Purpose Driven Environment

(Published on January 2013)

In the industrial age, many people believed that employees were fundamentally not interested in working and would try to evade their duties. It was the duty of the organization to prevent them from doing so. As an industrial engineer. I was trained to study processes and eliminate the possibility that an employee can be idle.  

But today, a new era has begun. We are shifting from the industrial age to the information and knowledge worker age, and it is critical for organizations to understand and manage this. People’s expectations are changing; they are motivated in different ways. Past theories and practices may not be effective.

When if comes to motivation, which has long been recognized as essential to getting the most from employees, we as an organization have it partly right and partly wrong. For one thing, our challenge is not so much to motivate employees, but to stop demotivating them.

Management often unwittingly diminishes staff enthusiasm in several ways. First, there is a perception that staff are disposable. At the first sign of business difficulty, staff—routinely referred to as ‘our greatest asset’—become expendable. Second, staff generally receive inadequate recognition and reward: This issue tops every staff survey. Third, management inadvertently makes it difficult for employees to do their jobs. Excessive approvals, endless paperwork, insufficient training, failure to communicate, infrequent delegation of authority and a lack of a credible vision contribute to frustration.

The organization should focus on creating an environment that will motivate all staff. This should respond to three basic needs of every employee: to be respected and treated fairly; to be proud of one’s achievements and the organization; and to have productive relationships with fellow employees.

Meeting these three needs depends on organizational policies and the everyday practices of individual managers. Even if the organization has solid talent management, a bad manager can undermine it in his unit. On the flip side, smart and empathetic managers can overcome much organizational mismanagement while creating enthusiasm and commitment.

Managers can do a number of things to get the best from staff, and unleash their incredible energy, talent, creativity, new ideas and resourcefulness. Some are highlighted here.  

Respect
First, communicate fully. One of the most counterproductive rules in organizations is to distribute information by the rule of ‘need to know’. This is usually a way of unnecessarily restricting the flow of information, resulting in employee frustration with inadequate communication. Full and open communication helps employees do their jobs and increases morale, and is a powerful sign of respect. Hold nothing back except those very few items that are absolutely confidential.

Good communication requires managers to be attuned to what employees want and need to know; the best way to do this is to ask them! Most managers must discipline themselves to communicate regularly. Often it’s not a natural instinct. Schedule regular employee meetings that have no purpose other than two-way communication. Management meetings should conclude with a specific plan for communicating the results to employees. Many employees are quite skeptical about management’s motives and can quickly see through ‘spin’. Since one of the biggest communication problems is the assumption that a message has been understood, get continual response on how well you and the group are communicating.  

It will further raise morale to remove obstacles to performance by dealing decisively with the five percent of staff who don’t want to work. Most people want to work and be proud of what they do. But a disciplinary approach, including separation, is about the only way to manage those who are, in effect, ‘allergic’ to work.

Achievement 
A critical condition for employee enthusiasm is a clear, credible and inspiring organizational purpose: in effect, a ‘reason for being there’ that goes beyond money. This is one of the fundamental differences in the shift to a knowledge-based workforce.

We as an organization have a clearly defined mission statement. Equally important is the manager’s ability to explain and communicate to subordinates how to achieve the mission. As manager of a technical group in ITSSD, my mission is to constantly innovate and provide technological options and platforms towards improvement of organizational efficiency and effectiveness. I have to infuse this purpose into every member of the team to come up with strategic and tactical measures to achieve it. Once employees understand the purpose, their contribution and tangible results, a productive chain reaction will fuel itself.

Managers should be certain that all employee contributions, both large and small, are recognized. My own team members repeatedly tell me, and with great feeling, how much they appreciate a compliment. That applies to me as well. Receiving recognition for achievements is one of the most fundamental human needs. Rather than making employees complacent, recognition reinforces their accomplishments, helping ensure there will be more of them.

I have seen many managers in this organization following a regimental approach to dealing with staff, not realizing that a command-and-control style is a sure path to demotivation. Instead, managers should understand that it is their responsibility to facilitate staff to do their jobs. I engage with my staff frequently in one-on-one informal discussions to understand their needs and grievances. This is a great way to build trust. I have also tried to provide consistent and informal performance responses, given as close in time to the occurrence as possible. I use the formal annual appraisal to summarize the year and address future needs.

Workers often want to know when they have done poorly. Do not succumb to the fear of giving appropriate criticism. At the same time, do not forget to give positive responses. It is, after all, your goal to create a team that warrants praise.

Teamwork 
Most work requires a team effort to be effective. Research shows repeatedly that the quality of a group’s outputs is usually superior to that of individuals working alone. In addition, most workers draw motivation from working in teams.

Whenever possible, managers should organize employees into self-managed teams with authority over matters such as quality control, scheduling and many work methods. Such teams can result in a healthy reduction in management layers and costs.

Creating teams has as much to do with camaraderie as core competencies. A manager needs to carefully assess who works best with whom. At the same time, it is important to provide opportunities for cross-learning and diversity of ideas, methods and approaches. Be clear with the new team about its role, how it will operate, and your expectations for its output.

Listen and involve
Employees are a rich source of information about how to do a job and how to do it better. This principle has been demonstrated often with all kinds of employees—from hourly workers doing routine tasks to high-ranking professionals.

Managers who operate with a participatory style reap enormous rewards in efficiency and work quality by continually asking for employees’ ideas. They hold direct conversations rather than waiting for suggestions to happen through formal communication. They create an atmosphere where ‘the past is not good enough’ and recognize employees for innovations.

Once they have defined task boundaries, participatory managers give employees freedom to operate and make changes on their own commensurate with their knowledge and experience. There may be no single motivational tactic more powerful than freeing competent people to do their jobs as they see fit.

A purpose-driven environment
A successful organization today has to embody the DNA of a purpose-driven, self-motivating environment. I have tried to point to some improvements that would benefit us as a whole. This exercise should be treated as a reengineering, as against a value engineering, which requires a top-down approach.

In general, the line manager’s efficiency and responsibility for actions are directly responsible for the efficiency of the organization and effectiveness of programmes.