelmann’s Blog, mostly in the comment section for the post. I commented on the fact that the performance review can be “abused” and can cause serious issues for employee motivation and performance.

Motivation has been much on my mind lately, and this discussion caused me to think a bit deeper on the topic. Corporations often confuse motivation with incentive. They are not the same. Giving someone a bonus or award may have a short term effect on motivation, but these incentives have to compete with all sorts of other motivational and de-motivational activities that are also going on. And sometimes an incentive might be demotivational.

I have spoken before of “Systems Theory” – that everything is connected. You can not ignore an employee, refuse them the tools they need, give them a review that “fits into the bell curve,” but give them a bonus and a raise and expect that to motivate the employee and produce good performance. While a younger employee might be motivated by money, eventually that issue resolves and more intrinsic (i.e. internal) issues rule motivation. Such things as respect, recognition, perhaps an increase in responsibilities, though that does not mean “double the workload” – as is often the case. Of course, in the extreme example above, you have also set this employee’s expectation that raises and bonuses are not related to performance.

Confucius said, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day…,” to which I would add that tomorrow he’ll ask you for another fish. And why should he bother learning to fish if you’re going to give him a fish anyway? To me this is the perfect example of “positive de-motivation.”

Companies may or may not realize that management is the prime source of motivation and de-motivation. In most cases, the focus for management and management training is operations. And while operations are obviously important, as the business world transitions more to a “Knowledge Worker” population, motivation and people factors become critically important as well. Managers need to be taught and given support in the people aspect of their jobs.

Management is hard. I have often compared the act of management to juggling (more so than herding cats, though that’s a good analogy too). Have you ever tried to juggle those little cloth squares? It’s tough! Management is like juggling several differently shaped items. Items such as budget, operations, P&L, people (and each is an individual), planning, reporting and often some work tasks as well. But people are not items – they are not something you can throw around like a juggler’s ball. Managers need to be worried about each person having assigned tasks, monitoring their performance (without micromanaging), supporting their needs, encouraging growth and career development and motivating them to do their best.

Few managers are good at “all of the above”. I’ve been blessed to work for a couple of these extraordinary managers – and I have tried really hard to be that kind of manager myself. However, this ability doesn’t come naturally for a lot of managers and companies do not help them grow in this direction. So when the economy tightens and positions are cut, the people left behind are de-motivated (they may have survived the RIF, but now they have twice or three times as much work to do) and their managers are at a loss as to how to re-motivate their employees. In addition, they know that as soon as things improve again, a lot of the employees will catch the “grass is greener on the other side” syndrome, and they will soon lose their experienced workers.

This is a time that companies need to provide insight and support to managers and employees through communication and training. Of course, the training department is the first to go, but there are plenty of vendors who can help. In all honesty, they should have thought of this before – but the cycle goes on. HR will start up the “recognitions programs” – and these are good, but in a lot of cases, the best that can be done is for the managers to recognize and appreciate the employees who are working hard and give them all the support they can. This should apply to upper management as well as line management, which is why motivation is hard. It’s “easier said than done.” Or perhaps I should say, “It’s like herding cats.”