In order to activate your employees’ brains, let’s think about our traditional perspective on success. The Protestant work ethic has an established place in both theology and business: The harder you work, the more likely you are to reach your goals.
Yet, as hard as employees at modern companies seem to work, only 30 percent of their business strategies are successfully executed. And even at the companies on the right side of that statistic, leaders feel they’re not achieving their goals fast enough.
Seeking to boost speed, leaders typically step in and try to address external processes. For example, they might set more goals, add more extrinsic incentives, or streamline the company’s decision-making processes — all of which can have some value in increasing the speed of execution. But ultimately, external factors aren’t the greatest indicators of whether a company is on track to reach its goals. The business environment is changing far too rapidly.
In order to best enhance strategic speed, business unit heads need instead to leverage a very different resource: the brain.
This is where all goal setting, motivation, and creativity originate, so why not target the source when striving to enhance individual and team productivity?
The True Value of Controlling Motivation
Motivation is best driven by ensuring employees understand the company’s goals, are familiar with proper methodologies, and know the incentives they’ll receive if they do great work. But leaders can’t just skim the surface when addressing these factors.
Research shows the brain requires three specific prompts in order to truly feel motivated:
- Truth motivation: It’s not enough to state your goals to employees; they need to feel convinced via hard evidence that their actions are necessary. Show them real-life examples of why their efforts are vital.
continue reading… Switch & Shift
by Srini Pillay