Video / Articles by Patrick Dixon - 24 million requests in year - 10 million visitors - Conference Speech/Event?
Motivation
at Work - The Reason for the Crisis:
How to motivate people to make things happen: lecture slides and two videos - long and short
"Connect with all the passions people have: they will follow you wherever you go" How to make great things happen: motivation event for Welsh Parliament (Assembly) - audience of local government, health service, education, fire service, police - on how to lead more effectively, win the war for talent, build strong teams.
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Surveys show there's a huge crisis
of motivation in most large corporations, which is why they continue
to spend billions of dollars each year on motivation courses, training
in motivation, meetings to boost motivation, incentives to strengthen
motivation, meetings to analyse problems in workforce motivation,
tools to measure motivation, mission statements and so on. Problems
in recruitment, productivity and retention, problems of commitment
to teams and corporate agendas.
But the motivation gap is fundamental.
People are passionate - but mainly about life outside of
work. Indeed the very phrase "work-life balance" tells
us that most people think that work is the opposite of
life. So how did we get to be in such a motivational crisis?
Motivation has moved on and
left most corporations behind
One thing is clear: motivation is
changing. Just look at the current obsession with work-life balance,
which is now a powerful force in every corporation, number one or
two career priority for the majority of executives in the US, UK
and Japan. Forget the old days when ambition meant rushing up the
career ladder. Today the great dual ambition is to have a satisfying
job and a fulfilling personal life.
Or take the growing motivation for
community action: 60% of all US workers give time each year to work
for causes they passionately believe in. The average time gift is
200 hours. If each hour given by a US citizen was charged out at
the average industrial wage, you would be talking about an industry
as large as 4.5% of GDP or 12% of the Federal budget.
And other countries are similar, whether
people are rich or poor, in Western Europe
or East Africa
Despite all the gloomy pundits some years back, community motivation
remains very much alive. But these motivation changes are rarely reflected
in corporate policy - or if they are, in a very superficial
way. That's because CEOs and senior teams are still over-influenced
by last-century management ideology about efficiency, bottom-line
profit, shareholder value, return on equity and other motivation -
killing fixations.
"How you make a difference to people - why shareholder value is a lousy motivator"
Video of event for fund managers - many fund managers are typical of those in other industries. They lack passion for what they do because they don't understand the impact they have on other people's lives - in their case helping pensioners / savers
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Management Gurus – high
priests of confusion ?
You’ll find that management theory is still mainly built on
two things: psycho-theories from one or two centuries ago and also
case histories of organisations. Both are rooted in the past, can
be based on subjective interpretations of data, and rarely concentrate
on motivation. Case histories rapidly date as our world changes
– just look at old business books and count the case examples
of companies that now don’t even exist, or are basket cases,
or riddled with recent scandal - and the old psycho-theories raise
many questions. Life in the third millennium has moved on a long
way from unproveable nineteenth century introspections about unconscious
motives and desires.
You’ll find great business ideas formed often many decades
ago about the nature of organizations, team management, excellence
at work and the rest. All vital and important things without which
no business can survive, but very little that grabs you by the throat
when it comes to passion, commitment and motivation.
Hey – if there was, we wouldn’t all be in this mess.
Without management experts we would all be the poorer, with lower
productivity, inefficient structures, bad organizations and wasted
resources. However it is a historical fact that management fads
come and go faster than ever – often in less than a decade
- leaving tens of thousands bruised, bashed and confused by each
one that sweeps into their organization. You just have to look at
a list of business titles published over the last five decades to
see that. And these fads actually undermine motivation.
First are four top turn-of-the-century gurus: Peter Drucker, Tom
Peters, Michael Porter and Gary Hamil. Each has had a huge impact
on business thinking today but are not so strong on motivation..
Between them these giants of corporate thinking have contributed
a huge amount to corporate efficiency, productivity and effectiveness,
generating wealth for millions, contributing to the economy and
to society.
What about passion for living?
Great leaders, great visionaries, passionate about their messages
– but what do they tell us more generally about human passion
for life?
What do they tell us about why people act as they do? The choices
they make? The things they feel strongly about? The culture we live
in and the changing lifestyles choices people are making?
Of course, all of them have addressed every topic under the sun
at one time or another on platforms or in writings, but what happens
when you look at the main thrust of their influence?
Peter Drucker
The problem is that Drucker says everything about managing a corporation
but far less that captivates the human spirit. Almost nothing about
managing personal life as a whole – or about work / life balance
or broader motivation issues.
Tom Peters
Tom Peters talks of excellence in companies, and also talks about
passion in leadership but says almost nothing about excellence of
personal quality of life, why personal commitment to workplace goals
is falling and why for most people, their strongest sense of motivation
is for the work they are not paid to do, the things they do outside
of work, simply because they believe those things are worthwhile.
Michael Porter
Michael Porter talks of being competitive, but
people are more than links in a value chain. He has a good understanding
of company survival, but a relatively poor understanding of personal
survival and of what people are looking for in life. Motivation
is hardly at the heart of what he writes or says.
Core competency has become a widely accepted concept,
encouraging corporations to focus on strengths. However, finding
a company’s core competency, or even changing future corporate
history does nothing to motivate me to get out of bed in the morning.
The world’s leading management gurus, on
whom hundreds of thousands of management consultants base their
work, are relatively silent when it comes to motivation, and are
nowhere when it comes to finding one single unifying factor that
drives all human action.
And we find the same when we review dozens of other
widely respected gurus of management theory. Here are a few more
popular buzz-words:
Actions are not the same as understanding
passion that drives these actions. Strategy does
not necessarily provoke personal motivation. Leadership
can encourage motivation but only if it understands what makes people
passionate. What's the point of a balanced team
if people can’t care less? Leaders doing the right
thing is often not the same as having a fired-up workforce.
Passion is based on more than mere ideas. Since
when did anyone at work get really get excited about a structure?
Quality of products and services is hardly the
core motivation for individual life, for what we do or what we buy.
Re-engineering of the corporation is not the same
as re-engineering people’s motivation. Objectives
do not provide people with meaning and ultimate sense of purpose.
Team psychology is almost irrelevant to question
of personal passion and aims in life. “Company-wide
quality management” is not the same as connecting
with what people feel strongly about. Global branding
does nothing to motivate. There is more to motivating people than
having great style.
Most recognised authorities on management score
low on motivation with the exception of Charles Handy, Edward Schein,
Elton Mayo, Elspeth Ross Kanter, and Douglas MacGregor. And most
of those who scored high are dead, or retired, and most of their
works were published decades ago.
Why corporations have been given such a
narrow view of motivation
Why the problem? Well one obvious reason is that
he who pays the piper calls the tune and management consultants
by definition are asked in by corporations to improve their bottom
line profitability, not to massage the inner needs and motivation
of their employees, except as a profit-enhancing exercise.
So its hardly suprising that we get on the whole
a very narrow view.
One thing is clear: there is one mega black-hole
of fresh thinking about motivation, about what really makes people
tick, about why people act as they do.
Harness all the passions people have and
they will follow you to the ends of the earth.
For a different approach altogether to motivation
- look
at this recent presentation. Discover the secret of the Four
Circles of the Human Heart.
Leadership: motivation to make things happen. Video segment of Skynet Belgacom presentation on direct marketing, looking at the most powerful leadership speech in the world, and how to harness the same power in marketing, management and motivation.
Blogs - web / video diaries on trends / management by Dr Patrick Dixon
Video / Articles by Patrick Dixon - 24 million requests in year - 10 million visitors - Conference Speech/Event? 
