The authors of the book “Leading Outside the Lines”, John R. Katzenbach and Zia Khan, describe Fast Zebras as employees who can quickly absorb information, adapt to sudden challenges and act constructively, in the same way as Fast Zebras survive a visit to the watering hole, while the slower members get attacked by predators lurking in the shadows. Smart managers and leaders need to know how to manage the Fast Zebras who work for them. And the Fast Zebras themselves should understand their value and importance. In this blog post we will explore how Fast Zebras deal with the issue of motivation.
Take the quiz and find out if you are a Fast Zebra: http://www.vcs-gsa.com/FastZebra/index.php
Motivation is a key element for all managers. Question number three asks how you will ensure that people are motivated and have the right attitude. If you were a Fast Zebra you would “Instill pride… because fun and money aren’t the best motivators. Pride is, and it comes from rising above difficult experiences”. If finding pride in the work you do is the best motivation, how do you as a manager ensure that this happens?
In order to find out how to best motivate employees, we decided to learn from one of the most successful CEOs over history: Jack Welch. According to Welch, “No company, large or small, can succeed over the long run without energized employees who believe in the mission and understand how to achieve it”.
Energy often comes from being in a team with other people. A good team spirit can lead to commitment and a feeling of belonging. You believe in the same mission, and together you understand how to achieve it. However, a challenge in today’s international working environment is that people have different views on what good teamwork is. How can you know how to be a good team player in cases where different cultures are being mixed? This is where managers are facing an increasingly important task.
Therefore we ask you: What makes you energized? What makes you believe in the company’s mission? And how will you understand how to achieve it? The answers to these questions will send us at least one step closer in becoming Fast Zebras.
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"The answers to these questions will send us at least one step closer in becoming Fast Zebras." How?
ReplyDeleteYou ask a lot of questions about my motivation and my energy, but I'm not quite sure how that is relevant to the manager who desires to instill pride in his/her employees. Unless the team consist of me and my manager only, we will need an aggregate measure of 'pride' since the manager otherwise will have to accommodate each individual employee (which would be costly in terms of monitoring costs). Is there such a measure of pride?
One concept is the employee engagement surveys being undertaken throughout companies. Info here: http://employeeengagementsurvey.net/
However, this measures the effect (employee engagement/pride in the workplace) without telling us the cause.
Another concept could be "world's best workplace" surveys or similar. For example the one published by Fortune Magazine every year. I think we get a little closer here because it actually asks employees to identify what makes their work place great. Nevertheless, the survey tells us that people like to work for companies where they receive a high pay and excellent perks - i.e. nothing about their pride in the work or the company.
It seems this measure of pride is hard to come by. Do we need it? Not necessarily, I would argue.
Taking my spring in Welch's quote, I think we can benefit from a game theoretical approach here. The main issues in Welch's quote are:
- how do we coordinate actions so that they are in agreement with an overall plan? and
- how do we motivate agents to act in conformity with that plan, so their actions lead to an efficient result?
The former question is a re-write of your question how to make employees understand how to accomplish the mission. The latter part is mostly about how to energize the employees, but also implicitly tells us how we can make employees believe in the mission.
My argument will be that we do not need to consider the second part of the second question. If the employee knows our direction and how to get there (coordination), and has the motivation/energy to walk that way, then it does not really matter if he/she believes in the mission.
We can solve the coordination and motivation problems by addressing two issues in game theoretical problem descriptions: Payoffs and information structure.
Payoffs need to be aligned with the direction. In other words, reward what you want. If you want the employees to move the company in direction A, then reward them for going in that direction and punish them for going towards B.
The information structure needs to be so the employee knows how to get to A, and you as manager need to know whether he/she is really moving in that direction (monitoring/reward structures).
Going back to fast zebras, I think we get closer to being and fostering fast zebras in companies by structuring our organizations so that it is rewarded when employees "quickly absorb information and adapt to sudden challenges and act constructively", for example by clear transparency of promotion ways (information structure) and high incentives for excess performance (payoffs). This also hints at the solution to the team issue. A good team can be created by rewarding contribution to team performance (or as the recent HBR issue suggests, punish non-cooperation) and ensure that all team members have the same information.
Casper,
ReplyDeleteYou have many good points in your comment. However, you say that “if the employee knows our direction and how to get there (coordination), and has the motivation/energy to walk that way, then it does not really matter if he/she believes in the mission”. We dare to disagree with this statement. For instance, it can be beneficial to learn from voluntary organizations. According to an article from HBR, the non-profit organizations are good examples of the important link between productivity and believing in the organization’s mission. The article refers to a professor who asked his students why they were involved in voluntary organizations, with the answer “Because in my job there isn’t much challenge, not enough achievement, not enough responsibility; and there is no mission, there is only expediency”. However, we are interested in hearing about successful organizations with highly driven employees, without believing in the company’s mission.