SuperMotivation

Dean Spitzer

• Publisher: AMACOM
• Year: 1995
• ISBN:
  9780814434635
• Topic: Persönliche Entwicklung
• Subtopic: Persönlicher Erfolg

Surveys show that 73% of workers are less motivated than they used to be, and 84% could perform significantly better if they wanted to. Perhaps most shocking of all, a full 50% of workers say they are exerting only enough energy to hang on to their jobs! This crisis needs radical treatment - and that's what Dean R. Spitzer provides with his original, idea-packed strategies for boosting employee motivation and performance. Instead of focusing on how individual managers can motivate individual employees, SuperMotivation shows you how to "motivationally transform" an entire organization. Based on the author's firsthand experience with a variety of companies and thousands of interviews, SuperMotivation takes a fresh approach to an age-old dilemma. Each chapter is full of immediately applicable techniques that any organization can use to "maximize the bang for its motivational bucks." You'll find hundreds of practical suggestions for motivationally transforming jobs, teams, meetings, suggestion systems, training, performance appraisals, compensation, benefits, and much more.

Part One

The SuperMotivation Approach

The Importance of Understanding SuperMotivation

SuperMotivation is not just a collection of isolated techniques; it is a complete technology of motivation. But, in order to use this technology successfully, you must understand the concepts and principles that underlie it. Part One of this book will give you a thorough, state-of-the-art understanding of both individual and organizational motivation.

Chapter 1 presents an overview of the SuperMotivation approach and explains why I developed it. Chapter 2 explores self-motivation, the enormous (and largely untapped) motivational potential that resides within every employee in your organization. In Chapter 3, you will discover how even the most routine work can become highly motivating when the environment (context) of work is “motivationally reengineered.” You will also be introduced to the pivotal components of SuperMotivation: demotivators and motivators.

Chapter 4 examines demotivators, the all-too-frequently ignored negative factors that conspire to destroy work motivation. This chapter also identifies practical strategies for defeating demotivators in the workplace. In Chapter 5, you will find a comprehensive discussion of motivators, the positive, energizing factors that will later be used to “motivationally transform” organizational systems.

A careful reading of Part One will greatly enhance your understanding of motivation. This understanding will pay huge dividends when we turn our attention to the applications of SuperMotivation in Part Two.

For readers who would like to delve deeper into motivation, there are notes at the end of each chapter and a comprehensive bibliography at the end of the book.

1

The Need for SuperMotivation

There is a motivation crisis in American industry, and the symptoms are all around us: low productivity, quality problems, poor customer service, costly accidents, high absenteeism, increased violence in the workplace, and declining morale, to name but a few.

Survey after survey has identified “lack of motivation” as the number one human resources concern of business owners and managers nationwide. For example, personnel managers identified “lack of employee motivation” as the most troublesome problem they face,¹ 69 percent of operating managers said that “lack of employee motivation” is the most annoying problem in their organization,² and small-business CEOs reported that motivation is the human resources issue that takes up most of their time.³ In fact, I don't think I've ever met a business owner or manager who wasn't frustrated by his or her failed attempts at motivating employees and keeping them motivated.

Surveys of workers have reported equally disturbing findings: 73 percent of employees said they are less motivated today than they used to be,⁴ 84 percent said they could perform significantly better if they wanted to,⁵ and—perhaps most shocking of all—50 percent of workers said they are putting only enough effort into their work to hold onto their jobs!⁶

Walk around a typical organization, and you are likely to find employees with low energy levels “going through the motions,” engaged in a high proportion of off-task behaviors, waiting to be told what to do, offering poor customer service, showing little initiative, playing it safe, and demonstrating little striving for excellence.

In these organizations, getting things done seems to require a major effort. Employees can't be bothered. They feel they are being interrupted by customers. Their attitude toward new business is: “Oh, no, not another order!” “Oh, no, not another phone call!” “Oh, no, not another new product!” And this low motivation is not limited to low-skill employees, but extends to managers and professionals, as well.⁷

In many organizations, the primary subject of conversation among employees is what they are going to do during their off-hours, or how much longer they have before retirement. And in company parking lots, one can see cars displaying such cynical bumper stickers as I OWE, I OWE…IT'S OFF TO WORK I GO; WORK SUCKS, BUT I NEED THE BUCKS; I'D RATHER BE SAILING [or fishing, or golfing, or anything but working]; and the all too familiar refrain THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY!

And yet the companies employing these workers are spending millions and millions of dollars annually trying to motivate them.

Does this mean that American workers are lazy, as is so often reported in the popular media? After twenty years’ experience in management and organizational improvement consulting, I can confidently answer with a resounding no!

On the contrary, American workers at all levels of ability and responsibility are eager to be given a chance to perform well and to contribute positively to their organizations. It is simply that they need a different kind of motivation than currently exists in most organizations. People have changed dramatically since the mid-1970s, but the prevailing motivational technology has not. What is required to energize today's workers is a completely new approach to motivation.

This is what SuperMotivation is all about.

What Is SuperMotivation?

SuperMotivation is self-sustaining, organization-wide, high motivation. Let's look at each of the three components of this definition that contributes to making SuperMotivation such a distinctive concept.

SuperMotivation Is High Motivation

There are two major components of human performance: ability and motivation. They are related as follows:

Performance = Ability × Motivation

Human beings are creatures of infinite possibilities, but most of us use less than 30 percent of our abilities (some estimates put it closer to 10 percent). However, ability means nothing unless it is used. When multiplied by motivation, ability comes alive!

That is why, in times of urgency or crisis, ordinary human beings are somehow able to mobilize their latent capacities to accomplish remarkable feats. High motivation is what empowers a 100-pound woman to free her child from under a 3,000-pound truck. High motivation is what energizes a runner to pull away from the pack and win a race. And high motivation is what causes a work team to meet a seemingly unattainable goal. In each case, ordinary people are able to achieve extraordinary results through the power of high motivation.

If you examined a sample of 100 people in virtually any area of human endeavor, you would probably notice little difference among them (perhaps 10 to 15 percent) as far as ability is concerned, but huge differences in performance (sometimes 1,000 percent or more). Astonishingly, studies have found that the top one percent of employees produce nearly twenty times the per capita output of the bottom half of the workforce!⁸ Most of this variation in human performance is due to differences in motivation.

Consider the top salespeople in any organization. Although all the salespeople in the organization have pretty much the same innate ability and receive the same basic training, somehow the top ones generate far superior results. These top salespeople do what needs to be done, when it needs to be done; they engage in proper planning without being told to; they go out and make the sales calls; and they don't procrastinate. In short, they are more motivated. They don't sit around and wish or hope; they don't waste energy complaining about reticent customers; they take persistent, positive action.

For that matter, compare the top performers with the average performers in any job, profession, or organization. Why do some employees have to be constantly prodded, whereas others grab hold of the ball and run with it? What characteristic do all top performers have in common? High motivation!

Now let's take a look at some other examples in everyday corporate life. In every organization, there are some highly motivated individuals who tend to excel under the same conditions as the mediocre performers. These unsung heroes of the American workplace include the machine operator who reduced downtime to near zero by developing his own superior preventive maintenance procedures, the secretary who cut typographical errors by 90 percent by flagging the most frequently misspelled words, the customer service representative who virtually guaranteed satisfaction by using a self-developed “debriefing” procedure to ensure that all customers received the extraordinary service they deserved, and the waiter who sold a $200,000 convention contract simply by being motivated enough to tell a visitor how great his hotel was.⁹ And you could probably add many examples of your own to this list.

SuperMotivation Is Organization-Wide

High motivation, such as in the examples cited above, has typically been viewed as a characteristic possessed by only a few rare individuals, rather than as a quality that can exist organization-wide. Fortunately, as we see in the next chapter, high motivation is a state that all employees are capable of manifesting. All people have virtually unlimited motivational potential. This innate self-motivation potential has simply been temporarily suppressed because most employees are working in environments that inhibit its expression.

SuperMotivation will result in higher levels of motivation—and performance—for virtually everyone. One way of visualizing this phenomenon is by considering the number of employees at various motivation levels, as depicted in Figure 1-1. Curve “A” shows the distribution of employee motivation in a typical company. In this distribution, most employees exhibit low to moderate motivation, and there is a very wide range of motivation levels. As an organization moves toward SuperMotivation, the distribution of employee motivation will shift to the right (toward higher motivation), and the range of motivation levels will be reduced (as shown by curve “B”).

Figure 1-1. Shift in motivation brought about by SuperMotivation.

In a SuperMotivating environment, even those with formerly low levels of motivation will be able to excel, while those with higher levels of motivation will be able to realize their full potential.

SuperMotivation Is Self-Sustaining

Although high motivation is not difficult to attain, it tends to be much more difficult to sustain. Some organizations have been successful at mobilizing widespread high motivation—for short periods of time. We have all seen glimpses of this phenomenon when motivational speakers or charismatic leaders have been able to pump up the enthusiasm level for a short time, or when special programs have been able to arouse employees’ energies to reach a short-term goal or meet an urgent deadline.¹⁰ Too many motivational interventions leave people full of hope, energy, and enthusiasm only to have these hopes dashed when they return to the demotivating realities of the workplace.

Practically any motivational program can create a momentary surge of energy. However, these bursts of energy rarely last, and they generally leave employees feeling lower than before. The impact of short-term motivation has been described as being “much like the effect of eating a doughnut…. When the sugar high wears off, very little of value is left in the system.”¹¹

This is why motivation has been perceived mostly as a cyclical phenomenon, notorious for its volatility: up one day and down the next. According to this traditional model, individuals and organizations must be continually energized with new doses of motivation. The major problem with this approach is that when each dose wears off (as it inevitably will), another must be added. Under these circumstances, it is ridiculously difficult and exorbitantly expensive for companies to try to maintain high motivation.

The real challenge of motivation is not to mobilize energy at a particular moment, but to sustain it for the long haul.

Motivation can be sustained only if it is built into the organization itself. This way, motivation will no longer be subject to the whims of people or the initiation of new programs that come and go.

Why Motivation Has Failed

Despite tremendous effort and massive expenditures, the results of previous attempts to address the motivation crisis in American industry have not been impressive. In the sections that follow, I discuss the four major reasons why most of the earnest and well-intentioned efforts to motivate employees have failed to produce the desired results.

Theoretical Chauvinism

It has been said that “the management woods are full of theories and fads.”¹² Behind everything we do is a theory, an explanation in the simplest possible terms. Although theories are valuable, American management has suffered from “theoretical chauvinism”—the tendency to adopt one theory to the exclusion of others. Whether the theory is Maslow's, Herzberg's, McGregor's, Freud's, Skinner's, or anyone else's,¹³ no one theory alone is sufficient to explain the complexity of human motivation. Our dismal track record in motivating employees testifies to the limitations of each of these theories when used in isolation. Furthermore, most theories of motivation have proven virtually useless for practicing managers, and have had little relevance for organizational improvement.

I am convinced that the most accurate explanation of human motivation lies somewhere in the middle—where most motivational theories converge—and not inside any one of them. That is why this book has drawn upon many different theories, without adopting any of them in full.

Quick Fixes and Panaceas

The United States is a society with a compulsion for instant gratification, widely known for fast food, instant pudding, and quickie divorces. Americans love “quick fixes,” fast pseudo-solutions that, unfortunately, usually do not solve the problem.

Quick fixes are seductively simple; they are usually intended to only temporarily “stop the bleeding” or “relieve the pain.” The rallying cry of the quick fix is: “Ready, fi...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Part One: The SuperMotivation Approach
• Part Two: Putting SuperMotivation into Action
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• References
• Index