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The 5 Basic Conditions People Need in Order to Execute Well

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From Jim Collins’s book Beyond Entrepreneurship: Turning Your Business into an Enduring Great Company:

1. People execute well if they’re clear on what they need to do. How can people possibly do well if they don’t have a clear idea of what “doing well” means — if they don’t have clear goals, benchmarks, and expectations?

2. People execute well if they have the right skills for the job. The right skills come from talents, temperament, and proper training.

3. People execute well if they’re given freedom and support. No one does a good job with people looking over his shoulder; when people are treated like children, they’ll lower themselves to those expectations. Also, people need the tools and support to do their job well. To use an extreme illustration, imagine how difficult it would be for Federal Express employees to make on-time delivery without reliable trucks.

4. People execute well if they’re appreciated for their efforts. All people want their efforts to be appreciated. We’ve consciously chosen the term appreciated rather than rewarded because it more accurately captures that excellent performers value respect and appreciation as much as, and often even more than, money.

5. People execute well if they see the importance of their work.

This is very perceptive and right on, on all fronts. If you miss even one of these components, you have a recipe for frustration among your people.

The Knowledge Worker Can Only be Helped, Not Supervised in Detail

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From Drucker in The Effective Executive:

The knowledge worker cannot be supervised closely or in detail. He can only be helped. But he must direct himself, and he must direct himself toward performance and contribution, that is, toward effectiveness.

Further:

The motivation of the knowledge worker depends on his being effective, on his being able to achieve. If effectiveness is lacking in his or her work, his commitment to work and to contribution will soon wither, and he will become a time-server going through the motions from 9-5.

How to Design Jobs Right and Make Every Job Meaningful

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In order to enable people to be effective in their jobs and find them motivating and satisfying, you need to design work right. A compelling mission and cause to work for—as important as that is—can be interfered with and even undermined if the work itself is not structured in a way that accords with how humans are designed to function.

The reason is that if certain factors are not present within the work itself, dissatisfaction and even misery result. This has been documented by the Gallup organization in their twenty-year effort to identify the characteristics of great managers and workplaces[1] and articulated anecdotally very effectively by Patrick Lencioni.[2]

Our aim at Next is that we not undermine the mission that we are passionate about through the structure of our jobs. Rather, our aim is not only that every job actually be meaningful, but that every job feel meaningful. We do not want the reality (meaning) to be obscured by poor structure and job design.

Hence, I am going to outline five models on designing work, and then draw a few implications for us.

Five Models on Designing Work

1. Motivation

The Components of Motivation

In his book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Daniel Pink argues that there are three factors of intrinsic motivation:[3] autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

Autonomy

Autonomy means having the freedom to chose and be self-directed. There are four areas of work over which you can have autonomy: what you do, when you do it, how you do it, and who you do it with. In general, the greater autonomy one has over these conditions, the more motivating the work[4]—assuming the other two components are also met (mastery and purpose).

The opposite of autonomy is control. Whether a manager believes in increasing autonomy or increasing control reflects something about his or her view of human nature. If we believe that people do not naturally want to work, accept responsibility, and do a good job, we will tend to think people need a prod to move forward, that “absent [extrinsic] reward or punishment, we’d remain happily and inertly in place,”[5] and that once people do get moving, they need a firm and close guide or they will wander off task.

But if we believe that people are not passive and inert by nature, but rather “wired to be active and engaged,” then people don’t need to be controlled.[6] Rather, what they need are clear outcomes (which they also have a part in setting) so that they know what is expected of them. Along with this they need to have the knowledge and resources that they need to do their work. The role of the manager then becomes that of a supporter and source of help, making sure they are equipped in the way they need, and removing the obstacles that restrain active engagement and intrinsic motivation.[7]

Here’s how this all comes together: control leads to compliance, whereas autonomy leads to engagement.[8] And this relates to the second component of motivation.

Mastery

Mastery is “the desire to get better at something that matters.”[9] Only engagement, not compliance, can produce mastery.

Managers help create the conditions for mastery by creating environments where it is conducive to get into the state of flow, or “the zone”[10] and making sure that people have “clear objectives and a way to get quick feedback.”[11] Another crucial part of this is making sure that people are able to play to their strengths—to do what they do best every day. For the opportunity for greatest improvement and growth and mastery lies in our areas of strength.[12]

Purpose

Purpose means working for a cause that is greater than yourself. This is what leads to the deepest level of motivation. Ironically, traditional management did not recognize purpose as a motivator. Instead, it relegated it to the status of “ornament—a nice accessory if you want it, so long as it doesn’t get in the way of the important stuff.” By taking this view, it “neglects a crucial part of who we are.”[13]

Evaluation

I think that Pink is right on the target with the three elements of motivation. Autonomy is one of our core guiding principles of leadership and management overall, and so it ought to be reflected in job design. Autonomy is good for the person, because it is motivating, and it is good for the organization, because when people are motivated they do better work.

Autonomy has to be combined with clarity of expectations, which we discuss in our approach in another document, and which is reflected in the other models in the “measurement” component. Measurement is one of the means of feedback on results, which is a form of accountability (but not the only form).

Mastery relates very much to our aim to focus on strengths and make sure people are able to do what they do best every day. We want to see people become better and better at what they do—and here we see that this is good for the individual and produces more effective results for the organization.

Purpose is becoming especially relevant in the modern workplace, because more and more people are realizing is essential to them in their work. People are not merely economic beings, and hence they do not work only for money. This is especially true in the nature of our work, being ministry. Our purpose as an organization is strong, and people come work here because they resonate with and want to contribute to that purpose. What we need to do is make sure that we don’t allow ourselves to become lazy on the other fronts because of this. It would be a tragedy if people were inspired by the sense of purpose in serving the kingdom, but we did not equip and empower them for effectiveness and growth in the other components that are necessary for job meaningfulness and effectiveness. In fact, as the Gallup research points out (which I discuss in the document “Employee Engagement” [link]), if people resonate with the purpose of their organization but lack some basic factors such as clear expectations and having the tools they need to do their work, they will ultimately become disengaged. So we cannot simply think in terms of the high level of purpose. We also have to serve people at the levels down lower on the mountain, at base camp.

2. Engagement

Description

Engagement means having an emotional connection to your work. Marcus Buckingham’s book First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently is based on a Gallup study of 80,000 about how to build an engaged workforce—that is, a strong work environment. Their findings show that a great work environment is not something that just happens randomly; rather, it is something that we have no control over.

Their most surprising finding is that the key role in creating a strong work environment is not the leadership of the company, but the managers. Your manager plays the greatest role in determining whether you will stay with a company and how effective you will be while you are there. People join companies, but leave managers.

Buckingham gives a full picture of what the management role needs to look like in order to build a strong workplace and create employee engagement. In brief, the role of the manager is not to perfect people, but rather unleash who they already are—to turn talent into performance. This is done by turning four keys: selecting for talent, motivating by focusing on strengths, setting expectations by defining the right outcomes (but no the right steps), and developing by finding the right fit.

If the managers throughout the company play this role effectively, time after time, a strong workplace is built. Further, the strength of a workplace can be measured through the 12 Questions that Gallup developed through its study. The primary role of a manager is to develop positive responses to the first six of these questions. The manager does this by carrying out the above four keys effectively.

The 12 Questions are:

  1. Do I know what is expected of me at work?
  2. Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right?
  3. At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?
  4. In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for doing good work?
  5. Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person?
  6. Is there someone at work who encourages my development?
  7. At work, do my opinions seem to count?
  8. Does the mission/purpose of my company make me feel my job is important?
  9. Are my co-workers committed to doing quality work?
  10. Do I have a best friend at work?
  11. In the last six months, has someone at work talked to me about my progress?
  12. This last year, have I had opportunities at work to learn and grow?

Evaluation

We have baked the realities that these questions measure into our management systems, including performance management, career discovery, and strengths discovery. When it comes to job design, the three biggest factors that we see at this point are: people need to have the equipment they need to do their work right, and so we ought not skimp there, and every job needs to have clearly defined outcomes, or expectations. Third, each person needs to be positioned in a way that will enable them to play to their strengths, which is not just an ambiguous ideal, but something that can be concretely measured by the question “are you able to do what you do best every day.”

3. The Non-Miserable Job

The Nature of a Miserable Jobs

Patrick Lencioni makes a distinction between miserable jobs and bad jobs. A “bad” job is often in the eye of the beholder—it’s defined by what you value and what you want your job to be like.

A miserable job is one that “saps your energy even when you’re not busy. It’s the one that makes you go home at the end of the day with less enthusiasm and more cynicism than you had when you left in the morning.”[14]

You can have a “great” job—a professional basketball player or a CEO—and still be miserable because “being miserable has nothing to do with the actual work a job involves” (217).[15]

Consequently, “miserable jobs are found everywhere—consulting firms, television stations, banks, schools, churches, software companies, professional football teams, amusement parks. And they exist at all levels, from the executive suite to the reception desk to the mail room.”[16]

The Consequences of Miserable Jobs

Miserable jobs matter because they are harmful to people and cause the organization to be less effective. “Economically, productivity suffers greatly when employees are unfulfilled.”[17]

But it is the social cost that is most significant, because miserable jobs don’t simply affect the employee himself—which is bad enough. Rather, they have ripple effects. “A miserable employee goes home at the end of the day frustrated, cynical, and weary and spreads that frustration, cynicism, and weariness to others—spouses, children, friends, strangers on the bus. Even the most emotionally mature, self-aware people cannot help but let work misery leak into the rest of their lives.”

Thus, it makes sense that we should do whatever we can to make sure we have no miserable jobs at DG, and know how to help reduce job misery in society at large. So we need to know, what makes a job miserable?

The 3 Signs of a Miserable Job

Lencioni argues that there are three characteristics of a miserable job: anonymity, irrelevance, immeasurement.

Anonymity

Anonymity simply means not having someone, usually at least your manager but also peers, who take an interest in you. So anonymity doesn’t mean “not widely known”—that’s not the point. It is when no one at work takes a personal interest in you.

This is the first component of a miserable job because “people cannot be fulfilled in their work if they are not known. All human beings need to be understood and appreciated for their unique qualities by someone in a position of authority….People who see themselves as invisible, generic, or anonymous cannot love their jobs, no matter what they are doing.”[18]

Irrelevance

Irrelevance is when there is no clear indication that your work matters to someone. Once again, the point here is not that it needs to matter to millions of people; it just needs to matter to a few. “Everyone needs to know that their job matters, to someone. Anyone. Without seeing a connection between the work and the satisfaction of another person or group of people, an employee simply will not find lasting fulfillment.”

Immeasurement

Immeasurement is when there is no way to gauge your progress—and do this for yourself. This brings objectivity to evaluating your performance, which is critical because people “cannot be fulfilled in their work if their success depends on the opinions or whims of another person, no matter how benevolent that person may be. Without a tangible [emphasis added] means for assessing success or failure, motivation eventually deteriorates as people see themselves as unable to control their own fate.”[19]

Making Jobs Meaningful

To make jobs meaningful, therefore, we need to make sure that they include three factors:

  1. Non-Anonymity. People must be known, and not seen as invisible, generic, or anonymous.
  2. People must know that their job matters to someone.
  3. People need to be able to gauge your progress and contribution for themselves.

The Benefits of Making Jobs Meaningful

By making sure every job is meaningful, many benefits result.

First, it increases productivity. “Employees who find fulfillment in their jobs are going to work with more enthusiasm, passion, and attention to quality than their counterparts who do not, mostly because they develop a sense of ownership and pride in what they are doing.”[20]

Second, it results in greater retention and lower costs. “Simply stated, employees hang on to fulfilling jobs as long as they can, mostly because they know their chances of finding another are relatively slim. What is more, fulfilled employees tend to attract other good employees to an organization, either by actively recruiting them or merely by telling friends about their enthusiasm for their work. The result of all this for an organization is significantly lower costs related to recruiting, hiring, retraining, and termination.”[21]

Third, it results in sustainable cultural differentiation. “In a world of ubiquitous technology and rapid dissemination of information, it is harder and harder to establish sustainable competitive advantage through strategic and tactical decision making. Cultural differentiation, however, is more valuable than it’s ever been, because it requires courage and discipline more than creativity or intelligence.”[22]

Fourth, it serves people. Managing for job fulfillment is not only beneficial to the organization; rather, it is right in itself because it serves people. This is how we ought to treat people, who are in the image of God. Organizations are not exempt from the Great Commandment. We ought to treat people the way they ought to be treated—the way we would want people to treat us—and that means managing our organizations in a way that seeks to maximize job fulfillment.[23]

4. Job Enrichment

In Treat People Right, Edward Lawler gives a good summary of what researches have found regarding job design.

He writes: “job design greatly influences employee motivation, satisfaction, and performance and ultimately has a powerful influence on organizational effectiveness.”[24] This is because “a great deal of research evidence shows that when jobs are designed to contain high levels of involvement and challenge, the result is high levels of intrinsic motivation and satisfaction.”[25]

The Characteristics of Enriched Jobs

There are three critical characteristics of “enriched jobs”:

  1. The experience of meaningfulness.
  2. The experience of responsibility for outcomes.
  3. Feedback or knowledge of results.

“When all three of these conditions are present in the minds of employees, the work itself can be both motivating and satisfying. However, if any one of these conditions is not present, research suggests that people will not be motivated because they will not experience a connection—or line of sight, as we have called it—between feeling good and performing well.”[26]

Feedback

For example, without feedback, you can’t know if you’ve performed well. There is no line of site between performance and results, which comes close to the definition of futility.

Responsibility

Likewise, without responsibility, you don’t “own” your work. There is one single defining characteristic for responsibility: autonomy. (This is reminiscent of Daniel Pink’s research.) “Autonomy occurs when people feel they can determine their own work methods and procedures without close supervision. Autonomy is what allows people to take responsibility for how well they perform. When freedom and choice are not present, people feel that someone is controlling them so much that they literally disown the results of their own behavior.”[27]

Meaningfulness

And without a meaningful task, “people do not feel that they have done something worthwhile, and so they don’t experience a positive feeling, even if they perform well.”[28] There are three characteristics of meaningfulness: doing a whole or complete piece of work, doing a significant task and the degree to which it requires the use of valued skills.

Most organizations are doing better at the factors of meaningfulness and feedback, but are often fail to give attention to giving more autonomy. It is for this reason that “many job enrichment efforts fail.”[29]

Diminished Jobs: The Thinking of Scientific Management

Much of this is contrary to the school of scientific management, which dominated work design during much of the last century. Scientific management “called for standardized, specialized, simplified, and where possible, machine-paced jobs—all in the name of efficiency, productivity, and low labor costs. People were expected to add little value beyond their manual labor, and thus they could be easily hired, trained, and replaced when needed. To keep people working hard, two carrots were used: financial incentives and the threat of being fired.”[30]

Scientific management stems from a faulty and unbiblical view of human nature. “A key assumption behind the scientific management movement was that in return for a job, people should be willing to behave like machines for eight hours a day.” Some today, in fact, still hold this. For example, in Coaching for Improved Work Performance, Ferdinand Fournies, writes that “people are hired in business to do jobs only because we don’t have a machine that can do those jobs.”[31] Ferdinand also states that the implied agreement between the employer and employee goes something like this:

She: I will do what you tell me to do as long as you pay me with a check that doesn’t bounce.

You: I will tell you what to do, give you some tools to do it with, and try not to dismember you in the process.[32]

What a horrible perspective! I will mention four of the core problems with it. First, it treats people as merely economic beings (note how the economic dimension is represented as the full range and purpose of the agreement: “as long as you pay me with a check that doesn’t bounce”). But people are not only stomachs; they are also resourceful, social, and spiritual. Managing people merely from the economic perspective fails to treat people as whole people. It is a truncated view of people that does not accord with truly treating them as whole persons who are in the image of God.

Second, this perspective doesn’t work. As I discuss in the document (I believe) on compensation, in a society of abundance it simply is not effective to manage with the carrot and stick approach because people’s economic needs are largely satisfied (or can easily be satisfied simply through a different job). People no longer work primarily for a paycheck, but also for the sake of higher level needs such as social relationships, performing at their peak potential, and meaning. If managers ignore these dimensions, they will have no influence.

Third, this perspective is inherently demotivating. This should be clear from what we have seen from our discussion above on motivation. As Pink argued, the three factors of motivation are autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Fournies perspective ignores all of these. He ignores autonomy: the employer says “I will tell you what to do.” He ignores purpose: the arrangement is only about getting paid “with a check that doesn’t bounce.” And he ignores mastery: the arrangement is only about “doing what you tell me” rather than what I am good at.

Now, scientific management was efficient. But that doesn’t mean it is right. We need to be concerned about more than efficiency when dealing with people. Scientific management accomplished its efficiency at the expense of people—and, ironically, the long-term result was actually very inefficient. As Lawler sums up very well:

“[Scientific management’s] use in most large organizations for decades caused low intrinsic motivation on the part of employees, high rates of turnover and absenteeism, and a strong inclination to solve workplace problems through unionization. In response to their mind-numbing repetitious jobs, employees frequently engaged in counterproductive behaviors, such as shoddy-quality work and even sabotage. Poor quality and productivity, along with constant labor-management disputes, were problems that frequently plagued U.S. car makers and for that matter most other U.S. manufacturers for decades. It was these problems that opened the door to foreign competitors.”[33]

5. Principle-Centered Leadership

Treating People as Whole People

Principle-centered leadership, articulated by Stephen Covey, means treating individuals as whole people, rather than simply one-dimensional. In other words, people are not merely economic beings, and so work needs to provide more than just financial incentives. People are also social, talented, and spiritual. And so work must tap into these dimensions as well. Covey writes that there are four basic management paradigms and suggests that “three of them are fundamentally flawed because they are based on false assumptions about the nature of people.”[34]

First, the scientific management paradigm saw people primarily as economic beings. This led to an authoritarian style, because if people are primarily economic, then it follows that the task of the manager is to “motivate them through the great jackass method, the carrot and the stick.”[35] In this view, the manager is in control and is the “elite one” who knows what is best. “I will direct you where to go, and I will do it through the carrot and the stick. Of course, I must be fair with the economic rewards and the benefit package. But it’s all designed to meet the needs of one’s stomach.”[36] The manager is fundamentally seeing themselves as “manipulating an economic reward package in order to get the behavior they want.”

Second, there is the human relations paradigm. This paradigm sees people not only as economic beings, but also social beings. Hence, it seeks to “treat people not only with fairness, but with kindness, courtesy, civility, and decency.” But “the power still lies with the manager—the shift is usually simply from being an authoritarian to being a benevolent authoritarian because we still are the elite few who know what’s best.”[37]

Third, there is the psychological paradigm, which recognizes the economic and social components of people, as well as the need to use one’s talent and grow and contribute creatively to the accomplishment of worthwhile objectives. This paradigm cares about contribution and realizes that “people have minds in addition to stomachs and hearts.” “With this larger understanding of man’s nature, we begin to make better use of their talent, creativity, resourcefulness, ingenuity, and imagination.” In this paradigm, “managers try to create an environment in which people can contribute their full range of talents to the accomplishment of organizational goals.”[38] This paradigm is pretty close, but is not yet reckoning with the all dimensions of human nature.

Fourth is principle-centered leadership. As mentioned above, this means treating people as whole people, which means recognizing that in addition to being economic, social, and resourceful, people are also spiritual. That is, they seek meaning, “a sense of doing something that matters.” It realizes that “people do not want to work for a cause with little meaning, even though it taps their mental capacities to the fullest. There must be purposes that lift them, ennoble them, and bring them to their highest selves.”[39]

On this paradigm, the you manage people through principles. “These principles are the natural laws and governing social values that have characterized every great society, every responsible civilization, over the centuries. They surface in the form of values, ideas, ideals, norms, and teachings that uplift, ennoble, fulfill, empower, and inspire.” The power in this paradigm shifts away from the “elite authoritarian group—however benevolent it may be” with the result that “every person in the organization will feel more empowered.”

Covey expands:

This enlarged view of human nature underscores the need to make work challenging and fulfilling. Principle-centered leaders try to automate routine, boring repetitive tasks and give people a chance to take pride in their jobs. They encourage participation in decision making as well as other important matters. In fact, the more important the decision, the more challenging the problem, the more they attempt to tap the talents of their human resources. They continually seek to expand the areas over which their people could exercise self-direction and self-control as they develop and demonstrate better insight and ability [emphasis added].”[40]

So principle-centered leadership is about empowerment and meaning. Rather than seeking to control people, the manager aims to expand the areas over which people exercise self-direction and self-control. There are certain conditions that make self-direction and freedom more effective for people (and enable it to remain aligned with organizational goals), which Covey calls “the six conditions of empowerment.” These go to the heart of Covey’s thinking on how to manage people as self-governing, holistic, mature individuals who are in the image of God.

The 6 Conditions of Empowerment

Covey’s discussion on the 6 conditions of empowerment provide a helpful summary of his entire approach in a nutshell. He writes:

To motivate people to peak performance, we first must find the areas where organizational needs and goals overlap individual needs, goals, and capabilities. We can then set up win-win agreements. Once these are established, people could govern or supervise themselves in terms of that agreement. We would then serve as sources of help and establish helpful organizational systems within which self-directing, self-controlling individuals could work toward fulfilling the terms of the agreement. Employees would periodically give an accountability for their responsibilities by evaluating themselves against the criteria specified in the win-win agreement.[41]

This paragraph brings out the first four of the six conditions of empowerment, which we will now discuss:

  1. Win-win agreement (which provides the clear expectations and outcomes)
  2. Self-supervision
  3. Helpful structure and systems
  4. Accountability

These four conditions of empowerment are in turn based upon the other two conditions: skills and character.

Win-Win Agreements

The win-win agreement is essentially “a psychological contract between manager and direct report. It represents a clear mutual understanding rand commitment regarding expectations in five areas: desired results, guidelines, resources, accountabilities, and consequences.”[42]

Covey’s approach here is consistent with the principle of autonomy, and is in fact built on it:

These five features of a win-win agreement basically cover what a person needs to understand before undertaking a job. We clarify the desired results, the guidelines to work within, the resources to draw upon, the means of accountability, and the consequences of on-the-job performance. But we do not deal with methods. Win-win is a human resource principle that recognizes that people are capable of self-direction and self-control and can govern themselves to do whatever is necessary within the guidelines to achieve the desired results.[43]

Self-Supervision

Win-win agreements, in turn, enable self-supervision—which is a model of freedom and autonomy (within a structure) rather than command and control. “Once a win-win agreement is established, people can then supervise themselves in terms of that agreement.” What, then, is the role of the manager? “Managers may then serve as sources of help and establish helpful organizational structures and systems upon which self-directing, self-controlling individuals can draw to fulfill the win-win agreement.”[44]

Helpful Structure and Systems

The role of organizational systems is important, as they help “facilitate the fulfillment of win-win agreements.” The systems might include things like “strategic planning, company structure, job design, communication, budgeting, compensation, information, recruitment, selection, placement, training, and development. In a helpful system people receive information about their performance directly, and they use it to make necessary corrections.”

Accountability

Accountability happens through a routine of conversations and quarterly performance reviews. We introduce our process for this below, and then link to the documents that give the more complete details.

Skills and Character

The other two conditions of empowerment are skills and character. “Character is what a person is; skills are what a person can do. These are the human competencies required to establish and maintain the other four. Hence they are really preconditions to the establishment of trusting relationships, win-win agreements, helpful systems, and employee self-supervision and self-evaluation.”

And all of this is based on trust. “In a low-trust culture, it is difficult to establish good win-win agreement or allow self-supervision and evaluation. Instead, there would be a need for control systems and for external supervision and evaluation.”[45]

So trust is at the foundation of everything, and the foundation of trust is trustworthiness.

Our Approach

Everything that we have looked at in the above models is important for how we design and think of jobs at Next. This comes together into an integrated picture for us through mindsets and systems.

Mindsets

For Managers

  • Manage in a way that maximizes autonomy—what to do, when to do it, how to do it.
  • Yet also complement autonomy with accountability for results by making sure that outcomes are clear (while leaving the way to the outcomes up to the employee), providing feedback, and being a source of help.
  • Position your people so that each of them is able to more and more do what they do best every day.
  • Make sure your people always have the tools and equipment they need to do their work right.
  • Praise good work routinely and highlight how it makes a difference.
  • Proactively seek to develop your people in line with their strengths by suggesting training and other opportunities that will add to their strengths, and helping them find the right fit as they look to their next steps.
  • Lead and direct primarily through values and principles rather than rules.
  • Make sure that there are ways for people to count, rank, and measure their own results.

For Employees

  • Focus on your strengths. This means adjust your role if necessary so that you are called upon to do what you do best every day, and when you seek out training do so not mainly to shore up weaknesses, but rather build your strengths further.
  • Supervise yourself in terms of the win-win performance agreement and utilize your manager as a source of help and coach.
  • Do great work and make things happen!

Systems

Mindsets are significant all on their own, but become even more effective when they are also reinforced through specific systems that concretely keep them in motion. Here are some specific systems that embody the above principles and mindsets, with links to the specific documents where we describe them in more detail.

  • Strengths-based hiring. [link]
  • Win-win agreements [link] (job profiles) that are established at the beginning of each hiring relationship or change in job. See the link for components.
  • Quarterly performance planning. [link]
  • Annual strengths interview. [link] (This is just done after someone is initially hired, and then integrated into the first quarterly performance planning meeting for each year after.)
  • Annual career discovery. [link] (This is also integrated into one of the performance planning meetings.)
  • Role tweaking. [link]
  • Organization-wide talent profile. [link]

Notes

[1] See the book First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, pp. 21-49.

[2] See his 3 Signs of a Miserable Job.

[3] There is a role for extrinsic motivation, but it is very secondary. Pink shows how extrinsic motivation often backfires and reduces commitment to a job or task. Further, I’m not interested in using motivational theory to shape people’s behavior; rather, the point is to make sure we aren’t creating conditions that get in the way of what people are naturally motivated to do.

[4] Note that “autonomy” is not identical to “independence.” Autonomy means acting with choice, not being a rugged individualist, like a Cowboy. Hence, Pink points out that “we can be both autonomous and happily interdependent with others” (90).

[5] Pink, p. 88.

[6] These two views on human nature were first articulated best by Douglas McGregor in The Human Side of Enterprise. Note that, while human nature is fallen, the fall has not wiped out the desire to be active and engaged and productive. While the fall wiped out the moral image of God in mankind, it did not totally wipe out the natural image of God. Those who think that people are naturally lazy and wanting to avoid work, and thus need to be controlled, are at odds with the fact that fallen man remains in the image of God. The image of God in man implies not only the principle of respect for the individual, but also recognition that people are full of potential and the ability to achieve. Both of these principles, together, thus imply that the right way to treat people in a workplace is to be continually seeking to increase autonomy rather than seeking to increase control. It is not that “control” is all bad; the issue is what is our default direction and which are we seeking to maximize.

[7] Note also that autonomy is not at odds with accountability. Accountability is critical and, along with autonomy, is necessary for empowerment. An individual who has autonomy but not accountability is not empowered—lack of accountability is de-motivating because it makes it seem as though one’s work doesn’t matter (since no one is seeking to provide accountability, they must not care) and because it undermines the ability to have clear outcomes (with no accountability for outcomes, it begins to become unclear what the expectations really are). Pink elaborates on this well: “Encouraging autonomy doesn’t mean discouraging accountability. Whatever operating system is in place, people must be accountable for their work. But there are different ways to achieve this end, each built on different assumptions about who we are deep down. Motivation 2.0 assumed that if people had freedom, they would shirk—and that autonomy was a way to bypass accountability. Motivation 3.0 begins with a different assumption. It presumes that people want to be accountable—and that making sure they have control over their task, their time, their technique, and their team is a pathway to that destination” (106-107).

[8] The biblical view of people is that, as adults, we are to be mature, wise, and capable of increasing responsibility. We are to be servants, but we are not to need to be closely managed. Our aim, therefore, should not to be to turn people into increasingly compliant individuals who do what they are told but don’t take initiative; rather, it is to act in line with the fact that people are to become increasingly responsible and mature—and thus engaged and taking initiative, not merely following directions.

[9] Pink, 111.

[10] See Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book Flow: The State of Optimal Experience.

[11] Pink, 117.

[12] This is one of Marcus Buckingham’s main points. See his First, Break All the Rules or Now, Discover Your Strengths.

[13] Pink, 134.

[14] Patrick Lencioni, The 3 Signs of a Miserable Job, p. 217.

[15] Likewise, you can have a “bad” job and not be miserable.

[16] Lencioni, p. 217.

[17] Lencioni, 219. Further, this can actually be measured, as Matthew Kelly shows in his book The Dream Manager.

[18] Lencioni, 221.

[19] Lencioni, 222.

[20] Lencioni, 224.

[21] Lencioni, 225.

[22] Lencioni, 225.

[23] Lencioni points out that, ironically, when managers work to reduce these three signs, there is an unexpected side effect that creates a virtuous spiral: “employees themselves begin to take a greater interest in their colleagues, help them find meaning and relevance in their work, and find better ways to gauge their own success, and they do all of this without specific direction from their bosses. In essence, they take some responsibility for keeping the three signs of a miserable job at bay. Ironically, this gives them yet a greater sense of meaning while creating a sustainable cultural advantage that competitors will envy but find difficult to duplicate” (225).

[24] Edward Lawler, Treat People Right, p. 139.

[25] Treat People Right, 139.

[26] Treat People Right, 141.

[27] Treat People Right, 142.

[28] Treat People Right, 140.

[29] Treat People Right, 143.

[30] Treat People Right, 140.

[31] Ferdinand Dournies, Coaching for Improved Work Performance. Fournies is also author of Why Employees Don’t Do What They Should –the title of which alone is a dead give away on his point of view, betraying a perspective of control and compliance rather than autonomy and empowerment.

[32] Coaching for Improved Work Performance, p. 49.

[33] Treat People Right, ” 140.

[34] Stephen Covey, Principle-Centered Leadership, p. 176.

[35] Principle-Centered Leadership, p. 176.

[36] Principle-Centered Leadership, p. 176.

[37] Principle-Centered Leadership, p. 177.

[38] Principle-Centered Leadership, p. 178.

[39] Principle-Centered Leadership, p. 179.

[40] Principle-Centered Leadership, p. 180.

[41] Principle-Centered Leadership, pp. 191-192.

[42] Principle-Centered Leadership, p. 192.

[43] Principle-Centered Leadership, p. 194.

[44] Principle-Centered Leadership, p. 195.

[45] Principle-Centered Leadership, p. 196.

Notes on Motivation

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Stephen Covey writes: “Whether they realize it or not, business leaders are practicing psychologists in the sense that their attempts to motivate people are based on their assumptions of human nature.”[1]

Some of the prior dominant approaches to management were based on faulty views of human nature. Thus, they may have resulted in great efficiency, but at the expense of people.[2] Ultimately, of course, this also hindered productivity because when people are less engaged, they are less effective. But worse, these approaches were against the purpose of management, which is not simply to get things done through others, but to develop people in the accomplishment of tasks.

Thus, Covey suggests, following Lee Iacocca, that “maybe we should study motivation before we set up structure.”[3]

This document brings together some of my notes on motivation. It is not intended as a full article, but just a collection of notes. We will first discuss motivation, and then some suggested practices for motivating on the basis of strengths.

On Motivation

Foundational Realities

What Motivation Is

Motivation is first of all not getting people to do what you want with minimum trouble. That is authority. Our aim is motivation, not control.

It is getting people to act willingly. Because it is in their interest and the organization’s interest.

Things to Recognize

The only motivation that really works is self-motivation. Put people in the position where they will be self-motivated, and remove things that hinder them. Collins stuff here also.

Must know how different people respond. Different people are motivated by different things. Factors of intrinsic motivation: autonomy, mastery, purpose.

If you label someone a loser, they will act like one. If you hold people to high expectations, they will achieve them. “When teachers held high expectations of their students, that alone was enough to cause an increase of 25 points in the students’ IQ scores.”

Must allow for and take advantage of the more emotional side of human nature.

Positive reinforcement from Peters.

Important Theories on Motivation

Maslow

Hierarchy of needs. They are sequential: higher level need doesn’t motivate until levels beneath it satisfied. Satisfied needs don’t motivate. Self-actualization never satisfied, and revised hierarchy later in life to have sixth level: self-transcendence.

  • Level 1: Physiological. Food, water, air, sex etc.
  • Level 2: Safety. Security of body, employment, resources, morality, family, health, property.
  • Level 3: Love/belonging. Friendship, family, sexual intimacy.
  • Level 4: Esteem. Self-esteem, confidence, achievement, respect of others, respect by others.
  • Level 5: Self actualization: Performing at your peak potential. Morality, creativity, spontaneity, problem solving.

Herzberg

Motivators and satisfiers. Satisfiers (hygiene factors) prevent dissatisfaction but do not motivate. Motivators are intrinsic to the work itself: challenge, enjoyment, etc.

McGregor

Theory X and Theory Y. People naturally want to do good work and grow in responsibility.

That Management Seminar

Talked about people as primarily motivated by one of three things: relationships, order, and opportunity to rise.

Christian Hedonism

The ultimate aim everyone has is to maximize their happiness.

Daniel Pink

The three components: Autonomy, mastery, purpose. Bake into job design and culture. Autonomy, primarily from job design and principle of trusting people. Mastery, need to train and direct people towards their strengths. Purpose, from culture—our beliefs, mission, and values. The rest of this document is on the second, mastery, by focusing on strengths.

Buckingham

Motivate by focusing on strengths. As Buckingham points out: Find out what motivates your employees, and try to create an environment that will help them become self-motivated. One of the primary responsibilities of manager is to change the feelings of team members from “have to” to “want to.”

Other Points

Six Reasons Focusing on Weaknesses Doesn’t Motivate

The problems with focusing on weakness, and thinking that anyone can become anything they want if they just fix their areas of non-talent:

  1. It eliminates individuality. If we all can be anything we want to be, then we all have the same potential. And if we all have the same potential, we lose our individuality. “We are not uniquely talented, expressing ourselves through unique goals, unique capabilities, and unique accomplishments. We are all the same. We have no distinct identity, no distinct destiny. We are all blank sheets of canvas, ready, waiting, and willing, but featureless.”
  2. It can’t work. Since our talents are given and we cannot create new ones (we can create new strengths by building on talent, but not new talents—recurring patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior), focusing on turning our nontalents into talents is doomed to failure and will result in a “crushingly frustrating life.” Persistence directed primarily to your nontalents is self-destructive.
  3. The person ends up being characterized by those few areas where he struggles. The person ends up being and feeling defined by those things they don’t do well rather than things they can do well.
  4. This, in turn, harms the relationship. When we know someone else well and try to change them, we imply that we wish they weren’t the way they were. This feels awful and makes the relationship just as demotivating as the focus on our nontalents is weakening. This often proves the undoing of the relationship. Who likes being around people that are always pointing out what they do wrong? “Most often, a bad relationship is one where your partner came to know you very well indeed…and wished you weren’t that way.”
  5. It is demotivating. Working on your nontalents is demotivating because nontalents deplete rather than energize. Talents, on the other hand, are energizing and self-reinforcing. This creates an upward virtuous cycle, whereas focusing on your weaknesses creates a downward vicious cycle, which can in turn spread to other areas by undermining your self-efficacy.
  6. It implies that the person is to blame. Failing to know the difference between talents, knowledge, and skills, and that while skills and knowledge can be acquired, talents cannot, the manager relentlessly points out each employee’s nontalents in the belief that he can fix them and become well-rounded. “You just need to work at it.” The implicit message is that the employee can control the outcome if they just work hard. The responsibility is theirs. And therefore when this doesn’t work, when their nontalents fail to turn in to talents, the finger of blame is pointing at them. “By telling you that you can transform nontalents into talents, these less effective managers are not only setting you up to fail, they are intrinsically blaming you for your inevitable failure. This is perverse.”

Individualize

Individualizing things. Thus, you must individualize autonomy.

Motivate Through Values

Tap the inherent worth of the task and mission of the organization to build intrinsic motivation.

“So much of excellence in performance has to do with people’s being motivated by compelling, simple—even beautiful—values.”[4]

Why contingent rewards reduce motivation

Contingent rewards can destroy intrinsic motivation because they reduce autonomy, which is one of the three core components of motivation.[5] (Note, however, that unexpected, non-contingent rewards do not.)

For the short term, you might increase performance through if-then extrinsic motivators. But in the long-term, you kill it. “Try to encourage a kid to learn  math by paying her for each workbook page she completes—and she’ll almost certainly become more diligent in the short term and lose interest in math in the long term.”[6]

Why traditional management undermines motivation

This has implications not only for rewards, but also our management theory—it is additional evidence that a command-and-control approach to management is bad, for it also reduces autonomy and thus motivation. Consequently, it will tend to result in lower performance in most cases.

It is Not that There is No Place for Extrinsic Rewards

Note that Pink is not arguing for the “basic evil of extrinsic incentives.” He states clearly “that’s just not empirically true.” His point is that “mixing rewards with inherently interesting, creative, or noble tasks—deploying them without understanding the peculiar science of motivation—is a very dangerous game. When used in these situations, ‘if-then’ rewards usually do more harm than good. By neglecting the ingredients of genuine motivation—autonomy, master, and purpose—they limit what each of us can achieve.”[7]

Baseline rewards must be in place:

Of course the starting point for any discussion of motivation in the workplace is a simple fact of life: People have to earn a living. Salary, contract payments, some benefits, a few perks are what I call “baseline rewards.” If someone’s baseline rewards aren’t adequate or equitable, her focus will be on the unfairness of her situation and the anxiety of her circumstance. You’ll get neither the predictability of extrinsic motivation nor the weirdness of intrinsic motivation. You’ll get very little motivation at all.

But once we’re past that threshold, carrots and sticks can achieve precisely the opposite effect of their intended aims. Mechanisms designed to increase motivation can dampen it. Tactics aimed at boosting creativity can reduce it. Programs to promote good deeds can make them disappear. Meanwhile, instead of restraining negative behavior, rewards and punishments can often set it loose—and give rise to cheating, addiction, and dangerously myopic thinking.[8]

Natural Rewards are Not Necessarily Extrinsic Rewards

Lewis’ point on natural connections. Christian hedonism is about motivation. The reward is to be the activity itself and the natural completions of it—deepened learning as the reward of study, satisfied customers as the reward of excellent customer service, or Lewis’ example of marriage as the reward for love.

We should not confuse the natural completions of an activity with extrinsic motivators.

Covey’s four levels

See document on the history of management.

Scientific Management and Motivation

Different management theories assume different theories of motivation. For example, scientific management ran on the assumption that humans are primarily economically motivated. But this of necessity fails to treat us as whole people, because biological and economic urges do not fully account for who we are. As a result, the principles and practice of scientific management are contrary to what it means to be a fully functioning, mature adult. Mature adults operate according to autonomy, for example—that’s part of what it means to be mature. But scientific management operated on a principle of control, which was primarily wielded through extrinsic motivation—rewarding the behavior the managers wanted, and punishing that which they didn’t.

The key point is that people are more than economic beings. They also seek purpose. If people were merely economic beings who dislike work and do so only to put food on the table, then you would need to coax them to work with extrinsic motivation and closely monitor them to make sure it got done. But people aren’t that way. They also seek purpose. We are “intrinsically motivated profit maximizers, not only extrinsically motivated profit maximizers.” And we need to recognize that in the way we manage and structure work. When work is creative and engaging and aligned with a person’s strengths, they don’t need to be directed; they are self-directed. You don’t need to figure out how to motivate people; you just need to ensure that the conditions exist where people are able to do what they are naturally motivated to do, and remove the obstacles that would interfere with this.

Why get paid at all?

Because the economic dimension and need is real. It must be met. It’s just that we are more than that.  

Aren’t Some People Motivated Extrinsically?

Some people are motivated by money and extrinsic factors. This reflects that people are different. But, Pink argues, this facet of people can change—you can move from being primarily extrinsically motivated to being primarily intrinsically motivated. And, being intrinsically motivated is most in line with what it means to be human.

Success Motivates

Believing that you are succeeding is a large cause of continuing success. Peters notes: “The old adage is ‘nothing success like success.’ It turns out to have a sound scientific basis. Researchers studying motivation find that the prime factor is simply the self-perception among motivated subjects that they are in fact doing well.” (58). And he quotes Warren Bennis, who mentions that in one study of teachers, “it turned out that when they held high expectations of their students, that alone was enough to cause an increase of 25% in the students’ IQ scores.” (59).

The Key is Self-Motivation

But the secret is to get people that are already motivated, that are self motivated, to do the things the organization wants. Then make sure that their goals and the organization’s overlap. Then ultimately motivate from principles, values, and meaning.

Remember Maslow here as well. The hierarchy. Self actualization and then self transcendence are the ultimate motivators. Create environments that tap into those levels, then give people the conditions for managing themselves. The manager then becomes a source of help and a coach.

Creating a Culture Where Self-Motivation Can Flourish

Plus Collins four points on creating a culture where self-motivation can flourish, from GTG. Summarized in Drive, 198.

Collins: “Expending energy trying to motivate people is largely a waste of time. If you have the right people on the bus, they will be self-motivated. The real question becomes: How do you manage in such a way as not to de-motivate people?” He gives four practices:

  1. Lead with questions, not answers.
  2. Engage in dialogue and debate, not coercion.
  3. Conduct autopsies, without blame.
  4. Build ‘red flag’ mechanisms. Make it easy for employees and customers to speak up when there is a problem.

Suggested Practices

Casting People

Excellent performance comes when the person’s talents are matched with the role. Hence, “if you want to turn talent into performance, you have to position each person so that you are paying her to do what she is naturally wired to do. You have to cast her in the right role.” (Buckingham, 148).

Excellent managers are deliberate in discovering the strengths of their people. This comes in part through the strengths-based performance planning approach. But they also talk with each individual, “asking about strengths, weaknesses, goals, and dreams.” And they notice things, “taking note of the choices each makes, the way they all interact, who supports who, and why.”

In doing this, it often becomes apparent that some individuals are miscast—they have valuable talents but are not in a position to use them. “By repositioning each in a redesigned role, great manager are able to focus on each person’s strengths and turn talent into performance.”

Managing by Exception

Since everyone is different, it also follows that you need to treat everyone differently. Fairness does not mean treating everyone the same. It means treating everyone in accord with their own unique individuality. Treating everyone the same runs over our uniqueness, and thus fails to honor each person as an individual. That is one of the basic fallacies of the over-standardized, overly detached approach to HR and management that can be so common.

This means that a manager has to learn about each employee’s uniqueness. Know how your people are different, and then treat them as they would like to be treated. The Golden Rule—“do unto others as you would have them do unto you”—doesn’t mean that you assume everyone is like you. Rather, the way that we want people to treat us is to first understand us, and then treat us according to who we are. That is, likewise, how we ought to treat others and how managers ought to treat employees—understand them, and treat them according to their individuality.

Spend the Most Time with the Best People

By default, we tend to spend most of our time with the least productive and less of our time with the most productive. This seems safe and logical—the less productive need help, right? And the most productive are able to handle it on their own, right?

But this is actually contrary to the purpose of management. It assumes that the purpose of management is “to control or to instruct.” If that is at the core of management, then this does make sense—the least productive need more control and instruction.

But, as we’ve seen, the core of the management role is to turn talent into performance. This doesn’t happen primarily by controlling or instructing. It happens by positioning the person in the role such that they can call on their strengths most of the time, crafting a unique set of expectations that aligns with those strengths, and helping each employee understand his or her own unique style so that they can understand better why it works for them and how they can perfect it. And it happens by running interference for each employee so that their talents aren’t covered over by red tap and bureaucracy.

So when a manager spends time with his or her people, he is not primarily coaching and controlling, but rather “setting unique expectations, highlighting and perfecting individual styles, and running interference.” As a result, most time needs to be focused on the employees whose talent is showing the most potential, because talent is the multiplier. “The more energy and attention you invest in it, the greater the yield” (154).

Not Focusing on Your Best Can be Destructive

In fact, by paying the most attention to those who are struggling, you can actually end up altering the behavior of your stars. This is because things that receive less attention tend to die out, and things that receive more attention tend to increase. Thus, your stars may end up “doing less of what made them stars in the first place and more of other kinds of behaviors that might net some kind of reaction from you, good or bad.”

In other words, “no news is never good news. No news kills the very behaviors you want to multiply.” “In practical terms, then, great managers invest in their best because it is extremely productive to do so and actively destructive to do otherwise.”

Investing in Your Best is the Fairest Thing to Do

Buckingham notes:

Each individual might value different kinds of attention, but, to a person, we all hate to be ignored. If love is no the opposite of hate, then surely indifference is the opposite of both. If you spend the most time with your worst performers, then the message you are sending to your employees is that “the better your performance becomes, the less time and attention you will receive from me, your manager.” From any angle, this is an odd message.

Investing in Your Best is the Best Way to Learn

The way to learn about what makes for excellent performance in a role is to watch those who are excellent in that role.

Our default thinking is sometimes that we can learn just as much by looking at those who are underperforming, identify what they are doing that hinders them, and then conclude that excellence means doing the opposite. But that is actually not the case.

Excellence is often not the opposite of bad. It turns out that those who are excellent in a role often share many traits with those who achieve poor performance in a role. The difference is often that those who are excellent in a role do something else that neutralizes those things.

For example, Gallup discovered that poor sales people suffered from call reluctance. So one might think that excellent sales people do not. And that would make a lot of sense. But it turns out that they do. The difference is that the excellent sales people also had the talent of confrontation, which enabled them to overcome their reluctance.

You cannot learn about the distinguishing features of excellence in a role, therefore, by simply studying poor performance and inverting it. Good is not the opposite of bad. The way to learn about excellence is to study excellence.

Investing in Your Best is the Only Way to Reach Excellence

It can be easy to fixate on what is “average” and gauge our expectations by it. The temptation is to compare each employee’s performance to what is average, and then help strugglers to get closer to average and leaving those who are above average to their own devices.

But this will be inherently limiting. Average should not be the bar against we measure performance. Excellence should be. Average is often far, far below what is possible. If we make it the measure, we often sell people short.

In fact, the greatest room for growth is usually in the employees who are already performing above average. And this is another reason why a manager should spend the most time with his best people. “If a manager is preoccupied by the burden of transforming strugglers into survivors by helping them squeak above ‘average,’ he will have little time left for the truly difficult work of guiding the good toward the great.”

Managing Around Weaknesses

Nonperformance will inevitably happen in some roles, and so we need to know how to deal with it. Here is how to handle nonperformance.

Nonperformance is not always the result of a non-talent. There are many factors other than lack of talent in an area where the role needs talent that can lead to nonperformance. These include mechanical causes, personal causes, lack of training, and the manager tripping the wrong trigger. Look to these causes first.

First, there are mechanical causes. This would be when, for example, the employee does not have the right equipment or information to do his job. If an employee is underperforming, first make sure that they have the tools they need.

Second, there are personal causes. They may be struggling with a difficult issue in their personal lives, such as a death in the family or health issues. There isn’t much you can do help solve these, other than being available to listen, but at least you will have an accurate understanding of what is causing the performance problem.

Third, the poor performance may be coming from a lack of training. Remember that strength is the combination of talent, skills, and knowledge. Talent is unchangeable, but skills and knowledge are not. If a person has a talent in an area but insufficient knowledge and skills, helping them get the training that they need can often remedy the situation.

Fourth, poor performance may be coming from the manager tripping the wrong triggers. This stems from the fact that people are motivated differently. So if a manager forgets this, he can easily be tripping the triggers that don’t sync with what actually motivates a person.

So not every performance issue is a talent issue, and the manager’s first responsibility is to investigate external causes such as the above. But if these factors do not seem to be the issue, it may be a talent issue.

Here it is important to distinguish between a nontalent and a weakness. Buckingham writes “A nontalent is a mental wasteland. It is a behavior that always seems to be a struggle. It is a thrill that is never felt. It is an insight recurrently missed.” Most nontalents are harmless. For example, if you have a nontalent for remembering names, but are not in a role that requires you to remember names, the nontalent is not an issue for your performance. All of us have a multitude of nontalents; we are fallen, we are imperfect, and most of all God simply created each of us differently and with different gifts. That is OK, and an eye should not wish it were a hand, and so forth.

A nontalent by itself, then, is not a weakness. “A nontalent becomes a weakness when you find yourself in a role where success depends on your excelling in an area that is a nontalent.” For example, for a server in a restaurant, a nontalent for remembering names is a weakness.

Nontalents by themselves can often be ignored; weaknesses should not be ignored. But what do you do about them? When the weakness is the result of a nontalent, you can’t just fix it—the talent cannot be magically added to the person’s personality. So instead, you have to work around the weakness. There are four main ways.

First, you can devise a support system. Spell check is one of the clearest examples of such a support system. Because of spell check, you don’t have to be great at spelling or proofreading. By using spell check, you can capture most (though not all) of the spelling errors in your document.

Second, you can find a complementary partner. This is the silent secret of some of the most successful, including Bill Gates (who found Paul Allen), Walt Disney (who found his brother, Roy), and Bill Hewlett and David Packard. “Each partnership was effective precisely because where one partner was blunt, the other was sharp. The partnerships were well-rounded, not the individuals.”

The partnering does not have to be formal. For example, if one person in a department is really energized with running reports, and another is not, it makes sense to shift that responsibility from the person that is depleted by it to the person that is energized by it.

“Since few people are a perfect fit for their role, the great manager will always be looking for ways to match up one person’s valleys with another person’s peaks” (171).

Third, you can tweak the role to make it fit the employee’s strengths more effectively. Roles are not rigid and inflexible things. Often, companies value standardized roles. The problem here is that this can easily run over each person’s individuality. It is often easier to change the role than the person. Obviously most roles cannot be changed in simply any way, so there is a limit to how much a role should be changed. But within those parameters, managers and employees should actively seek to tweak roles to call upon the strengths of people in them.

Tying it All Together In a Management Approach

Covey:

To motivate people to peak performance, we first must find the areas where organizational needs and goals overlap individual needs, goals, and capabilities. We can then set up win-win agreements. Once these are established, people could govern or supervise themselves in terms of that agreement. We would then serve as sources of help and establish helpful organizational systems within which self-directing, self-controlling individuals could work toward fulfilling the terms of the agreement. Employees would periodically give an accountability for their responsibilities by evaluating themselves against the criteria specified in the win-win agreement.[9]

Notes

[1] Stephen Covey, Principle-Centered Leadership, p. 190.

[2] See, for example, our discussion of scientific management in the document “Job Design: Every Job Meaningful.”

[3] Principle-Centered Leadership, 191.

[4] In Search of Excellence, 37.

[5] This is based upon analysis of 128 studies; Pink details some of the research behind this in chapter 2.

[6] Pink, 39. Extrinsic rewards can increase performance for algorithmic tasks—“those that depend on following an existing formula to its logical conclusion.” But they decrease performance for tasks that involve creating something new and managing ambiguity, which “demand flexible problem-solving, inventiveness, or conceptual understanding” (46). This is because of how rewards tend to narrow one’s focus. “Rewarded subjects often have a harder time seeing the periphery and crafting original solutions.”

[7] Pink, 49.

[8] Pink, 35.

[9] Principle-Centered Leadership, pp. 191-192.

Person-Based Pay vs. Job-Based Pay

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From Treat People Right!: How Organizations and Employees Can Create a Win/Win Relationship to Achieve High Performance at All Levels:

Financial status and rewards in most organizations are based on the types of jobs people do. This approach is based on the assumption that job worth can be determined and that the person doing the job is worth only as much as the job itself is worth….

It is not clear that the worth of people can be equated with the worth of their job. This approach clearly does not fit with a company that depends on people for its competitive advantage. The alternative that is being increasingly adopted is person-based pay. It bases pay on each individual’s skills and competencies.

Filed Under: HR

What is Budgeting For?

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From Good to Great:

Most answer that budgeting exists to decide how much to apportion to each activity, or to manage costs, or both. From a good to great perspective, both of these answers are wrong. In a good-to-great transformation, budgeting is a discipline to decide which arenas should be fully funded and which should not be funded at all.

In other words, the budget process is not about figuring out how much each activity gets, but about determining which activities best support the hedgehog concept and should be fully strengthened and which should be eliminated entirely.

Creating Autonomy in Routine Jobs

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One of my core management philosophies is that managers should define the ultimate outcomes with their people, but not the specific steps to reach those outcomes. Each employee ought to have the freedom to figure out their own path to the goal.

This solves the “manager’s dilemma” of how to serve the organization while also providing autonomy to the employee’s. The organization is served because employee efforts are directed toward the performance of the organization; at the same time, employees have autonomy because they are able to determine the best way to accomplish those results, based on their own individual preferences, judgment, and talents.

It also serves employees to know the outcomes because it is motivating to know what is expected of you and how it serves the larger picture.

One question I often get about this is: How does this work for jobs that are largely routine? For example, how would this work for a factory worker?

There’s a lot that can be said here, but Tom Morris does a good job of articulating a core part of the answer in If Aristotle Ran General Motors:

A concern for truth should continually play an important role in how we think about our jobs and in the many ways we interact with others in our work. But a concern for beauty should guide us too.

How, you might wonder, can a factory worker be an artist and experience this form of active beauty if he has to perform the same routine motions over and over, all day long? This is part of the reason Jack Stack decided to teach everyone at the Springfield Remanufacturing Company what he began to call “The Great Game of Business.”

Even the factory-floor worker engaged in repetitive acts of assembly can play the game of business, using his mind to devise more efficient processes and motions, connecting his specific job with the big picture of what’s going on in the overall company life.

He may be able to see things no one else can see and make suggestions for beautiful improvements no one else could make. He alone may be in a position to create an elegant solution to a problem that no one else can solve, or even notice.

We need to encourage the people who work around us to think of their jobs in this way, no matter what their jobs might be. Everyone can be a performance artist and an important player in the great game of business.

The Purpose of Budgeting

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From Good to Great on the purpose of budgeting in an organization — with implications for your personal budgeting as well:

What is the purpose of budgeting? Most answer that budgeting exists to decide how much to apportion to each activity, or to manage costs, or both. From a good-to-great perspective, both of these answers are wrong.

In a good-to-great transformation, budgeting is a discipline to decide which arenas should be fully funded and which should not be funded at all.

In other words, the budget process is not about figuring out how much each activity gets, but about determining which activities best support the Hedgehog Concept and should be fully strengthened and which should be eliminated entirely.

The point is: we shouldn’t have a mentality of doing “some of everything.” This will distract from doing what is most important. You need to do the right things, and the corollary of that is to stop doing the wrong things. Budgeting is a discipline for making those determinations.

Don’t skimp on what is most important because you need to make room for all sorts of other things, spreading yourself thin. Don’t think that there is virtue in only partially funding things, as though it makes you look more frugal. Instead, fully fund the right things, and in order to make room for that don’t fund at all the wrong things.

And this requires the disciplined thought to identify what the right things are, and what the wrong things are.