Motivational Communication

There’s a short article in the March 2008 Harvard Business Review called, “The Best Advice I Ever Got”. In it, the individual interviewed, Kris Gopalakrishnan, discusses the challenges of motivating employees and some lessons learned from a former college instructor. The instructor shaped some of Kris’ techniques in motivating employees. He say’s, 

…in talking with employees, I seldom focus on numbers but instead on big ideas and their role…I don’t think that talking about revenue targets or market share projections will get people inspired…instead help people imagine a future in which their unique contribution has an impact…

Communicating with employees at all levels is critical and too often done ineffectually or just plain ignored. When businesses are going through challenging periods, it’s hard to know what to communicate, how much and when to employees but its importance should never be overlooked.

If you’ve read Jim Collins’ Good to Great, essentially a study on why good companies become great and how, then you’re aware that one method the book uses to tackle the motivation issue is to hire the ‘right’ people. This is certainly a step in the right direction but shouldn’t imply leaders should ignore folks altogether just because they are great performers. Leaders must have a good perspective on communication of the inspirational kind to their teams. Ambitious organizations do need passionate, self driven people but those individuals need to be encouraged too. Often managers just assume that folks will intuitively understand how the company or project is doing and use their own internal passion to get them out of bed in the morning and gear up for another day.

There’s also a balance in how to communicate once the resolve to do so is there. Using the carrot method isn’t always the most optimal motivational tool. It creates an atmosphere of entitlement. Incentives are great but showing how individuals are contributing to long term objectives will have a more lasting effect. If you’ve hired the ‘right’ people, chances are they just need to hear that you are inspired and passionate, and their hooked.

Tense workplace?

Have a sensitive employee in the office?  Is it severe enough that you can cut the tension with a knife?  If folks are limiting interaction with each other even for small matters, it’s serious.  It could be a personal matter but odds are it’s related to something going on in their work environment.  Ignoring it won’t fix it and if not careful, approaching it the wrong way could make it worse.

When folks aren’t communicating due to some internal social conflict, the impact on productivity is real.  I once worked as a manager for a large fortune 500 company in a production role.  One of the younger engineers in the group was responsible for the efficiency of how some particular equipment operated in the facility.  He was always reluctant to talk to one of the seasoned technicians who had worked at the plant for almost 30 years.  The engineer felt the technician didn’t listen to his suggestions, was rude and blew him off.  I picked up on some animosity the technician had with this young degreed engineer trying to introduce ideas and opinions about how the equipment should operate; equipment that he’d been working on for 2 decades.  The engineer didn’t approach the technician well and the technician didn’t handle the suggestions well.  In the end, there was little progress towards making some much need improvements in plant efficiency.  The issue was resolved, not easily, but the simple communication hang up between these two folks added up to real dollars before it was remedied. 

One of the most immediately useful and easily ignored skill sets valuable to managers is the ability to recognize disruptions in organizational behavior.  Usually offered in biz schools, it teaches managers the psychological factors effecting work environments. There are really fascinating societies that emerge in the workplace that directly affect business productivity and career success or failure – some are slight and some pervasive; inhibiting team morale, internal communication, job advancement, and worse. Good managers must understand how individuals behave in different situations in order to maximize the effectiveness of their teams. Good employees need the same expertise to be successful in their discrete roles. Moreover, understanding some of the science behind behavior characteristics in a company’s organization can give an individual leverage others may not have in career advancement.

Q&A: Supply Chain Strategies vs. New Product Introduction

When bringing a new product to market, what makes up a successful long term vendor strategy through all phases of development, and how early does this process begin? Whether the phased program is managed solely within the walls of the principal business or certain program components are outsourced, thorough integration among all the elements is critical to success. But how is overall success measured in a true turnkey program? Architecture, design, beta testing, marketing, pilot production and continuous manufacturing for example are all components that make up the new product introduction road and they all have their own unique metrics for success. But isn’t true success measured in the macro sense where a high quality cost effective product is delivered? Do companies tend to mis-judge vendor strategies early on only to deal with costly challenges later? Looking for interesting ideas and experiences on the subject.

 

Chain of Command

        

 

I recall a successful executive once saying, when remarking of his experiences in manufacturing operations,

I reached a point in my career when I realized in this environment I had to decide each day that the sun would rise and ensure that it did. 

That may sound a little ego driven but it’s really just symptomatic of the constant variables that can work against success in the field and the mindset some end up taking.   When first hearing this I was impressed by the strategy, but after further thought I was more dissapointed than anything else.  Does it really have to be that painful for managers? Perhaps there are some takeaways from an organization that requires, under urgent conditions, flawless leadership. 

     The military has an organizational model which one could draw several comparisons to manufacturing.  Generally, the manufacturing field requires a significant amount of process control and therefore discipline in leadership to manage those efforts. Efforts in communicating cannot be wasted sorting through networks of hierarchy.   Information should travel fast, accurately and efficiently.  To achieve this end subordinates must trust the manager and those leaders in turn must have the same faith that the subordinate will execute the plan. There must be discipline in following procedures and communicating through a set leadership structure in order to keep processes repetitive, lean, efficient and in the end, cost effective.  These are characteristics found on US Navy war vessels.

      Last week there was a fire onboard the USS George Washington, one of the US Navy’s NIMITZ class aircraft carriers.  There were no serious injuries and the fire was extinguished without any serious damage to the ship.  A fire is a serious threat aboard ship.  Swift action must be taken by the entire crew to diagnose the problem and eliminate the threat to the vessel.  There’s no choice really, they cannot run from the fire or wait for support in the middle of the Pacific.   There’s no time to be wasted figuring out who to communicate with or how to solve the problem and the fire team isn’t going to try something new when a fire breaks out - these factors have already been worked out through hundreds of hours of repetitive training by each member of the crew.  Moreover, one individual does not solve the crisis nor does he or she dictate each micro effort to the team.  The team works as a collective unit through a very effective structure of communication called the chain of command - a command structure that can transform itself depending on the situation.    They have set procedures for each scenario that can arise.  This was most certainly carried out last week on the George Washington. 

     Even the most seasoned civilian leaders can learn from this philosophy.  The dysfunction created by not formulating optimal organizational strategies does not usually result in the loss of life in civilian operations environments.  But don’t ignore the effect it has on the bottom line, regardless of the size of the organization.  A little discipline and structure can go a long way.