What motivates people to work hard?

In the closing stages of a recent client meeting, the conversation turned to pay. In this case no significant bonus was in play and many frustrations with the way in which head office dealt with it's country organizations had been expressed. So I asked the obvious question: 'What motivates you to do try your hardest, rather than do just enough to keep your job?'. The answer was pretty vague but seemed to be a mixture of personal pride and the potential to do something special in the market place. It got me wondering and since then I've asked a few other people the same question.

You can look at all the motivational research you like and the more recent consulting perspectives on 'Employee Engagement' and you're likely to be more confused rather than less by the wide array of models on this subject. From my totally unscientific sample, once you separate out fear of job loss, and the potential to make a huge bonus as factors encouraging people to go above and beyond, it strikes me that for most people it's a question of built in disposition more than anything. In other words, intrinsic rather than extrinsic factors are the key that unlocks the door to sustained higher levels of performance. You can throw money or great employment conditions at someone, and they will take it - but the motivational effect will wear off and you will have to keep upping the ante to keep them turned on and feed their insatiable sense of entitlement. However, if you can find people who combine the right intrinsic qualities and sufficient talent, then you may save yourself a lot of effort and even money. People who are purely motivated by extrinsic factors, may be best suited to environments that are very short-termist (like trading) and can (in good times, at least) afford generous payouts. But, for the long haul, intrinsically motivated folk may well serve you better. The workon intrinsic motivation of Steven Reiss at Ohio State University seems to come closest to explaining this in a comprehensive theory that has a sound research base. It is worth a look if you are interested in this line of thinking.

Preparing BU Heads for Moves to Regional Leader Roles

I was recently asked about what development needs there might be for a manager currently in a single unit MD role, whose next move was to be a regional CEO role. In a world where talent development is increasingly on the 'A' list of management priorities, this is probably a question that is occuring with increasing frequency, so I thought I'd shared my thoughts on this. My start point was that I would focus on the most significant changes in the role and then work back to the develop needs.

I would expect to see six major changes in role demands in this situation. Each of these demands points to different develop needs that will be more or less urgent depending on the background of the person making the move. Taking each in turn, the role demands and associated development needs might include the following:

1. A wider span of control, which means a greater reliance on others (development needs: delegation skills and learning to manage from data rather than involvement in tasks)
2. An increased distance from the real work of the organization, which makes it harder to know what is happening and exercise controls (development needs: risk management, business analytics and controls)
3. Cross-border activities, which mean different cultural issues, talent pools, and regulatory contexts (development need: x-cultural training, education about the political and regulatory environments for each country)
4. Less direct influence on events, which means a higher dependence on the effects of symbolic actions and weaker personal relationships (development needs: understanding and managing networks, managing messages/ executive level communications, psychology of large groups)
5. A higher level of discretion over how to spend time because of the longer term issues that are being dealt with (development needs: prioritization, personal philosophy of leadership, framing a 90 day plan (for customers, operations, people))
6. More strategic expectations of the role (development needs: strategy formulation, business finance, competitive and market contexts for each country under the role).

Delivery mechanisms will likely depend on whether the learning content is related to knowledge or skills development – the first can be delivered through classroom training or self learning, the latter through courses, advice (another leader with the right level of experience acting as a buddy or an external coach) but always through involvement in doing the task. Also, use of cross business projects as a development tool can be useful to prepare people for this kind of transition.

Any other thoughts on this would be welcomed!

Endless Lists of Competency Lists

Talking to a friend recently who is in the midst of a massive exercise to determine the competencies required of a large population of leaders. It left me speculating whether companies might all do better spending less time investing in individual research projects on this subject, many of which are based on rather flimsy research methodologies and end up with long lists of characteristics against which managers then have to determine performance ratings (adding another layer of subjectivity to the whole process).

Instead, if a meta analysis was done to compare what different companies come up with as the set of core characteristics they are looking for and that was compared to a core list derived from a similar analysis of the academic literature, my hunch is that they would have a huge overlap once you put labeling differences to one side. Would it not be better to focus on the characteristics that make the differences between cultures or companies, rather than reinventing the long list over and over again?

Places To Be Happy

As the US closes down for it's annual celebration of independence, hopefully it will be a weekend marked by happiness for all - even though the overall level of happiness may not have increased much in the last 60 years! Reported on the BBC web site today, some fascinating research (see the World Values Survey) has been undertaken over the last few decades, comparing happiness trends between countries. Apparently the US, along with other laggards including the UK, Belgium and Germany, have been flat-lining, while many other countries have shown increasing levels of happiness. Top of the latest list are Denmark, Colombia and Puerto Rico - maybe a whole new tourist industry could be started, with happiness tourists replacing the Da Vinci Code tourists of late?

What makes the difference, you ask? It seems to come down to two main dimensions: stronger secular-rationalist values (a shift towards secular communities) together with stronger values of self-expression (which idealizes individual expression). Having sated ourselves on materialism, these forces are now driving an increased desire for self actualization. That, and democracy are the common trends in the happier countries (even though, once democracy is established, familiarity seems to result in people rating it as less important!).

I wonder if there is any connection between the increasing interest in Positive Psychology in the US and dissatisfaction bred by its relative underperformance compared to most other countries where data has been collected?

Women's Role in Society and Other Demographic Trends

Here's an interesting talk given by Anne Manne about the role of women in society and work, called Love and Money. Whether you agree with her views or not, it raises some important questions, the answers to which will ultimately affect the way in which employers will need to think about patterns of employment and support for childcare. A core of the argument revolves around the difference between the right to equality at work versus the compulsion that women should be at work and the implications of decisions around that for the next generation of workers (many of whom will be reared by child-carers rather than parents). It's a longish piece (around 50 minutes) and only for those who can listen with an open mind. Definitely not for those with no interest in having their ideas challenged.

Continuing on the theme of demographics, there is an argument that we are all getting too anxious about the pending reduction of numbers of people in the workforce, because increases in productivity rates (which even at the lowest levels increased at an annual rate of 1.5%) will compensate for a big chunk of the reduction. Also, we are neglecting to see that the impact is likely to positive in terms of rising wage levels, reduction in the number of lowest paying jobs, reduction in pollution and freeing up of land.

In both cases, it means that organizations need to be planning strategically for the workforces they will require in the future - not just focusing on year on year recruitment plans.

Why Would You Ever Leave?

How do people ever get to focus on their work at Google? This video clip of Google's Zurich office environment, posted on the BBC website, won't give you the answer, but it will give you a sense of what the combination of money and open minds can provide. Old distinctions between work, play and home seem to have disappeared. Who cares about having the corner office, when you can fight over who gets to use the slide between floors?

Employee value propositions don't seem to be cutting it

It seems we are fighting an uphill battle in improving workplace satisfaction. Americans increasingly hate their jobs, according to a report by the Conference Board. Even worse, the young aged under 25 years have the most negative views and those aged 45 to 54 are the second most dissatisfied groups. If you want to increase your chances of meeting someone who is happy in their work, start with the clergy and then move onto the helping professions (not including doctors, who it was recently reported in the UK seem to regret becoming members of this formerly esteemed profession).

I wonder if there is an inverse correlation between the extensive efforts being put into defining 'employee value propositions' and the rate at which satisfaction declines? It is certainly a buzz phrase at the moment, but seems in danger of falling into the trap of many of the old quality management and culture change programs of the past - lots of good words, but not much to back them up.

Surely, at a time when the demographics mean that the supply of well qualified, highly talented young people is declining and that young people's expectations from the work environment and their careers are changing, more substantial effort needs to be made by companies to bridge the gap between words and deeds. Starting with the CEO may not be a bad idea, given the power and influence they can exert - one survey indicated that only 2% of people found them to be 'very trustworthy'!

A better understanding of the trade-offs people make when they come to work - with the kind of detailed segmentation that political analysts and marketing professionals do to understand voting and consumer spending patterns - might not be a bad place to start.

If you're looking for a book that attempts to address this issue, try Firms of Endearment

Demographics and the Millenial Generation

It's hard to ignore the massive influence that demographics are going to have on changing patterns of market demand and the way business will get done. With developed and developing nations fighting for talent and many countries unable to attract and absorb immigrants at a high enough rate to make up for the shortfall in young people for their economies, business is going to have to have to come up with some creative solutions about how to source and organize talent.

As if simple demographics weren't making it hard enough, there are also the changing expectations of the 'millenial generation' to deal with. Work patterns, career planning and development, reward strategies, modes of communication, organizational structures and workplace environments are all going to be radically different within the next decade. The combination of macro-economic forces at the global demographic level, plus leaders in most companies that don't even have the millenial generation as an agenda item, points to us heading for a set of clumsy and haphazard responses to these issues. The answer won't be to copy companies like Google, who have the money to recruit the cream from around the world and create work environments that companies with normal earnings can't afford. Instead, maybe we should be looking for answers in countries like Singapore who have made a head start in thinking about how to make up for population shortfalls and new businesses established by millenial generation entrepreneurs.

David Foot at the University of Toronto is a good source on demographics, if you want facts, figures and thinking on the subject.

Millenialgeneration.org keeps track of insights on the millenial generation debate.

CEO appointments break through national glass ceilings

Following slowly behind the lead shown in the UK premier football league, it seems that companies are increasingly appointing non-nationals to head up their companies on the basis of 'best person for the job'. The NYT reports that, although the majority still recruit from in-country, a growing number look outside, as in Duran at Carrefour. The article provides more examples and some facts and figures for those who are interested.

Systems thinking - old is not necessarily out of date

Researching for an article I came across an essay by Senge and Sterman published in Transforming Organizations by Kochan and Useem back in 1992. It was about the importance of seeing the organization as dynamic rather than the more static perspective of many strategy folk. Research has shown that managers have a bad habit of chopping and changing strategies when things don't seem to be going well, change many variables at once and are not good at articulating underlying rationales for what they are doing. Senge encourages the use of systems thinking as a way to surface assumptions, and learning laboratories to simulate conditions and map, challenge and improve mental models. It's striking how many instances of poor foresight, coupled with 'irrational exuberance' have played out in the political and corporate worlds today. Maybe a little more attention to the possibilities of systems thinking and the lessons of research into group behavior might have helped avoid some of the problems we are now facing.

http://www.amazon.com/Transforming-Organizations-Thomas-Kochan/dp/0195065042/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1212520416&sr=8-2