Motivational Operations
Brent Filson
There's an inexorable law operating in business. I call it the
law of UP — Unfulfilled Potential. One can see aspects of this law
working in other areas:
For instance, in neurophysiology, humans
are supposed to use only a fraction of our brains' capabilities; in
technology, superconductivity is not yet widely available; and in
medicine, the harnessing of the body's abilities to fight cancers is
only just beginning to be understood and realized.
But the law of
UP is particularly dominant in the business world — and especially in
operations. Operations is the blocking and tackling of any organization,
the fundamentals that create the foundation for consistent success.
It's
such an important function that in many companies the Chief Operating
Officer is usually the next in line for the job of CEO. If a company is
not doing operations well, all of its other functions are diminished.
Having
consulted with operations leaders in a variety of top companies for two
decades, I've seen that many are unfortunately strict adherents to the
law of UP — for one main reason: They've neglected an all-important
results-driver, motivation.
Clearly, many factors further
operational excellence: capital, cycle time, technological advancements,
quality, efficiencies, etc. But motivation is the most fundamental,
operational determinant at all, for it drives all the others.
After
all, operations is the sum of people doing many jobs; and when skilled
people are motivated to accomplish those jobs, great results happen.
But
many operations perceive motivation as "soft" — as opposed to the
"hard" factors of cycle time, quality control, etc. — and so either
ignore it or struggle with actualizing it on a daily basis.
I see motivation, however, as a "hard" determinant of operations that can be a concrete, a practical results-producer.
I'm
going to provide four imperatives that you can use right away to
achieve consistent increases in operational results. But before I do,
I'll offer a working description of motivation. For leaders often fail
to motivate others because those leaders misunderstand the concept of
motivation.
The best way for me to describe it is to describe what it is not.
Motivation
is not what people think or feel. It's what people do. Look at the
first two letters of the word, "mo." When you see those letters in a
word, such as "motor", "motion", "momentum", "mobile", etc., it usually
means action of some kind. Look at motivation as action too. If people
are not taking action, they are in point of fact not motivated.
Motivation
is not something we can do to somebody else. It is always something
that that someone else does to themselves. Look back over your career,
and you will see that the motivator and the "motivatee" were always the
same person. As a leader, you communicate, but the people whom you want
to motivate must motivate themselves.
Motivation is not a
dispassionate dynamic. It is an "emotional" dynamic. The words
"motivation" and "emotion" come from the same Latin root word, which
means "to move." When we want to move (motivate) people to take action,
or in truth have them motivate themselves, we engage their emotions. Put
another way: People will not take action for more results faster
continually unless their emotions are engaged.
Finally, the best
way to enter into a motivational relationship with people is not by
distant communication but the kind of face-to-face speech that has
people make the choice to be committed to your cause.
Those are
descriptions of what motivation truly is. But descriptions alone won't
help you meet the challenges of UP. You must follow clear imperatives to
help you transform descriptions into results.
Here are four that will help you cultivate motivational operations.
1.
Give leadership talks not presentations. The difference between a
presentation and a leadership talk is what Mark Twain said the
difference between the almost right word and the right word is. "That is
the difference," he said, "between the lightning bug and lightning."
Let's
understand the basic difference between the presentation and the
leadership talk. Presentations communicate information; but leadership
talks have people believe in you, follow you, and, most important of
all, want to take leadership for your cause.
My experience has
taught me that 95% of all communication in business is accomplished
through the presentations. However, if 95% of communication were
accomplished through the leadership talk instead, leaders would be far
more effective in getting results.
So before you speak to people,
and leaders speak 15 to 20 and more times a day, ask yourself if you are
simply providing information or are you motivating those people to
motivate themselves to take action for results.
2. Create
motivational systems. Most operational leaders are good a systemizing
quality initiatives, cycle time, efficiencies, etc. But few understand
that some of the most important systems they can put into place are
systems that help people make the choice for motivation.
A particularly effective motivational system is one that saturates operations with "cause leaders."
Unquestionably,
people accomplish a task better if they are not simply doing it but
taking leadership of it instead. When we are challenged to take
leadership, we raise our performance to much higher levels. With that in
mind, create systems that identify cause leaders, challenge them to
take specific leadership action, and support those actions through
systematized training and resource allocations.
3. See results
not as an end but as a motivational process. Clearly, you have to get
results. But many operations leaders misunderstand what results are
about. I teach leaders the concept of achieving "more results faster
continually" — not by speeding up but instead by slowing down and
working less, by putting the motivational imperatives into practice.
Leaders understand the "more results faster" aspect — but they often
stumble when it comes to the "continually" aspect.
We can usually
order people to get more results faster. But we can't order people to
do it on a continual basis. That's where motivation comes in. Instead of
ordering people to go from point A to point B, say, we must have them
want to go from A to B. That "want to" is the heart of "continually."
When
we understand results this way, understand that we must achieve "more,
faster" on a continual basis, then we begin to make motivational
operations a way of life.
4. Challenge people to be motivational
leaders. The imperatives are powerful when you use them consistently.
But they are even more powerful when you have your leaders use them and
teach others to use them. After all, you alone can't create motivational
operations. You need others to help you do it, especially those
mid-level and small-unit leaders. If they are not putting the
imperatives into practice every day, your attempts to raise the
standards of operations to a consistently high motivational level will
falter.
Define the success of your leadership by how well your
leaders are leading, and you are well on your way to making motivational
operations a reality.
Once you begin to institute motivational
operations by applying the four imperatives, the law of Unfulfilled
Potential becomes your competitor's worry, not yours.
2005 © The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
PERMISSION
TO REPUBLISH: This article may be republished in newsletters and on web
sites provided attribution is provided to the author, and it appears
with the included copyright, resource box and live web site link. Email
notice of intent to publish is appreciated but not required: mail to:
brent@actionleadership.com.
The author of 23 books, Brent Filson's recent books are, THE
LEADERSHIP TALK: THE GREATEST LEADERSHIP TOOL and 101 WAYS TO GIVE GREAT
LEADERSHIP TALKS. He is founder and president of The Filson Leadership
Group, Inc. – and has worked with thousands of leaders worldwide during
the past 20 years helping them achieve sizable increases in hard,
measured results. Sign up for his free leadership ezine and get a free
guide, "49 Ways To Turn Action Into Results," at
www.actionleadership.com.
brent@actionleadership.com
