Whenever any change programme is initiated there are always those people who are enthusiastic early adopters of change. These are the same people that go out and buy the latest gadget, even though the reviews say that it will be full of bugs and that you would be much wiser to wait for the second release. Equally there are those people who will always be against any kind of change, even when the benefits of such change are completely obvious. But in reality the vast majority of people don’t really care about change as long as they are not adversely affected and that they have backed the winner.
Most people’s lives are not based around their careers, but are based around their families and their relative well being. So the fact that you want to restructure the company, create a shared service, outsource, implement a new system or change the way the company’s procedures operate is of no interest as long as two things are not threatened – their level of income and their security of employment. Most people work to live, i.e. to ensure that they and their families live in a state of relative comfort. They do not want to be the CEO of the company; they don’t have a career plan and equally they don’t want to become famous for leading the revolution against management. But they do not want to be seen to have backed a lost argument. So it should be fully expected that when the new programme is announced that most people will not respond in any demonstrable way. They will wait to see how things progress and will only become a follower when they see success being delivered.
Many companies will try to incentivise people with financial bonuses based on achieving set milestones. There is no doubt that this will have a short term positive effect on results, but study after study ever since Maslow has shown that money on its own is not an effective or sustainable long term motivator. It is very tempting to offer someone a pay rise to stop them from leaving the organisation, but the truth is that once someone has decided to resign their heart is no longer in the project or the mission. Emotionally they have moved on so even if they accept the pay rise you have only postponed the evil day.
And the more an individual is paid the more true this becomes. Most people can remember a time when they got their monthly pay cheque and then had to ration out payments, prioritising those companies that would take the roof off your head versus those who would not. If you are in this situation and your boss offers you a 10% pay rise then it’s probably going to be very significant to you. On the other hand if you have passed the point where you have to worry about paying the bills every month that same 10% pay rise is less likely to make a significant impact on your lifestyle. This increases the likelihood that more of your judgements will be influenced by non-monetary factors like how much you enjoy your job or how your job enables you to live the lifestyle that you want or whether you consider your job to be the pinnacle of your career or a mere stepping stone to that goal. Bosses often get this wrong and end up overpaying people to do jobs that they eventually leave anyway. This is not to discount money as a motivator, but it is unlikely to be completely effective unless there are other levers at play.
If you speak to most people who have been involved in a successful change programme they will acknowledge that there may have been long hours involved, lots of tense discussions and even a few arguments but they usually enjoyed the whole process and got a massive kick out of succeeding. There are even some people who don’t want to go back to the normal routine after the project is complete and want more of the change drug. There are now many people out there who have made a profession out of leading these types of change programmes without having any desire to do line roles or to end up as the boss of an entire company.
There will always be those who are ambitious for promotion and titles. Money is not their primary motivator. They will see a change programme as an opportunity to shine in front of others. Just like the majority of people mentioned earlier, they may not care about the goals of the programme but they fully understand how their star could rise as a result of the programme being successful and them being associated with that success.
And lastly there are those out there who simply want to do the right thing. This is usually a very small minority who will continue to do what they believe is best without any reward at all. These are the type of people who are often fantastic in either public service or charitable situations. They don’t care about reward or glamour. As a result, in the general business world, these people can be passed over for promotions and pay rises since employers don’t feel under pressure to keep these people. They are just taken for granted. This is a great shame since these individuals are most likely to be recognised as role models. So mistreating role models does not do much to encourage others to emulate their behaviour.
Since there are many different types of people in the organisation with many different personal drivers it would not be correct to assume that one framework of motivation will drive all individuals toward the organisational goal. It is incumbent on managers to recognise the way individuals can be motivated and to extract the best performance from all the team. Incentivisation is not always about money and does not always have a linear relationship with the scale of achievement. In one environment operators were given low value shopping vouchers for achieving financial targets. That scheme was very successful since it tapped in to people’s pride in winning something. There are other cases of very well paid people feeling very de-motivated because they lack a sense of achievement or purpose. So one size does not fit all and there is no magical formula for managers to understand who fits in the correct box. But the more experienced and emotionally aware managers will be much better at identifying the various traits and playing to the correct strengths.
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