Seth Godin’s book Linchpin, which I have read, may also be helpful. In addition to suggestions for leading even when you’re not the figurehead, it suggests that sometimes you may have to walk away.

Any advice? How do you prevent your employees from viewing you as powerless, and how do you evoke the changes necessary in upper management — encourage them to get away from the idea of only “policing what is wrong”?

Any reading material – or advice – that would help? Or is all lost without the support of the top?

If you could recommend any books or writers on motivating employees in non-profit organisations that would be great.

Thanks

In Leadership and Self-Deception, the analogy is made of a father who hears his baby crying in the next room.

If he feels his wife is lazy and that she shouldn’t have to help with the baby, it doesn’t matter which one he does–his attitude, words, and body language will carry through, and his wife will still get the impression he doesn’t think he should have to do it.

It’s not which choice he makes, but what his attitude is towards his wife that makes the difference.

I think the same thing applies here. You can have a goals system in place or a rewards system in place, but whether or not it motivates employees is more based on the attitude your employees feel you have about both them and the program than it is about the inherent effectiveness of the system.

The Game Of Work-style system gives two advantages:

1. It creates a point where accomplishement is rewarded. Too often management is simply done by standing around waiting for something to go wrong and then pointing it out. A system like the one described in the game of work institutionalized the recognition of accomplishment.

2. It creates a clear system of expectations. It takes away the manager’s ability to be arbitrary about performance. If I say “X is the goal,” and X is accomplished, there’s not as much room for me to be disstisfied with the employee. When there’s that type of objective measurement, there’s more trust, because employees don’t just feel they’re being “picked on.”

This is an interesting point of view about the mis-intentions of rewarding employees. Studies such as the
American Management Associations poll ( http://membersonly.amamember.org/hr/2005/july_02.cfm ), show that salary and bonus are not at the top of the list of what motivates employees, yet so many companies in America are structured this way to provide bonuses, plaques, and cookies.

Ironically, studies like this, and your references don’t support this conventional, large-scale behavior. It makes us wonder what then really drives motivation?

In Jack Welch’s book, Winning, he talks about motivating employees in terms of focusing on differentiation, not incentives.

As former CEO of General Electric, Jack Welch established a goal-based feedback system where every employee knew if they were an A, B, or C employee. The A employees represented the top 20% of the producers, the B’s were the middle 70%, and the C’s were the lower 10%. (This reminds me of Paredo’s 80-20 rule, where 20% of your investments deliver 80% of your yield!)

In Jim Collin’s book, Good to Great, he concludes that people are not your biggest asset, but rather, the RIGHT people are you biggest asset. His team, after studying top performing companies for 15,000 hours, found no correlation between financial incentives and high-performance teamwork.

He suggests that the high-performance companies find the right people, put them in the right positions, and get rid of the wrong ones. Under the right conditions the problems of commitment, goal-alignment, and motivations largely melt away.

For example, he says, the Marine Corps get credited for building values in people. In reality, however, people with values are attracted to the Marine Corps. If your organization establishes the right values, and you build your culture around them, this will help in bringing and keeping motivated people.

So, my conclusion would be that differentiation is really what employees seek. A rewards system of bonus’s and plaques are one form of that, but other forms exist and can be more effective.

I think a reward system of bonus’s and plaques is, at least, something. Many companies do nothing. Effective companies create a culture of goal-setting, feedback, and transparency.

One simple and great reward system in place at RxAmerica is their corporate value-challenge. When an employee does something visible to underscore one of the corporate values, they get mentioned, and their name goes into a box. At the end of the next time-frame, a drawing is had for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners. $1000 goes to the first place winner. Second and third place winners get an iPod, or gift certificate. A variation on this theme could be two second place, and three third place winners, etc.

Mike Berry
http://www.RedRockResearch.com ]]>