Leadership
In many office environments and sometimes in movies “management” is usually looked down upon. Credit never goes to the people that create the strategy and guide the teams, unless you are the actual founder or the creator. This lack of understanding is what makes a lot of people wonder. What is the actual value of management anyway?
Well it depends – I just read a wonderful book “ High Output Management” by Andy Grove and he answers the very essence of this question. Not only is leadership required even at a small breakfast place but essential to the success of any organization or business. A lot of the concepts I use in this article are borrowed from the book. If you want to learn in detail from this legendary CEO, I would highly recommend its purchase.
Let us break that down, shall we?
Thinking in terms of sports
Even with the best players on a team, we know that without proper coaching, teams will not be able to succeed. Take the US all star hockey team of the 1980’s they lost to the Russian national team, however a group of amateur college players beat them at the final of the olympics to grab the gold medal. Yes, it is true that sometimes the players are beyond capable where coaching may not make a difference but, in real life most teams do not have amazing talent laying around, and need to make a difference even with the most mediocre players. Business follows the same ideology.
Motivation
For anything in life we need to have a direction, a goal, a destination. Once we know where we are going, there are a few things we need to take into account:
- How fast do we want to get there?
- And what are our constraints?
- If time is our only concern then we need to worry about 2 other factors: cost and scope.
- For example
- If we want to create a travel web application/
- Fully operational in 6 months.(TIME)
- We need to think about cost- how many resources do I have to reach this destination. If I say I can afford to have 5 people.
- The next constraint is how much work I can give those 5 people to utilize them to their full capacity.
- If we want to create a travel web application/
Given what we know we have to also make a few assumptions: In order for people to perform at their peak, do they have the skills necessary to do the job? It is critical to understand this, since you will not be able to gain the output necessary if people do not have the skills to perform. OK so for simplicity sake, everyone knows what they are doing. Back to the question: how do you motivate them to do more, and increase their productivity?
People motivate themselves by needs, the need to have a house, food, and security, social needs, this was first introduced by Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The thing is once a need is satisfied, it is no longer a source of motivation. OK again back to the question, say my team has met all of their basic needs, how do I motivate them? Well simple by creating needs that are unsatisfied at all times.
How can leaders accomplish this? They need to first create an environment that meets all of the basic needs- meaning if we look at Maslow’s pyramid, the needs are met up until self-actualization. Once at this stage we need to create intrinsic needs: (from within)
- Purpose
- Mastery
- Autonomy
These needs have been proven to outpaced the majority of external motivation, such as pay or fear. Thinking in terms of sustainability, you can motivate a team to do something fast, with external factors such as money or other rewards, but if you want productivity that is sustained and steady then you need to move to motivation 3.0 ( introduced in the book Drive by Daniel H Pink)
For you team,
The purpose is the mission you set out for your application to have, the value it will bring and the impact it will have.
For mastery will be how the individual will gain expertise in the technology and become better over time.
Lastly, for autonomy you are not controlling how the work is being done, as long as it is, you are allowing the employee the freedom to perform in the best environment they please.
