Coach's Corner
Motivating Employees -
Is Money The Only Answer?
by Rick Wallace |
| Of all the pains and issues I hear from small business owners - "people" seems to be the most common. Everything and anything to do with "people". Let's face it - "The Right People" is the cornerstone of the trilogy - Right People, Doing the Right Things, Right.
The topic of motivating people came up several times this week. Two clients brought it up and I saw an article in Business First about it. That article reminded me of Dan Pink and his study of the subject.
First of all everyone should be fairly compensated for what they do. Once that is out of the way then we can talk about "Money" as extra compensation tied to performance, commissions, bonuses, etc.
In short, science has proven time and again that:
- "Money" is important and effective when the task is mechanical and/or a set process.
- That "Money" is actually a detriment to performance for tasks that require creativity and thought
Yes that is what I said - Money is actually a detriment - study after study show it decreases performance for creative activities!!!
For these tasks the following 3 things are key to motivation and increased performance:
- Autonomy - establish goals, make people accountable, and firm up agreements then let them go do their job without looking over their shoulder
- Mastery of their jobs - they feel good about their capabilities
- Purpose - serving a purpose above themselves and the company
These three things are cornerstones of the Strategic Planning Process and the Leadership Matrix my clients are implementing into their companies ( click here for my slideshow Lack of Execution - The Bane of Business). Small monetary bonuses and celebrations are ok, but without the three things above, money alone, will not, over time, keep your key people motivated. The following is a quote from a client on the subject. Money is there, but also notice the fact the team is setting goals, deciding what actions and projects to focus on next quarter and meeting and using dashboards to ensure they are staying focused on execution. It is fun!!!! "It really works - we set three key goals for Q2 - revenue, inventory shrinkage and A/R and we made them all. I split the $ improvement we made in inventory shrinkage equally with the whole team, we have a steak dinner planned for the A/R achievement and everyone gets a $500 bonus for the meeting the Revenue target. We meet next week and I will ask the team "what do we want to work on this quarter". We will get it in our dashboards, start our weekly meetings and go. One person told me "that this is really fun" and one of my top salespeople said "we are all working as a team. In the past some people seemed to resent it when I sold a lot, this quarter they were supporting me. Everyone feels like a team". Here is the video from Dan Pink. It is 18 minutes I promise you will enjoy and learn something very important about "People". |
