Stone Soup: Sustaining and Motivating During Change

ACMA Winter Conference

2:30 p.m. – 4:15 p.m.

Thursday, February 6, 2003

Sedona Arizona Hilton

Dr. Patrick Sherman Organizational Consultant

Facilitator University Faculty

former City Manager

Bill Pupo City Manager, City of Surprise

Wendy Kaserman Staff Assistant, League of Cities

Ryan Gregory Management Assistant, City of Phoenix

Panel/Audience Discussion

Meet the Panelists and Format

Prescriptions for Keeping a Motivated and Committed Workforce During (and Past) Times of Uncertainty

Motivation Theories and Differences

Generational Applications

Observations from Your Employees

Advice, Tools, and Prescriptions

Keeping Yourself and your Organization Motivated

Dr. Patrick Sherman

What People Are Not Motivated By...

People are Not Motivated by Money.

Can be Demotivator if perceived as unfair.

Factors that do not Motivate- Extrinsic Factors do not motivate

pay,

working conditions,

policies.

What People ARE Motivated By...

Factors that Motivate:– Personal growth opportunities, recognition,

responsibility, – communication, relationships. – social, esteem, self-actualization, – existence, relatedness, growth, – Needs and desires for achievement, exercise of

power, and for affiliation, – Specific and challenging goals and objectives with

good feedback and communication.

What People ARE Motivated By...

Different Scientists and Theories of Motivation Enforce and Reinforce the Same Patterns of Human Needs

• Maslow• McClelland• ERG• Goal Setting• Herzberg• McGregor

All relate to motivation being a factor of Recognition and Appreciation, Relationships and Communication, Self Development and Personal Growth, and Achievement and Responsibility.

Generational Impacts of Motivation

Motivational needs are different in different individuals and in different generations.

To be successful today you must Know your employees well enough to access the specific need that makes them tick, gives them passion, enhances their feeling of making a difference, makes them feel welcome and feel appreciated, and reinforces the reason they came to your organization in the good times.

Or Does This?

Generational MotivationTips

Veterans: honor hard work with tangible awards such as plaques as a symbolic record of accomplishment. Interact personally and be respectful and directive.

Boomers: Give public recognition,opportunities for them to prove their worth, ask for their input, and recognize long hours and sacrifice, allow them to question, give status symbols.

Gen Xer: Give constant constructive feedback, assign multiple types of projects, give them control over work priorities, give them flexible schedules, give constant training and development opportunities, let them utilize new technology.

Gen Y: learn about personal goals, educate and skill build, mentor and develop.

Common Themes: Flexibility, Training, Communication, Recognition

Resources to Help Manage and Motivate:

Geeks and Geezer’s: How Era, Values, and Defining Moments Shape Leaders (Bennis)

When Generations Collide: How to Solve the Generational Puzzle at Work (Lancaster)

Generations at Work: Managing the Clash of Veterans, Boomers, Xers and Nexters in Your Workplace (Zemke)

Managing Generation X (Tulgan)

1001 Ways to Energize Employees (Nelson)

First, Break All the Rules (Buckingham and Coffman)

“Organizational Eavesdropping”: Observations from your employees….

Over the past year I have taught 400 graduate students and consulted with organizations 3 states that represent thousands more.

Conversations are similar….and troubling for the future of public organizations and leadership….WE are out of touch with our employees….we just don’t get it….and employees are just waiting for the economy to turn around to bail out….

Common Themes from “Organizational Eavesdropping”• Telling not Empowering• Not Listening • Not enough flexibility• Have to ask permission• Fear of Risk• No real communication

Observations from your employees..

• Time at desk more important than producing• Not enough flex scheduling/telecommuting• No one says “thank you”• No recognition by boss. Recognition comes from coworkers.• Rules more important than outcomes• Not enough training•I don’t have input on training•I don’t have input on my career•Short term focus•No mentoring •No career development•Won’t let me make a difference•Work/life balance is a joke

Advice, Tools, and Prescriptions:Observations

We have a crisis in recognizing and appreciating employees.

A New “Organizational Disease” exists:

“TDD” or Thank-you Deficit Disorder

• Generational Differences of Veteran/Boomer managers not knowing or caring about how to relate to Xer’s exacerbate it.

• The words “Good job”, “Thank you” or “Tell me what you think” happen infrequently. They are not signs of manager weakness…They are signs of manager and organizational excellence.

– And it doesn’t cost a dime!

Advice, Tools, and Prescriptions: Recognition

Truisms from Non Gen Xers:

“Brains, like hearts, go where they are appreciated” - Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense

1961-1968 (Nelson, 1994, p. 89).

“Two things that people want more than sex and money are recognition and praise” - Mary Kay Ash, founder of Mary Kay

Cosmetics (Nelson, 1994, p. 9).

Advice, Tools, and Prescriptions: Recognition

In a study of 1,500 employees by Wichita State University, it was noted that the most powerful motivational technique was instant recognition. (Nelson, 1994)

A Kepner-Tregoe study indicates that only 40% of American workers say they receive recognition and that, “unless this issue is addressed, the goal of achieving a high-performance work place will be unattainable” (Kouzes & Posner, 1999, p. 5).

In my informal survey of working Masters students only 25% get enough recognition (Sherman, 2003).

Advice, Tools, and Prescriptions:Observations

Flexible Scheduling and Telecommuting are more politically correct inclusions into policies than organizational realities.

• Workers resent this lack of “walking the talk”, lack of trust, and lack of freedom to determine how they get the job done.

• We ask for more with less, but won’t allow workplace changes that can drive it.

Advice, Tools, and Prescriptions:Observations

We are becoming more “top down” and

“hierarchical” in management style, not less.• Under Stress we revert to old habits and training. • Do NOT become your fathers…we all know it doesn’t

work.

Communication is infrequent and mostly one way. • Manager’s do not know their employees and do not

make them feel needed. Feeling “needed” brings commitment, feeling expendable does not.

Advice, Tools, and Prescriptions:Keeping Yourself and your Organization Motivated

What we can do:• Say “thank you”daily if not hourly, and mean it.

• Build on relationships. Have “conversations” with employees to find out what makes them motivated…And then Act on what they tell you.

• Don’t cut development and training. Employees expect it, and it is a major motivator. People are doing jobs of former colleagues, telling them they cannot learn skills to allow them to be more efficient insults them.• To Gen X and Y taking away training and development

is foundational to their sense of worth and their future.

Advice, Tools, and Prescriptions:Keeping Yourself and your Organization Motivated•Be Flexible. More, not less, flex scheduling, telecommuting. Don’t resort to the 1960’s org.structure.

•Listen to your people. Ask them how they can be more productive and then do what they say.

•Find new work models: part timers, job sharing, retirees, partial retirement.

•Your Organization can resemble one of the following two models:

– Which will it be?

The De-motivated Organization

“Soulless bureaucracies dominate the workplace. They are just as common in the public as the private sector. Disconnection's abound within soulless bureaucracies. Management fervently clings to the hopeless belief that business is no place for humanness, that buying a person’s hand and head is more important than engaging a person’s heart and soul. Such workplaces deaden the spirits of workers everywhere” (Harris & Brannick, 1999)

The Motivated and Passionate Organization

“For those who believe passion falls into the realm of the touchy-feely, I want to summarize the tangible benefits it provides. Passion provides direction and focus, passion creates energy, passion fosters creativity, passion heightens performance, passion inspires action, passion attracts employees and customers, passion builds loyalty, passion unites an organization, passion provides a critical edge, passion brings the organization to a higher plane” (Chang, 2001).

Advice, Tools, and Prescriptions:Keeping Yourself and your Organization Motivated

Take Care of Yourself and Your Employees:

• Work smart. No “Tragedy of the Commons” • Question processes, not people. • Mentor, nurture, and grow. • Get out of the office and let your people out. • Neither Tyrants nor Dead men or women

live to enjoy their “80 points”.

Panel Discussion Themes:

Flexible Work

Recognition and Appreciation

Communication

Career Development

Work/Life Balance

Stone Soup: Sustaining and Motivating During Change

Dr. Patrick Sherman

Leadership, Organizational Development, & Human Resource Consulting

4443 N. 21st Place, Phoenix, AZ 85016

602-778-6577/928-587-8500

psherman10@msn.com