Sensible Motivation Strategies
Chief executives must get the best out of their staff—whatever their mentality. This webpage does not aim to be comprehensive, but to provide a guide for thinking, so sensible adjustments can be made to suit a specific organization.
Common errors:
- failing to combine motivation with control;
- assuming all employees are motivated by money;
- assuming money is purely a hygiene matter—i.e. the rate for the job.
Market-centred Employees
Financial rewards are particularly important for staff.
Risk: Lack of loyalty—the employee may join a competitor or set up a competing business.
Power-centred Employees
The ambition and drive to dominate and control is a useful but ancillary quality in a manager. A likelihood of bullying, irrationality, risk-taking and borderline dishonesty exists and this could be dangerous to the firm.
Risk: Creation of a sphere of near-absolute control—the employee may develop a fortified mini-empire within the organization.
Cause-centred Employees
Professionals dedicated to their discipline rather than to management are the most common staff. The challenge is to ensure they channel their energies in support of the business, at best seeing the business as an extension of their cause.
Risk: Splintering the organization—factional conflict, turf wars, and energy diverted to the promotion and defence of a profession can obstruct progress or even tear the organization apart.
Community-centred Employees
This class of employees will be found throughout the organization. They enjoy the social dimension of work and believe in achieving through teamwork.
Risk: Loss of focus on the task—energy tends to be put into people rather than into getting results.
Kinship-centred Employees
For those who put family welfare before work, ways should be found to bind them to the firm through family care.
Risk: Distraction—bringing family problems into the work place; using insider information to benefit the family.
Perspective-centred Employees
These employees will be recognized as «thinkers» in the organization. They restrain impulsiveness and seek to make dispassionate analyses. Their output informs debate and decision-making.
Risk: Overcomplicated outputs—so pragmatic action is inhibited or no-one reads or listens.
Reality-centred Employees
Such people are difficult to accommodate in any organization. They should either be restricted to advisory responsibilities or otherwise placed in a relatively isolated position where they are unlikely to destabilize or frighten others.
Risk: Telling the truth—leading to a disturbing awareness that essential values and goals are being violated for pragmatic, personal or corrupt reasons.
Recognizing Sector Differences
Private sector: Business attracts people. But because money is a necessity, and the private sector is (or should be) the largest employer, it attracts all other types as well.
Public sector: Services politically controlled and publicly funded attract Power-centred people. and Community-centred people may be well represented too; the former are attracted by working on something meaningful, and the latter are attracted by working on communal improvements. individuals are required in the upper reaches of a civil service.
Voluntary sector: Charitable organizations attract &/or Community-centred people, depending whether the body promotes a particular dogma or provides a social service. Some organizations have both qualities.
Ready for Intellectual Technologies?
If you have developed a good feel for the approaches and the logic of the TET layout, you are ready for the more complex applications of this framework.
Why not check yourself with this brief summary that short-cuts the review process.
The first major application is career-development. It should be suitable and helpful for you, wherever you may happen to be in your career at present. There is no best order for the other intellectual technologies: review the list and choose an order that works for you.
-
Return to the overview of business and markets.
Originally posted: July 2009