Think about a time when you stretched yourself and did something exceptional. Why did you do it? How did you tap into the focus, energy, and creativity you needed? How did you overcome the fear of failure?

I am talking about motivation – how our activities tap into our psychology. Leaders, managers and employees all play a part in creating work environments that provide motivation.

There is a well established area of research around why we do the things we do. Our behaviours are tied to fulfilling 3 basic psychological needs*:

• Autonomy (“I want to”)
• Competence (“I am able to”)
• Relatedness (“I have support to”)

In other words, motivation is firstly about doing thing things you want to do. But then it’s about feeling competent to do those things and feeling enough support to stretch yourself.

“I want to”

There are some things you do for no other reason than you want to: They are their own reward. Work usually isn’t its own reward. People may want to work and enjoy it, but they do so for an outcome…like pay. But that doesn’t mean that money creates motivation. Sometimes it hurts it.

In one famous study, researchers experimented with how subjects chose to spend their free time between experiments. In many cases, subjects would continue to ‘play’ with the experimental material, even during a break…ie…they ‘wanted’ to. But, when pay was linked to play, the interest in the play went down. The pay took away play – the activity was no longer its own reward…it was now work.

This is called the ‘crowding out’ effect, and it can impact what people in your organisation are choosing to do. Here are some things to consider when you are thinking about rewards:

Rethinking rewards

This ‘crowding out’ effect is a bit different to what we have been teaching managers for years about rewards – that we should attach a bonus or pay to the behaviours we want to encourage. Be careful not to over-simplify this – employees are not the same as rats pushing a bar to get food pellets. If people already want to do something, let them. The activity is its own reward. Save your rewards for areas where you are trying to create more motivation. Some changes you might like to experiment with:

• Reduce the amount of control and reward you associate the tasks people already ‘want’ to do. Control is counter-productive to employee engagement.
• Encourage employees to reflect on their own activities and why they do them – let them tell you where the best fit exists.
• Save your rewards systems for the things that people don’t already want to do naturally. I know of one organisation which provides a paid parking spot for the person who is rostered to be on call.

Of course, you can’t always offer choice when there is work to be done. But you can look for ways to tap into people’s natural motivations.

Once you have thought about rewards, you can think about creating the motivational elements of “I am able to” and “I have support to” – the next steps in creating work environments which encourage people to stretch themselves. More on those in the next blog.

Need help? Handspring.com.au is a collection of resources, services, and stories about change in organisations. Have a look around.

*Deci and Ryan out of the University of Rochester are world experts in motivation. You can find a detailed compilation of related resources at selfdeterminationtheory.org.

But, why do some teams just seem to work together better than others?

In 1999, a group of researchers set out to find that answer. They invited 60 business teams to conduct a yearly planning meeting in the research lab*.

Now, you might question – how anyone can study team dynamics in a lab? Did the teams know they were being studied? Yes. But the research environment was a meeting room and the researchers were behind 1-way glass and after a short time, the teams reportedly just got on with the business at hand.

Measuring Communication

The researchers focussed on communication and interactions. Specifically, they observed (and scored) these teams’ utterances based on frequency of:

• Self vs other-focussed comments
• Inquiring vs advocating statements (ie asking vs. telling)
• Positive/negative statements

Measuring Performance

Researchers compared those communication scores against external performance factors of the companies represented – things like profitability, customer satisfaction, and 360 degree feedback. There were some pretty remarkable trends between company performance and team communication .

1. In low performing companies, team members talk mostly about themselves…rarely about others
2. In low performing companies, team members do lots of telling, but not much asking
3. In low performing companies, team members make 3 times more negative statements than positive (whereas high performers make 5 times more positive statements than negative).

Now, before your roll your eyes on that last one…by positive statements, I don’t mean ‘corporate cheerleading’. I mean genuinely positive, encouraging statements. How willing are you to share ideas in environments that always shoot you down?

In other words, how your team members talk and listen to each other matters. It matters to your ability to innovate. A team that is able to encourage ideas from group members creates a healthy dynamic – a pattern of thinking and communication that perpetuates.

So how do you improve?

If you are trying to improve how your team performs, why not do a little study of your own? How often are positive statements made? How open are team members to listening to alternative thoughts and ideas? How is conflict handled?

Once you know how you rate, it’s time to think about the harder question: How open is this group to change? Just suggesting a change doesn’t make it happen. People have to want it – and want it strongly enough that they are willing to stop doing some things and start doing others. That can be uncomfortable…and will often require support, leadership, and trust from the rest of the team – the cultural building blocks of change. Is your organisation ready?

*You can read more about this study on Wikipedia under “Losada Ratios” or read the original study, which is:

Losada, M. (1999). The complex dynamics of high performance teams. Mathematical and Computer Modelling, 30(9–10), 179–192

It’s funny the kinds of reactions I get when I make that suggestion. Some people know instantly what I am talking about. For others, it takes a little coaxing. But it doesn’t take long for them to name a vice…chocolate, sweets, television, junk food, alcohol, cigarettes, and the car were all named by my group of friends hanging out (drinking) on Australia Day.

My vice is easily identified: A bold red with steak, a sharp white with spicy food, a cleansing ale after squash. I do love to relax with alcohol. So, this month, I opted to join Febfast – a 4-week pause to my bacchantic ways. You can read more about Febfast here.

One friend is sceptical: ‘what’s the point of stopping something for a month if you are just going back to it in March?’ Fair question. I am trying to learn something – because learning is a fundamental step in changing. So, here is what I have learned so far:

1. It’s not that hard

I thought this would be more of a struggle for me. But, I still enjoy friends, social events, and business events while sipping something non-alcoholic. And, when I do feel for a glass of wine, the feeling usually passes if I just wait it out. Knowing this makes me feel powerful and in control. And, by stretching my willpower ‘muscle’, I am teaching myself to be happier and more successful in other areas of my life*.

2. It’s not that easy

The thing about a vice is that it is usually triggered by something. I have all of the willpower I need to not have a drink. But, do I have the courage to ask myself why I want one? Is it boredom, self esteem, or just general satisfaction? I am noticing situations that make me want to drink and questioning why I even engage in them.

I loved this quote from Lisa Dempster’s blog:

“I’m starting to realise that physically not-ingesting alcohol might not be the hardest thing I do this year. Rather, looking inwards – and figuring out who I am, who I could be, and who I want to be – might just be the biggest challenge I face…”

3. When in doubt, change something

It’s amazing what impact changing one thing can have. As soon as you change one thing, it tends to shake a bunch of other things loose. I know someone who recently quit smoking and then realised that, without the hourly smoke breaks, he was seriously unhappy with his employer. He had been masking his unhappiness with his smoke breaks. He didn’t set out to change jobs by quitting smoking, but that’s what happened. And he is happier as a result.

Give it a try

What kind of vices are you engaged in? What would happen if you tried to change one? It doesn’t have to be permanent, it doesn’t even have to be big…it’s just an opportunity to learn.

*Read more about why willpower matters here

It’s one of the hardest parts of leadership…recognising the need to change and taking the necessary actions and then dealing with the fallout – the shock, denial, anger, and fear that often follow a big change announcement. It’s time consuming and frustrating and can leave leaders scratching their heads and management teams wondering ‘is it really worth it?’

When change involves a perceived loss for employees, I like to draw from the lessons of organisational fairness to help strengthen feelings of trust and justice during change.  “When workers see themselves as being treated fairly, they develop attitudes and behaviours required for successful change.”*

Fair doesn’t mean equal

Change creates winners and losers.  It’s inevitable.  But it is possible for employees to support a change, even when they perceive it as a loss.  This is when your change team needs to be focussed on the principles of organisational fairness:

1. Commit to consistency between what you say and what you do
2. Remind people of the common ground – the goals that are shared between parties, even when the change has resulted in inequity to some
3. Don’t overstate the positive – communication should be honest, frequent and consistent to assure employees that they will never be intentionally deceived
4. Encourage participation (organisational citizenship) – make people aware of how they can participate in positive ways. 

But who enforces fairness?

Implementing a change is time consuming and tiring and worrying about fairness usually takes a back seat.   While your project teams are focussed on delivery and deadlines.  Your change team should be focussed on people – they are on the ground and close to those most impacted employees…watching, listening, and feeding back meaningful information that is also consistent.

And this doesn’t mean delegating to a junior communications person.  Enforcing justice sometimes requires some pretty tough conversations with senior managers.  You need someone who can stand up for the principles when they are being overlooked. 

Is it working? 

An ex-boss of mine used to ask ‘is the line going up or going down’?    He was frustrated with waiting for facts and figures to prove if a communication strategy was working.  Over the years, I have learned that the best yardstick for ‘is it working’  isn’t complex statistics or a surveys,  but conversations.  Bring up the change in a small group of impacted employees and just observe what happens. 

• Do they know the facts? 
• Can they explain it to each other? 
• Can they talk about it reasonably, without spiralling out of control? 

When the principles of fairness and justice are at work in an organisation, you can observe them in the employee interactions.  That is the best ‘proof’ I know. 

*Folger, R. and Starlicki, D.P. (1999).  “Unfairness and resistance to change:  hardship as mistreatment”,   Journal of Organisational Change Management, 12(1), 1999, pp. 35-50.

That’s what Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey say in their book, How the way we talk can change the way we work*.

But what if our goal is to actually change ‘the system’ – our patterns of thought?

The tool that Kegan and Lahey use to help change ‘the system’ is called an ‘immunity map’. The concept is this: We can’t really help ourselves get what we want until we understand what we are doing to prevent getting it.

So how do we develop that kind of understanding? Well, it requires taking a step back from ourselves. It requires examining our thinking. If you have something that you are trying to change, try this exercise (the example below talks about change in a work context, but you can think of any type of change you desire):

All you need are 2 pieces of paper: One for making notes, and one for documenting your Immunity Map. To make your immunity map, draw a big square with 4 columns in it (like the one on the picture attached to this blog). Then, ask yourself this first question…

1. Think about your work. What sorts of things need to happen more frequently to experience more of what you want?
 

Don’t read ahead until you have answered this question. Write down your answer on your note paper.

Now read your answer. How does it sound? My first one sounded something like this:

“I need more time. I am so busy, I don’t have time to think about the ‘big things’”

That statement sounds like someone who is frustrated. It’s a complaint. But, it also shows that I am committed to something. With a little work, I can change my statement from a ‘complaint’ to a ‘commitment’. Here is how that commitment sounds:

“I am committed to finding work which is meaningful and important to both me and my clients”

This is my complaint, restated as a commitment. The commitment is what you write in column 1 of your immunity map. Once you have written it, you can ask yourself a second question…

2. What are you doing – or not doing – that keeps your commitment from being more fully realised?

Write this on your note page. My first answer sounded something like this:

“I keep spending too much time on other people’s urgencies and deadlines”

It sounds a little blaming, doesn’t it? But I can re-word it so that I take more personal responsibility. Such as…

“I never say ‘no’…I don’t stop to consider others who could do the job instead of me”

This is what I can take responsibility for. Once I am clear on that, I write it in column 2 of my map and move on to the next question:

3. What fears or discomfort do you have about doing column 2 differently?

Be honest. This fear should feel real. It should also feel a little bothersome. It should feel genuine, not noble. Write it on your notes page. Here was mine:

“If I did find someone else to do the work, my clients might decide that they don’t need me”

If you read between the lines of that statement, you can see that I am holding a competing commitment. Yes, I am committed to finding meaningful work, yet I am also committed to feeling needed. As a result, I keep saying ‘yes’ to things I should probably be saying ‘no’ to. I am caught in a cycle. But now that I realise the cycle, I can start to learn from it. I can start to observe how my commitments are interfering with each other.

Before moving on to column 4, it is useful to just stop and reflect on this for a while. Watch yourself and how these competing commitments are playing out in your daily life. In my next blog, I will show you how to complete your immunity map by identifying your ‘Big Assumption’ and, more importantly, talk about what you can do to start changing this cycle.

*Kegan, R. & Lahey,L.L. (2009). How the way we talk can change the way we work: seven languages for transformation. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass

“Our mental development, unlike our physical development, does not have to end at age twenty; we can keep growing and developing in adulthood”**.

The question that has been central to me is: ‘can people and organisational cultures really change?’ I am now convinced that the answer is ‘yes’.
 
I became intrigued with the work of Robert Kegan while studying for my Masters in Organisational Coaching. It’s the most powerful way I have found to understand patterns of thought in myself and others and how those patterns impact the way we see the world.
 
The basic proposition is this:

Our mental development and growth helps us overcome our immunity to making other changes in our lives – it is when we begin to see and understand the commitments we hold around not changing, that we can begin to change.
 
I realise that our libraries and bookstores are littered books about personal change and growth. There is a reason for this – it’s something people seek. Unfortunately, it’s not something people often find. The problem with that literature is its inability to close the gap.
 
That gap between wanting and doing is a learning problem and closing it is about learning and changing the way we think about change.  Kegan and Lahey’s book is a great way to understand this learning. 
 
**Kegan, R. & Lahey, L.L. (2001). How the way we talk can change the way we work.. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass

It’s really a question of money vs. happiness that seems to be a theme repeated at this year’s Writers’ Festival. Mike Daisey (The Last Cargo Cult) challenges our relationship to money by handing it to the audience as they enter the theatre – his money – the stuff that he was paid to perform the show. After 2 hours of amazing story-telling, the audience has the option to give it back.

So, after all the years giving lip service to the line ‘money doesn’t buy happiness’, these authors and philosophers seem to be saying ‘no really, it’s not a throw-away line…we are serious…what does it really mean?’   But it’s not just a concept for individuals, it’s being asked on a global scale.

Saul says that capitalism is only a valid concept for economies NOT in surplus. Once we have everything we need, more doesn’t get us anywhere.  So, measuring ‘more’ in terms of ‘product’ is the wrong measure. What to measure instead?  How about happiness and satisfaction?

It’s his example of how to start thinking spatially, not linearly. He says we should blow up all of the University Philosophy departments (get the people out first, ‘cause we still need them) – but blow them up into little pieces and catch them as they land. Then, put the pieces together in a new way.

To learn about this new way, we should turn to our indigenous populations and learn the ways of their dreamtime stories – they can teach us much more about philosophy in the way we need it today – spatially…not in the silly linear way taught by western philosophies of the Greeks and Romans.

So, what does Mr. Saul have against philosophers? (actually, his thinking extends to economics and business departments, too, as well as economic journalists and consultants – ouch). Well, he just doesn’t think we have evolved much since our 19th and 20th century thinking. We haven’t stopped to challenge ourselves – it’s been too long since we had a revolution of ideas. Or, said another way, we can’t solve our problems with the same thinking we used to create them (problems being GFC and environment to name a few). Our problems are complex, and linear models just don’t cut it when trying to solve complex problems.

Do you agree? I do. As (an evil) consultant working in organisations, I see it all the time. Organisations don’t solve their own problems very well because the tools and models we have given them in business schools don’t match the complexity that is their reality. One thinker on organisation change (Kaufmann) puts it like this: linear thinking might help you get to the top of your current mountain, but if you need to climb a new mountain, you will need to change your ways – going sideways or even down before you go up again. You’ve got to be willing to put your models at risk and re-think the problem in a whole new way.

If we aren’t challenging ourselves the think in complex ways, we won’t be able to solve complex problems.

Is your current situation making you feel a bit restricted?  Is it a phase?  It’s probably not just in your head.  There is plenty of research showing that both you and your company will go through a number of normal and predictable phases of growth over time.   Part of finding the right organisational ‘fit’ is to match where you are in your growth.

Larry Greiner‘s now famous article, Evolution and Revolution as Organisations Grow* highlighted that as organisations grow in size and age, they pass through stages.  The growth (evolution) periods are characterised by certain management styles, while the change (revolution) stages are characterised by a dominant management problem that must be solved before growth can continue.  Greiner outlines the following stages:

Do you see the paradox?  The solution to the problem in one phase becomes the problem that must be solved at the next.  As a manager or employee of a growing company, you may find yourself solving new problems by changing the very things you put in place to solve old ones.    And this is while you are doing your own growing, too.  No wonder change is so darn hard in organisations. 

And, remember…if one of you starts to feel restricted, you may very well be at different stages of growth.  If so, you have a choice to make.  You can work to make it fit or you can choose a different size.  Greiner observed that ‘’a good phase 2 manager facing phase 3 might be wise to find a position at another phase 2 organisation that better fits his or her talents.”  I would add that it is just as likely that your own growth can pass that of your organisation, in which case it may be wise to find another company that can appreciate your talents.   Bad organisation/employee ‘fit’ just holds you both back – choose something that matches your size and character.

*Greiner, L. 1998.  Evolution and Revolution as Organisations Grow.  Harvard Business Review.  May-June 1998.

Several years ago I met a University Professor who gave great advice to his graduate students.  He said:  “You have to decide whether you want to be in research or adminstration.”

I have been repeating that advice to IT professionals ever since, but mine goes like this:

“You have to decide if you want to be the ‘doer’ or the ‘manager’.  Do you want to work on your technical skills or your management skills?

Here is a news flash for you…the grass is not greener on the management side of the fence.  Taking the management path might mean leaving behind some of the things you like best about your work – those things that caused you to get into technology in the first place.  Managers don’t get to play with the latest technologies, or tinker, or problem solve.  Managers delegate.  They match people with business needs.  They ensure projects stay on budget.  They write performance reviews and career plans to help technical people become better technical people.

What?  You say that doesn’t sound like management in your company?  Then maybe you are working for an IT company managed by technicians.  It’s a classic syndrome in IT – a superstar programmer or implementer emerges from the team and what do we do?  We promote her.  We take her away from doing the things she was best at and put her in management (and probably with very little support).  We end up with IT companies managed by technicians.  Some technical people make very good managers.  But others struggle to let go of their ‘technical expert’ personas.  (Hint – these ones are easy to spot…they are the ones who are too busy solving customer problems and writing lines of code to get their business initiatives done on time).

If your organisation is struggling with the roles of technician and manager, here are a few things you might try…

1.       Assess your current situation.  Who are the managers and what are their backgrounds?  What do they say are their strengths and weaknesses?  What do others say?  There are plenty of assessment tools you can use to help.

2.       Consider your company’s roles of manager and technician.  Are they equally rewarded and respected?  Are changes needed here?

3.       Start career planning.  Sometimes people choose a management path because it’s the only path they can see.  Good managers (the ones who aren’t buried in fire-fighting) recognise employee strengths and help the employee build on those.  These conversations take time and listening skills.  Do you need to strengthen these in your organisation?

4.       Look to the top.  Is your top management prepared to lead by example?  If not, return to step 2. 

Setting goals directs our attention to something  in a positive way, as if to shine some light on it and say ‘I would like this to be different’. Our attention, awareness and actions are directed there – where the light is shining. 

I had a chance to see this in action last week.  I was invited back to a company to repeat some skills training for their sales team.  Before we started this training,  I worked with the team members for about an hour to clarify their personal goals around selling – not about what they wanted to get from the training, but what they wanted to achieve in their selling in the next 6 months.  For the rest of the day, I conducted the training.

Guess what?  The students reported that the content was significantly more valuable to them than it had been the first time around.  Guess what else?  The content was the same.  The difference was them.   Setting goals before the training had made the content more valuable to them. 

I love it when something is both simple and powerful.  How might that apply to your own work and life experiences?  Could those experiences improve by linking them to one of your own goals or resolutions?  Why not give it a try?

*Locke, E.A. (1996).  Motivation through conscious goal setting.  Applied & Preventitive Psychology, 5(2).  117-124.