Tag Archives: how to motivate people

motivation, Performance Management

How Do You Motivate People to Improve Their Performance?

motivation

Concluding our series on performance management, today’s focus shares input from our Partners in Improvement on how to motivate people to improve their performance.

During our discussion, some focused on the individual quantitative measurements to focus and motivate individuals on achieving important goals. For example, tying individual goals to the organization’s KPIs was cited as an effective way to align behaviors with goals and make sure everyone knows exactly what they are expected to do.

Other Partners said that group rewards and recognitions were more effective than individual metrics. For example, one Partner described how teamwork deteriorated to the detriment of the organization as a whole after his organization switched to individual metrics and rewards instead of rewarding everyone based on achievement of the company’s key strategic metrics.

We also discussed experience with financial rewards relative to intrinsic rewards, such as recognition.

Financial rewards did not necessarily produce the best results. One participant explicitly pays people for participating on improvement teams in some of their plants while one of their Midwestern plants is prohibited from paying for participation. The Midwestern plant relies on intangible rewards such as recognition and expressions of “thanks.”

Surprising to many, the Midwestern plant had a much higher rate of participation than the others, seeming to demonstrate that intangible or ‘intrinsic’ rewards can be more effective than monetary rewards.

Another organization found recognition, sometimes coupled with small gift cards, was an effective method for their organization.

The keys to effective use of recognition as a motivational method are timeliness and making the recognition public. This is no time to keep your appreciation under a barrel. One successful program is called ‘Six Star’: people award one another stars for helping an internal or external customer. When someone gets 6 stars, they get a gift card and the ‘star of the month’ gets a party, recognition, and a parking space

Conclusions:
While there are clearly a wide range of views about how to manage and motivate performance, several final conclusions generated quite a bit of support:

  • Performance Management must be about much more than individual performance measurement. As Deming said, over 90% of problems are caused by the system not the person. To manage performance, we must manage the system by which people, plant, process interact to produce results.
  • Frequent observation and feedback is more helpful to people than formal annual reviews.
  • Frequent communication about what an organization needs and wants greatly increases the odds that the organization will get what they need and want.
  • Group rewards encourage teamwork, while individual rewards encourage an individual to optimize his or her own goals even if it may sub-optimize the organization as a whole.
  • Tying money directly to performance appraisal can be a two-edged sword – raising stress and reducing the intrinsic rewards and personal satisfaction from doing a good job for the team.
  • Avoid managing performance through the rear view mirror – be proactive!
  • Make more of the goal setting process which produces targets against which we measure performance and take corrective action.
Continuous Improvement, Culture building, Engagement, Workforce Engagement

Engagement, Motivation & Work

Enterprise engagement has been a frequently-addressed topic in this blog, and a recent post shared some of our Partners in Improvement group’s thoughts on an important element of an engagement strategy — rewards and recognition.

In that post, several points were made about being careful with the use of extrinsic, or monetary rewards as motivators.

To add some additional perspective,  the Enterprise Engagement Alliance shared information from a past New York Times column “The Secret of Effective Motivation,” in which authors Amy Wrzesniewski, Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Yale School of Management, and Barry Schwartz, Professor of Psychology at Swarthmore College, suggest that the most effective type of motivation in terms of actual long-term results is action based on an internal motive — that is, “the pleasure derived from the activity and results themselves rather than from an instrumental motive such as the desire for fame or money.”

“Helping people focus on the meaning and impact of their work, rather than on, say, the financial returns it will bring, may be the best way to improve not only the quality of their work but also… their financial success,” the article states.

This viewpoint is well-aligned with our “Engagement Around the Work” approach, which involves specific steps for achieving a
culture of engagement that is linked with team productivity, performance, and job satisfaction.

This approach incorporates a clear objective of engaging people around the one thing they all have in common—and the one thing that can bring about increased profitability and a sustainable competitive edge—the work.

As Bill Conway often said, “It’s all about the work!”

Read “Engagement Around the Work” white paper.

Continuous Improvement, Engagement, Performance Management, Rewards and Recognition

Rewards & Recognition Best Practices

Recent posts have focused on “rewards and recognition,” a crucial component of enterprise engagement.

We shared a range of perspectives based on discussions with our Partners in Improvement groups, who agreed that these programs are typically designed to achieve one of three objectives:

  • increased commitment
  • increased desired behavior or motivation
  • increased measurable results

Based on their collective experience the Partners identified the following eight criteria or best practices for an effective rewards and recognition program:

  1. Keep it simple: The most cost effective method of all seemed to be the simple thank you note. The notes, if done well, are widely appreciated and cost nothing more than the time and attention to set up a system of information when an individual or team deserved a thank you.
  2. Be very careful about extrinsic rewards: these can cause more trouble than benefits. Extrinsic rewards require very clear metrics, auditing, and careful, even elaborate design to ensure a focus on the rewarded metrics will not lead to deterioration of other facets of the organization. Obviously, this makes it hard to ‘keep it simple.’
  3. Be specific: it is much more effective to recognize a team or a person for a specific result or accomplishment than for generally doing a good job.
  4. Be timely: the closer in time the reward or recognition is to the accomplishment being recognized, the more impactful it will be.
  5. Be consistent: Be sure that you respond to comparable accomplishments in comparable ways.
  6. Be authentic: Sincerity in words of appreciation and praise are essential to an effective system of reward and recognition.
  7. Communicate widely: Publicity helps extend the celebration and communicates widely what is valued by the organization.
  8. Use team rewards to encourage better organization-wide results.
Developing People, Engagement, Rewards and Recognition

Rewards & Recognition Part 3: Comparisons

As discussed in our previous two posts, “Rewards & Recognition” programs can vary in a many ways.

For example some are very inexpensive to run, and others are costly; some are geared toward recognizing individuals, while others focus on rewarding teams.

Similarly, the reasons for implementing a program can differ a great deal, depending upon an organization’s situation and objectives; and as our Partners in Improvement groups discussed, the outcomes — both intended and otherwise — can also vary.

During our Partners’ discussions three distinct types of programs were compared:

  1. “After-the-Fact” rewards vs. “Defined Benefit” awards:
    Some organizations conduct recognition and reward programs that are designed to ‘catch people’ doing the right things, such as a “caught in the act” program that recognizes individuals by posting a card describing their accomplishments on a wall in the lunch room, or a “Bravo” program for peer-to-peer recognition, where recipients are awarded small gifts — in the $5-10 range.  These systems are designed to encourage certain behaviors and accomplishments — but an individual may or may not
    be one of the lucky ones ‘caught.’ Not every worthy act is rewarded, but the belief is that the program reinforces the
    desired behavior overall.

    Alternatively, some awards are planned in advance, such as an organization that gives one day off to everyone after every 250,000 hours without a lost time accident, or another program that promised a raise to all employees if first pass yield metrics were achieved.  Along the same lines, one organization implemented a partially-defined reward: the reward was defined, the criteria were defined, but there would be only one winner and the identity of that winner would remain uncertain until the end. This prize, in this case, was a one year lease on a BMW for the manager with the best results. The success of this program depended on being well-hyped in advance so that every manager improves his or her results in order to try to win. However, the size of the prize being so significant caused some dissatisfaction among some of the managers who didn’t win.

    Conclusions: both the individual and team concepts are effective. If a “one winner” approach is taken it is best to keep the value of the single award on the lower-end as opposed to awarding one “big” prize such as the above-referenced car lease.

  2. Team Awards vs. Individual Rewards:
    The primary advantage of individual recognition is the precision of being able to reward and recognize a person who best exemplifies the behavior that the organization wants to encourage.  Consider that, on any team, there are bound to be stronger and weaker contributors. The weaker contributors on a strong team are, perhaps, unfairly recognized for contributions they may not have made. Furthermore, the stronger contributors to a weak team are unfairly under-recognized and may become less motivated.  Individual rewards and recognition enable organizations to reward the people they believe most deserve it.

    However, often the success of an operational or project team as a whole is far more important to an organization’s success than the actions of individuals. Recognizing operational teams as well as temporary teams for their contributions encourages effective teamwork, helping one another to get further faster. It takes a mix of talents and personalities to build an effective team and while a team may have one or two stars, the success may also be due to the down-to-earth individual who keeps the group focused or the individual with the easy personality that defuses tensions and egos in order to keep the group working effectively.  Our research into employee engagement suggests that being viewed as an important member of a team is also very motivating. Indeed, in Daniel Pink’s book Drive, The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, he describes the pleasure people receive from being part of something bigger: a team, a movement, a purpose.

    Conclusions: While the benefits associated with individual rewards were recognized, the vast majority of our Partners expressed strong support for the benefits of team rewards and recognition.

  3. Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Rewards:
    Intrinsic rewards are those that strive to produce a sense of appreciation, belonging, satisfaction or contributing to a higher purpose. Some rewards are free, such as a thank you note, a parking space, or putting a person or team’s picture in the newsletter. Some intrinsic rewards may cost the giver something,
    such as buying a team lunch, giving everyone a day off, and making a contribution to a charity of the person or team’s choice, but these rewards are non-monetary and are not designed to appeal to a person’s acquisitiveness. Rather they emphasize the organization’s appreciation for a person or team’s contribution.

    By contrast, monetary rewards have a simple and clear cash value for the recipient. For example, a grocery chain gives $50 to any individual accumulating six ‘stars’ which are awarded by coworkers or customers to recognize exceptional service. The main advantage of monetary rewards is that, whether the amount is large or small, public or private, before or after
    the fact, one can expect that all recipients will value the reward because the recipient can spend it however they choose.

    Conclusions: While appreciating the clear nature of extrinsic rewards, nearly all of our Partners had a cautionary tale about unintended consequences; and the bigger the reward, the bigger the problems. Unlike rewards aimed at intrinsic motivation, the problem with extrinsic rewards was not that they might fail to influence the recipients, but rather that the outcomes were often entirely different than intended. For example, the organizations that implemented large monetary rewards, such as the BMW lease, found they attracted attention and inspired avarice as intended. Many people really wanted to win them. In fact, a good many people felt they deserved to win them. The unintended results included resentment, accusations of unfairness, and powerful disincentives for people to help one another to raise the overall performance of the organization. Team morale took a serious hit as well.  As one of the Partners put it, “An extrinsic reward seems to create 1 winner and 99 losers.”

Ultimately, our Partners agreed upon a list of best practices, which we will share in our next post.

Engagement, Performance Management, Rewards and Recognition

Rewards & Recognition – Part 1: Variation

We recently attended the “Engagement World” expo in Galveston, Texas, at which all aspects of enterprise engagement were discussed including ISO 10018 and  standardized engagement plans.

Simply stated, to be truly effective, an engagement plan must contain certain elements, including a method for rewarding and recognizing  desired behaviors and outcomes.

This fact was spelled-out in a prior post, noting that Rewards & Recognition is an important component of a comprehensive engagement plan. In addition, our Partners in Improvement discussed this fact, and shared some interesting insights regarding various ways of recognizing and rewarding people, and the variation in results.

For example,  some, like a service award, are very predictable; if you reach an anniversary, you are likely to receive one. But many other recognition programs include an element of surprise when exceptional service is spotted.

Some rewards cost the organization little or nothing — such as a thank you note or a special parking place. Others are quite costly, such as a one year lease on a car, or an upscale ‘President’s Award.’

Some are for teams, and others are for individuals. Many of the rewards and recognition are after the fact, while some are announced and hyped in advance in order to encourage people to try for them.

The amazing variety allowed us to explore the benefits and unexpected drawbacks of the different types of rewards and recognition. But despite the variety of implementations, the objectives were really quite simple. An organization implements a reward and recognition program for one of these three reasons:

  1. To increase the recipient’s satisfaction and happiness with the organization and his or her role within it
  2. To motivate continuation of certain types of behaviors and accomplishments
  3. To motivate people to work to achieve certain measurable results

We’ll take a closer look at these differing approaches in our next few posts, and share some surprising data points regarding outcomes and predictability.