Motivation 3.0 (Fortnightly Blog on “Developing Leaders’) ***************************************************************** One of the biggest challenges for managers in the current scenario is to keep high performing teams and employees motivated. If the high potentials are not motivated enough, then the risk for the organization is comparatively higher as they might opt to leave the organization or get disengaged within the teams. Motivation 1.0 and Motivation 2.0 no longer works for this category of employees. What is Motivation 1.0: Motivation 1.0 talks about how secured is the job, satisfactory compensation and a decent role fit. This version of motivation is already outdated since a platter of opportunities exists in today’s world. What is Motivation 2.0? This is the most widely used version of motivation by majority of Corporates. If the employee performs more than the expectation, they get highly rewarded. The reward could be sending on site for a high potential program, additional perks, stock option plans, a considerable above average pay hike and fast track promotions. But Organizations fail to understand that the ‘Carrot & Stick’ approach of motivation is slowly getting outdated. The fact is that the high potentials are able to understand these extrinsic motivators come with an expiry date and an ‘If – then’ clause, “If you perform very well, you will be highly rewarded”. What is Motivation 3.0? In 1995, there was a discussion with economists on creating two encyclopaedias. The first was from Microsoft where they pay professional writers to create the content. The second encyclopaedia was created by ten thousands of people who are willing to write, edit articles for fun and learning without even being paid a penny. The encyclopaedia created by Microsoft was MSN Encarta and the other was Wikipedia and the later created a history. Motivation 3.0 perspective is all about to learn, to create and better the world. It instils the effectiveness of autonomy, engagement and clarity of purpose at work and with teams. It details ‘Growth’ as wider contribution and higher responsibility than mere titles or designations. Some of the Motivation 3.0 techniques are: a) 85:15 model: Employees spend 85% of their time working on assigned tasks or projects and spend 15% of their remaining work time on altogether different project of their interest which directly or indirectly contributes to the organization’s growth. 3M’s ‘POST-IT’ was the invention of Scientist Art Fry when working on one such project b) Make the teams uncomfortable: Many managers are happy making the team comfortable. But the highest motivation comes when the team is under right pressure. The highest level of motivation happens when teams are made uncomfortable with the right amount of stretch and high level of support encouraging them to push beyond limits and achieve high sense of achievement. c) Empowerment Audit: Organizations always assume that there is right empowerment and engagement within the teams but fail to validate those with facts. Validate such assumptions by running ‘Empowerment Audit’ (survey) to understand the right feedback from the employees. d) 80:20 Goal Setting: Bring a change to the routine goal setting process using 80:20 rules. 80% goals cascades from Organizations whereas the remaining 20% comes from Employees. Involve and empower them to set and achieve their own goals e) ‘Thank you’ card : Send a ‘Thank you’ card to the employee’s close family (spouse/parents) thanking them for supporting the employees towards their contribution for the Organization. f) Mentor/Coach: Assign a coach/mentor to help them think big. g) Contributors: Help them to become contributors instead of consumers. The high potentials should start contributing towards organizational growth in addition to the growth of their teams. h) ‘Gift’: The best gift is helping them to learn more. Gift them a very valuable training program that could help them reach the next level. Will these techniques apply only to high potential employees? The answer is ‘No’. These work for all employees because all employees in Organizations have high potential. Most of the times, these potentials are left undiscovered. If managers can work on helping each employee discover their true potential and build on those, the Organization will soon become a high potential organization. “If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it is stupid”
Posted on: Sun, 02 Nov 2014 16:31:51 +0000
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