Motivational Mapping

The art of establishing Employee Engagement has been a Slow Train Coming.....

We've adopted buzzwords and put others to bed. We've seen technology impact frequency and pats on the back are now covered with a strategic glove. Things don't change with rapid pace but the more we investigate the more we tend to find one common denominator to organizational excellence:

COMMON SENSE

Today, we will examine your employees personality types and design an all-encompassing engagement strategy. It may just be the last blog post on #EmployeeEngagement that you will ever have to read.

The Behavioral Science of Intrinsic Motivation will tell you that your employees inhabit one of the following Professional Personas:

1. The Controller - one who seeks the autonomy to control their own success (without political interference).
2.  The Test Taker - one who wishes to measure personal development through certification and/or training.
3. The Difference Maker - one who seeks a greater purpose in their work.
4. The Achiever - one who wishes to elevate through results.
5. The Socialite - one who seeks a social connection at work.

Historically, an organization would cast an employee to fit one of the above behavioral characteristics through job description. But, things are not longer that simple. Many employees now view competition in tandem with collaboration. Climbing the ladder no longer happens at the expense of another. Everyone seeks knowledge for the sake of making the organization better, but reciprocity is a reality.

Providing a scale for talent development means you take a path to success and cut it in 5. Now, one's ability to accelerate within your organization takes on a multi-perspective landscape where there was once only a straight line.

The Questions Surface:

• How can we measure cultural impact?
• Does certification ensure development?
• Does community development improve loyalty?
• Is compensation more important than benefits?
• Does socializing with co-workers actually improve workplace engagement?

Ask a priest to prove to you that there is a god and you'll likely hear:

When You Believe There Is No Need For Proof

Such a response does not satisfy the non-believer. In a similar vein, there are those who do not believe that rewarding someone for "doing their job" should be an extended benefit. Fortunately, we've arrived in a time where almost everything can be measured.

Be A Coffee Bean

Life is a boiling pot of water. Employees can be:
- a carrot
- an egg
- a coffee bean

The carrot gets soft when over-exposed to boiling water.

The egg hardens

But, the coffee bean resonates within the water and turns a bland liquid into a life-altering beverage.

Any person has the ability to completely transform their environment. Most, however, react to the very human workplace by allowing it to squash them or by rendering themselves indifferent to any and all opportunities for development.

A Learning Experience

"When you are willing to say you don't know the answer the only path is to learning"
- Laird Hamilton

Organizations tend to view training as a necessary means to disseminate content for the sake of appeasing a requirement. For this reason, many organizations archive content in learning management systems without a path for advancement or a higher purpose in the learning process. You can develop a thousand courses but if employees cannot access them or do not understand why they matter..... your archives will gather dust.

Have Your Cake.... and eat it too

Most organizations have a regimented Total Rewards model that informs an employee of the benefits of their job and how to maximize their income. Again, we create a checklist where there should be a graphic novel.

Insurance and a paycheck are an expectation, not a motivator.

Every one of your employees wants a path to engagement....

through controlling their own destiny with the opportunity to learn every day in a place where their efforts might just change the world.           

Don't Forget to Remember,

Dave

Intrepreneurship

As one who has dedicated the better part of his life to finding the Holy Grail of Employee Engagement, I am consistently in the trenches trying to find what works and what needs to change. This requires 4am conference calls with other regions of the world, speaking at and attending conferences of various disciplines and driving technical deployments that are massively complex in scale. Every day presents new challenges, every organization wants something different and no concept seems impossible to bring to reality.

The studies that promote global employee dissatisfaction are flawed. The method for research is outdated and the means by which information is collected/benchmarked are disingenuous.

Those of us who have conversations with corporate business leaders and those who serve them every day have developed solutions for gaps in performance, but it all remains based in the Human condition:

People want to work for a cause they believe in
People want to believe that their effort makes a difference
People are no longer willing to be bullied into keeping a job

With the above in mind, I proposed a road map for building an organization's Employee Value Proposition to a group of Human Resource professionals earlier this week. To my shock, one workshop attendee stood up and said:

We are willing to train our employees but only to the extent of their job requirement. If they learn anything more, they will leave.

... This is an extremely misguided construct that (unfortunately) was not unanimously disputed.     

We live in a time when individual employee brands are stronger than those of the organizations for which they work. In the gig economy, employees of all ages are finding comfort in short term employment and are willing to adjust their lifestyles accordingly. Respect for tradition is rampant, obedience to authoritarianism will not be tolerated.

Seeing a member of a major technology company's sales enablement team emphasize the concept of Intrepreneurship to our workforce last week made all the sense in the world. She focused on the following as a means for employee development:

1. Co-Creation
2. Mastery
3. Leadership
4. Competition

This format for employee development hits the scale of intrinsic motivators. Is it disappointing that this came from a Sales Enablement Leader and not from HR?

The alpha-male constructed rules for advancement are dead. Micro-management is over. Competition has taken a backseat to collaboration. Idea generation is now social and no longer confined to silos.

In short, people who do great work, climb! Politics are no longer an excuse for promotion...and we have all-accessible data to validate the climb!

As organizations, we are called upon to provide learning and advancement opportunities for employees at all levels. Advancement applicable to core-job-function, and beyond that, soft skill enhancements for the sake of Culture Building and Leadership Development.

Employees now have the opportunity to:

• Contribute to organizational development (regardless of their pecking order).
• Master the core-function of their given position at their own pace.
• The ability to develop as a professional beyond the control of their manager.
• To be promoted by the pure virtue of their effort, creativity and degree of collaboration.

It's here. The time is now. Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way!

Don't Forget to Remember,

Dave   
      

The Lucky Ones

"The difference between a good poet and a bad one is luck" - Charles Bukowski

The climb to success has peaks and valleys. There are points when we over-exert ourselves only to run into walls, other times things just seem to fall into place. There are times when our faith is tested prompting us to take action as a means to control our fate. Some times we push too hard. Some times we lose sight of what is important.

I've been writing a personal motivation blog for over a decade, but I don't consider myself to have an insight specific to others. I've also been very lucky. Some of us are born with opportunities, others have to earn them.

Having faith is often a blind turn. Don't be afraid to allow room for luck. Faith is a process of submission and there are those who do not like to relinquish control. Somewhere between mastery and failure, a little bit of luck never hurts.

In each day our willingness to fail can be built as much by our ability to heal as it is our pure skill. Self-confidence is as much an affect of experiencing the worst as it is achieving our personal best.

We can train and prepare and anticipate and adjust. The ever-slight bounce in our direction should be cherished. If we acknowledge that there is luck in everything, it makes our failures more digestible. There will be days when someone is just better than you, but you will catch up to them. It might take 10 days or 10 years but the playing field always levels.

The greatest hits are a centimeter away from a strike. Some people barley catch passes and others nearly miss them. There is the big throw that was an inch too high and the shot that bounced twice and missed. Luck has it's place in everything.

You'll win some and lose some. There will be moments after you made the winning play when you find a corner to breath a sigh of relief. There will be times when you believe you have let everyone down, when in fact, you have lifted them up. Some times those who show heart win a thousand little wars without winning the battle. Some times the loser gains ground on the winner. If winning only brings you relief you may be playing the game for the wrong reasons.

Chasing luck is a fools game. Seizing the opportunity given you turns the lucky into the superior skilled.

Don't Forget to Remember,

Dave