A simple way to assess motivation preferences
March 18, 2010
My son likes to challenge me to battles on MarioKart Wii. While the main game is the traditional car race, there are also two options for battles:
Balloons: Each player starts with 3 balloons attached to their cars. The goal of the battle is to protect your balloons from being popped while trying to pop as many balloons as possible on the opposing team.
Coins: Each player starts without coins. The goal of the coin battle is to collect as many coins as possible.
It turns out I detest the balloon battle option. I started thinking about why this is the case, and determined it is a matter of personal motivation preference. The goal of gaining points by reducing the other team’s number of balloons does not appeal to me at all. In contrast, seeing the number of coins I’ve collected and making the number go up up up is much more motivating to me.
The same is not true of everyone; my son on the other hand, prefers the balloon battle. He likes to watch the balloons pop.
We can expand the learning outside of MarioKart Wii. Understanding what games someone enjoys can tell you a lot about their motivation preferences. Among my favorites are Trivial Pursuit, Clue, Blokus, Jeopardy, and Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Clearly, if you want to motivate me, find ways to let me show you how smart I am and challenge me with a puzzle to solve. The conclusion might be different for someone who enjoyed playing Scrabble and watching Wheel of Fortune.
Consider the board games, video games, game shows and sports that you like to play and watch. What do they say about your motivation preferences? Do you like to win, or beat your own high score? Do you prefer to play solo, or would you rather play a team sport? Do you like to take risks? Would you rather play for fun or for the challenge of it?
Perhaps organizations should have game closets to assess what types of achievements fuel their employees.
Based on your favorite games, what are your motivation preferences?
Overcome resistance with fancy purple shoes
January 28, 2010
My almost-2-year-old daughter is obsessed with shoes. She will just sit in our shoe corner and try on everyone’s shoes and walk around in them for fun. Her favorite ones, though, are her own pink shiny ones.
The trouble started when inevitably, her favorite pink shoes became too small – or rather her feet grew too large. I took her to the store to pick out some new ones. She chose the purple ones with flowers on them.
Given her love of shoes, I was surprised when she refused to wear them. Even though she had picked them out, she would run away whenever we even picked them up. If we were able to put them on, she would immediately pull them off her feet and toss them as far as she could. She would then scurry around to find her shiny pink shoes that by now were scrunching her toes.
This morning we hid the pink shoes. I fully expected the morning to end with tears and a barefoot daughter on the way to school.
Then her Daddy had a stroke of genius. “Let’s put on your FANCY shoes!” he said.
Every night at bedtime my daughter insists that we read Fancy Nancy, a story about a girl who enhances everything she wears and owns with accessories. It’s a fairly long book for someone who’s not quite two, but she follows along with the story intently.
Catching on to his idea, I pointed out how the flowers made her new shoes fancy, like Nancy’s.
With a little bit of a struggle (but not the usual all-out wrestling match), she let him put them on. And then they stayed on her feet.
Tonight, before leaving for dinner, she fussed a bit when he tried to put her shoes on again. This time, it was because she wanted to put them on by herself.
When faced with resistance, how might you make the change “fancy?”
Got hope?
December 18, 2009
A common thread between change agents seems to be hope.
Considering all the challenges they face, that might seem ironic. But, perhaps hope is the only reason to keep pushing the boulder up the hill, even when it doesn’t seem to be budging.
Hope that the organization has the potential to be better.
The belief that we can bring more meaning to the enterprise.
Knowing that financial success and doing well at the “soft stuff” are not mutually exclusive.
The belief that it’s possible to engage a large group in a collective purpose.
Hope that there is something good on the other side of the hill.
…And that there is truly another side to get to.
…And that it is possible to get there.
When the going gets rough, sometimes all a change agent has is hope, and their willingness to take action toward it.
After all, no one ever moves forward from a place of futility.
What is your hope?
How to get Beyond Leadership Buy-in
August 4, 2009
It almost goes without saying that an organizational change initiative without proper levels of leadership support is doomed to fail. Perhaps the project will be paid lip service, but it will ultimately either be ignored into oblivion or cut short of its potential with one drop of the axe.
Not only do organizational leaders have the power to make or break your project on their own, but it is impossible to bypass them to change the organization below. Individuals experiencing change will look to those in power for confirmation that they are committed to the new way of doing things. It is under intense scrutiny that leaders are watched to see if their actions match their intentions. If not, the change initiative will be dismissed as “flavor of the month” and not taken seriously.
Amid all this doom and gloom, there is a bright side. You don’t have to settle for the level of leadership support you currently have. As fellow human beings, leaders are capable of being informed and influenced.
Take the following steps to determine how to best garner the support of the most influential people in your organization. Read more
There’s nothing you’d rather be doing
May 24, 2009
Many years ago, I took a negotiations class as part of my MBA program. One nice Saturday morning at 9:00 am, the professor started class with the question, “How many of you would rather be somewhere else?”
Many people, including myself, raised their hands sheepishly, but were willing to play along. The professor asked a few of us to say where we would rather be. (I said home in bed. I did not have kids yet, and sleeping in was still an option.) He went around the room and collected responses on the whiteboard.
Then he told us we were all wrong! That if we would rather be somewhere else, then that is where we would be. Our priorities, preferences and motivations were reflected in our choice to get up and go to class that morning. If I would really rather be sleeping in, then I would still be in bed. But instead, my priority of learning how to negotiate, or my motivation to get a good grade in the class made me choose to set the alarm in the morning and drive an hour to get to the class in downtown Chicago. The fact that I was there proved that I would rather be in class than in bed sleeping. Whoa!
Ultimately, what we choose to do is a reflection of our real priorities, our actual preferences, and our true motivations. It’s not what we would rather do, or what is on our to-do list, or what we say we want.
Obviously, this lesson struck a chord, since I remember it 7 years later. Every now and then I remember that morning and ask myself: What does my current activity say about my priorities? Why is it that I choose to do this and not something else that might better reflect my values and goals? As you can imagine, this thought usually arises when I’m procrastinating or avoiding taking action or making a decision. Taking a look at how you spend your time through this lens can be eye-opening and push you toward taking a step in the right direction.
Taking this lesson to its logical conclusion then, there is nothing that you would rather be doing than reading this blog post. If there were something that better fit with your true priorities, preferences and motivations in this moment, you would be doing that instead.
So, now that you’re done reading, let me ask this:
What will you do next?
Fair vs Equal: Two views of incentives
May 3, 2009
During my Beyond Buy-in webinar a couple of weeks ago, one of the attendees mentioned that different leaders are motivated by different things, and that there is no one-size-fits-all incentive. How true! Now that the comment has had time to percolate, here are some thoughts.
I would like to talk about the difference between fair and equal.
Fair: Getting something of equal value to the effort expended, relative to everyone else.
Equal: Getting the same reward as everyone else regardless of input.
Equal incentives are frequently used for team rewards – a group of people working toward a common goal, and everyone will receive the same reward if the team succeeds. Equal rewards often seem unfair, since every person contributes individually to the effort – especially if the target is missed. On the other hand, equal rewards do engender mutual accountability and collaboration, if the culture allows.
Fair incentives can be tricky, because not everyone associates the same value with the same reward. Besides money, rewards for individual performance might be promotions, time off, more responsibility, parking spaces and other perks. Not only is perceived value different, but the criteria for determining who gets what is often subjective, or at least apples and oranges. At the same time, people like being recognized for their own contributions.
When possible, it’s best to use intrinsic motivation and exclude incentive programs altogether. The recent McKinsey article, “The Irrational Side of Change Management,” lists five different forms of motivation, in terms of impact of the change initiative:
- Impact on Society
- Impact on the Customer
- Impact on the Company
- Impact on the Team
- Impact on Me
If the company and your change initiative can tap into each of these sources of motivation, then each person will select which one is most fulfilling to them. Now that would be fair and equal!
Introducing the new Beyond Buy-in Workbook!
February 11, 2009
In my quest to equip you to lead organizational change, one of my goals is to put together a comprehensive set of workbooks to help you implement the essential ingredients of change. I am excited to introduce the Beyond Buy-in Workbook, which takes you through five steps to raise leadership support for your change initiative. Find the details on the Publications page.
Whether you are just getting started or your quest for change is well underway, if you need the leadership of your organization to show more support for your initiative through words and actions, this workbook is for you.
Newsletter subscribers have already received the accompanying article entitled “Beyond Buy-in: Raise Leadership Support for Your Change Initiative,” which features five steps to gaining leadership support. The same exclusive article is also free for new subscribers. Sign up to read a preview of the Beyond Buy-in methodology.
Employee Survey: Factors That Increase Innovation
September 8, 2008
In an effort to better understand employee innovation, I developed an employee survey to answer the question: “How can we increase the number and quality of ideas suggested by employees?”
The survey was developed based on a model for increasing employee involvement*, which includes four elements:
- Power: For employees to become involved, they need to have the power to do so. In the case of submitting ideas, employees need to feel that their ideas will be considered, will be valued, and will be implemented.
- Information: Employees need timely access to relevant information in order to know best how to focus their creative efforts.
- Knowledge/Skills: Employees can only contribute to the level of their knowledge and skills.
- Rewards: In order to be motivated to contribute, employees need incentives, either internal or external.
The results of the survey helped design an improved suggestion box program, which increased the number of ideas suggested by a factor of nine. See the post “Case Study: A Roundabout Path to Increasing Employee Suggestions.”
Given the chance to redesign the survey, I would have mixed up the categories more so they would not be grouped together. Also, it would have been a good practice to make more questions inverted, to reduce bias in the questionnaire. Overall, the survey provided us with good information from which we were able to take action and make a measurable improvement.
* Source: Cummings and Worley, Essentials of Organization Development and Change, South-Western College Publishing, 2001, pg 172-173.
Common challenges of organizational change
July 7, 2008
In my conversations with organizational change practitioners, I’ve noticed there are at least seven common challenges they face:
- Leadership buy-in - how do we get the leadership team, especially the CEO, to take on ownership of the changes?
- Communication – how do we move beyond the prescribed speeches by leadership and get everyday managers and employees talking about this every day?
- Motivation – what are the best incentives to use to motivate people to change?
- Overcoming skepticism – how do we make people understand this is not “flavor of the month?”
- Project justification – how can we quantify intangibles so we can justify key change projects?
- Subjugating the urgent – how do we keep transformation from taking a back seat to firefighting?
- Longevity - once we build momentum and change starts to happen, how do we ensure it survives turnover in key positions (especially the chief executive)?
What are other challenges you face?
Tips for Leading a Successful Transformation
February 1, 2008
Once a year, over one hundred former employees of AT&T Canada Long Distance Services get together to celebrate a major accomplishment. Ten years ago, they brought the company back from the brink. How do you lead an organizational transformation that has such an impact that those involved are still celebrating it together ten years later? Bill Catucci, former CEO of AT&T Canada LDS reveals that it is a combination of actions and leadership. Read more
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