Psychologists Teresa Amabile and Steven J. Kramer interviewed more than 600 managers and found a shocking result: 95 percent of managers misunderstood what motivates employees. It turns out, employees seek the feeling of making progress every day toward a meaningful goal! Amiable and Kramer highlight in their Harvard Business Review article that “By supporting progress in meaningful work, managers improve employees inner work lives and the organisations performance.”
It starts with your strategy. Your POAP (Plan on a Page), the simple, powerful depiction of your goals and vision for the next 12-24 months. If you dont have one, then maybe stop reading here, book in with us and we will introduce you to a method of planning that will have you dreaming again, finding your fire again… If you have one, read on!
Here are four things you could consider doing to fire up your team for 2023.
Your strategy should be a delight to consume!
In my hometown of Cunnamulla lies a house that is nearly 100 years old, it is the one I grew up in. Every night for dinner my brother and I were made to sit at the table and eat whatever was put on the plate. It was a hit and miss scenario in terms of whether the ‘tea’ would be a delight to consume. If on occasion there were items such as cabbage or broccoli my brother and I knew just what to do. You see there was a hole in the wall next to our place at the table, much to his satisfaction my brother was most often next to the hole. If ‘tea’ was not consumable, if it wasn’t a delight to consume, guess what? Down the hole it went!
Similarly, what are you serving to your employees and is it a delight or should it be thrown down the hole? A black and white table of lame KPI’s is not a delight! Four meaningful values with some powerful statements and directions can be a delight to consume. It captures attention. This type of strategy can be like the sweet espresso first thing in the morning. The cream to the strawberries if you will. The bbq wings to my first beer at Friday knock offs as it were! Is your strategy being consumed or thrown down the hole like the cabbage from the 12 year old’s dinner plate?
Your strategy should be accessible, available, unavoidable!
Put your hand up if your strategy is up in the lunch room, next to the laminated note to staff advising the cleaning fairies are on holidays?
If you hand is up, that isn’t bad, good effort! Next steps include:
– Do a special event/announcement to unveil the strategy
– Do a roadshow to speak at every location/site and talk through the strategy and what it means for people
– Get it into your teams feed and invite discussion, create a poll, ask some questions
– Develop a page on your Sharepoint or add it to your existing Sharepoint news feed
– Involve others – invite dialogue, questions, feedback
– Speak about it at toolbox talks, stand up meetings
– Use it as an anchor for management meetings
If you do even half of these suggestions you will have made great efforts in cascading the strategy to all areas of your business.
Review, Respond and Re-fire!
Not every strategy will be for every season of your business. While I don’t advocate for changing a 24 month strategy 4 months in, I am a fan of a good old fashion review! That allows you to respond and re-fire where required.
What this means practically is:
- Creating a culture of open dialogue where managers have a platform to provide feedback (Review Meetings)
- Embedding social norms in the business that see actions just as important as strategies
- Allowing our spirits to lift. What I mean is, allowing excitement, a little crazy to seep in, the fire.
Depend on your leadership team
If you have a management team working for you, rely on them to fire keep the strategy fire stoked. There is a significant opportunity here for them to take ownership over respective portfolios, report on the status of these and the degree to which the business is achieving the goals you set.
Some tips to operationalise the above statement:
- Create a quarterly management meeting with a distinct agenda aligned to the strategy you have in place
- Handover portfolio responsibilities to each management meeting member and require a report for them to deliver in their agenda item
- If you are a sole trader, invite several trusted colleagues to engage in a similar process with you
- Where there are distinct lack of or drops in progress, present possible reasons why and several options for addressing them
- Take down the actions and ensure the actions are revisited at the next meeting
If you put this type of process in place you are likely to see a level of commitment, ownership from managers. The outcome you are looking for is that where there is ownership there is motivation. Your managers are the exact people who can and should help you to keep the strategy fire stoked in your business.