Motivating Staff Morale - What Managers Ignore

I have been following an interesting debate over assessing motivation of employees, taking place on a social networking forum. These days almost all employers use some form of motivational assessment tools, psychometric tests, etc., to assess how a potential employee or manager’s primary motivation for seeking a job fits into the organisation’s values, culture and mission. However, even after rigourous processes of selection to calibrate the motivation of a new recruit, it is not uncommon to find recruiting managers complaining they don’t know there they went wrong. Or even the new recruit complaining that he/she does not think that they can work long in the organisation.

I have recently spent about two weeks with some highly motivated aid workers in Haiti who are doing their work to help the people affected by the earthquake earlier this year. Having met over a hundred of them, their commitment, mission and motivation to simply help the people left me amazed. These are a bunch of people who aren’t motivated by money or comfort or name and fame. External stimuli are less important to them than what they feel internally – their own sense of achievement, of being of service to people less fortunate than them. And they were working for some of the most amazing organisations on this planet whose record of service to humanity have been unparalleled.

It therefore surprises me to find that even when an individual’s, motivation and values were fully aligned to an organisation’s, after a while, many of the same staff and managers feeling that this wasn’t what they initially started with – the highly motivated individual or the-my-type-of-organisation thinking.

The problem is that during recruitments, both the candidates and recruiters, are looking at what motivate the individual. All the assessment tools and tests are geared towards that. The tools work at the level of conscious choices or patterns we follow. But human minds also work at sub-conscious levels, which sometimes some of us don’t even dig into. Consciously, I may be fully open to receive feedback, positive or negative, from my manager, and subconsciously I feel demotivated when I receive negative feedback from my manager in a certain way. The selection tools put lot of emphasis on what motivates us, but not enough to understand – for both the new staff and the recruiters – what factors could demotivate (i.e., what motivates one ‘away from’ something) an individual. When recruiting, managers look at individual patterns of motivation, but  when dealing with factors that demotivate, the same manager then falls back on organisational (generic, common) approaches to dealing with the individuals – salaries, best practices etc. Managers/organisations simply do not know how to handle individual differences in what keeps one from being demotivated.   

Rebuilding Haiti – The Big Challenge Ahead

This week and the next I am in Haiti. It is a little over four months since the devastating earthquake took over 200,000 lives and destroyed most of whatever infrastructure existed in this impoverished city of Port au Prince. It is a daunting task, rebuilding a city, rebuilding houses, and bringing life back to some semblance of normalcy. Over one and a quarter million people still in tents, life is hard for everybody, despite the relief efforts of all the aid organisations which have been working hard since the first day of the disaster.

Just to give you a sense of how people are living, imagine sleeping inside a plastic tent, closed on all sides, with some small ventilation; the tent size is just enough to accommodate a single bed, and a small shelf where you can store your personal belongings; water is from a common source about 50 metres away from where you live; toilets and bathing facilities are common, and there are over three hundred people living in the compound where you live; the temperature during the day is around 45 degrees Celsius. Fortunately there is electricity, but no fans. And you are living there for the past four months.

That’s exactly where I am staying with over three hundred of staff and volunteers from an international humanitarian organisation which is one amongst over a hundred organisations in Haiti, helping rebuild the country.

Now change the picture to this: there are over nine thousand people living in your compound instead of 300; water is about 150-200 metres from where you live, and for each source of water, there are about five hundred people who queue up for it, there is one toilet for about 800 people, and one bath for 500 people; your tent is one of the two thousands in an area the size of an average football stadium. And you have no jobs, no livelihoods, and you are relying on handouts from friends and charities to survive from day to day.

This is exactly how people are living here in Port-au-Prince, over one million of them.

Unfortunately, they will continue to live like this for some time to come. Despite the fact that billions of dollars are available for rebuilding this country, and money is not in short supply.

Therein lies the tragedy of Haiti.

It is estimated that nearly 700,000 houses were destroyed by the earthquake, over three-quarters of this in the capital city. Houses that were destroyed and collapsed need clearing of the site for rebuilding to take place. And clearing rubbles is a painstaking operation when you have two houses in a row destroyed and one adjoining one remaining intact. The streets are small even for a small car, and moving heavy machinery is simply not possible. Then the question comes where do you dump the billion tonnes of rubbles? Things would have been easy if people could be provided alternative land where fresh constructions could begin. Now imagine, if one-third of London is destroyed, where in London would you find new land for these people? You can ship them to Scotland or Manchester, but how many of these people will live there where they can find no employment, no jobs, no businesses?

The problem in Haiti is the same – all businesses and jobs are in Port-au-Prince, and except for some very marginal farming, there virtually is no other livelihoods opportunity outside of the city of Port of Prince. And even there, before the earthquake, it was only a lucky minority that found employment. And the rest lived on hope of finding an employment.

This disaster has been unique. I have seen several dozens of big disasters in all parts of the world in the past two decades – never have a million people so severely affected in a single city with such a high density population.  In this situation, what should the aid agencies do? They have the money, they have the will to do it, but they don’t know where to build the house. Nobody has the answer: should aid agencies build houses wherever they can find land and hope that people will move there? Or should they focus on creating jobs and providing livelihoods instead, hoping that once people have jobs, people will find a solution to their housing problem?

We would like to hear your thoughts – if you have ideas, do share them with us. There are several billion dollars of funds available, there are one million people who lost homes and livelihoods and their near and dear ones. And no easy answers yet.  

Non-profit Leadership – Three Lessons to Learn from Businesses©

Results in non-profits organisations have always been vague. Traditionally, to be seen as legitimate and worthy of our support, all that a non-profit had to demonstrate was its commitment to a cause. It would get rewarded (support, donations, funding from donors and governments) for what it represented, and that support was based on what it promised, rather than performance or results.

In the business sector, an organisation is rewarded based only on its performance or results it delivers in terms of profits, market share, stock prices, employment created, and similar measurable indicators which underpin the core purpose of the business. The core purpose of non-profits is often defined in terms which do not make them amenable to be broken down into success criteria. How do you measure the success of an organisation which defines its core purpose as removing poverty, or meeting the healthcare needs of the vulnerable population?

The core purpose of an organisation is to answer the question -- why does the organisation exist at all? This is different from defining goals or objectives at a particular point in time. In the non-profits, the core purpose is taken for granted by successive generation of leaders. This is partly due to the reason that the core purpose is often defined so broadly that it becomes axiomatic that the core purpose makes absolute sense, no matter what changes may have happened in the external environment. Who can question the fact that poor exist, and that they need help, or that poor people’s healthcare needs are not being met, and hence there is a need to address these?

So goes the thinking.

However, if you pause for a moment, and ask the question: what is the best way to help the poor? As the noted Economist, Milton Friedman, argued over three decades ago, the best way to help the poor is to help them become richer. If the core purpose of a non-profit was defined in this language, you could measure the performance in terms of wealth created, income raised, assets increased etc. This would also enable the organisation to define a clear and compelling vision, while simultaneously enabling it to measure and track its performance.

However, non-profits have historically shied away from such specifics, and donor and supporters (customers) are expected to take the organisations for who they are, what they represent, and what they promise, not what they deliver.

This paradigm is slowly shifting. There is increasing pressure now on non-profits to deliver and demonstrate results. Many donors have now been supporting businesses to undertake activities which were normally delivered in the past by the non-profit sector. Corporate social responsibility is breaking new ground in terms of how companies engage with society. Caring for the society and the vulnerable is no longer the preserve of the governments and the non-profits.

It is heartening to see that some of the corporate giants have moved beyond their corporate social responsibility, and started redefining the core purpose of their businesses. PepsiCo is reshaping relationships between business and society. PepsiCo is examining the health implications of its products, it’s partnership with governments and NGOs, and initiating approaches to empower the younger generation to take responsibility early in their careers. It has launched a partnership with Waste Management Inc. to create innovative public recycling kiosks offering incentives for consumers to deposit empty bottles and cans. The company has been running a competition to find the best not-for-profit organisations whose social innovations can solve significant world problems.

Procter & Gamble is another company which now defines its stated purpose as improving “the lives of the world's consumers, now and for generations to come." In 2009, the company launched a new business strategy, called "purpose-inspired growth" to "improve more lives in more places more completely." In smaller organisations, too, entrepreneurs are creating businesses that reflect their social and environmental values shaping the core purpose. Anita Roddick’s Body Shop’s involvement in activism and campaigning for environmental and social issues including involvement with Greenpeace and The Big Issue are well known. In 1990, Roddick founded Children On the Edge, a charitable organisation which helps disadvantaged children in Eastern Europe and Asia. These are a few examples. There are thousands others. As espoused by C. K. Prahalad in his widely acclaimed book ‘The Fortune at The Bottom of The Pyramid’, the business case for making poverty eradication a core business of businesses is immense.

Non-profit leaders need to demonstrate a stronger appreciation of these changes happening globally, and realise that they can not take their donors and public support for granted – mere good intentions and promises which sustained them in the past are not enough any longer. One of the reasons why the non-profit sector globally has been steeped in a static mode of thinking is the (perceived) success non-profits have had in the past. Despite not having clear measures and benchmarks to achieve, there is no denying that some of the work done by non-profits have made immense impacts on the lives of millions of people all over the world. However, future cannot be seen as an extrapolated extension of the past.

There are three critical issues non-profit leaders of today and future generations ought to grapple with, drawing lessons from the business sector:

1. Redefine the Core Purpose: Although the needs of the poor and vulnerable remain as they were in the past, organisations still need to examine the rationale for their existence and the special and specific contributions it makes. Core purpose needs re-visiting continually to make sure the organisation remains at the cutting edge of delivering what it intends to deliver.

2. Define Performance Measures and Tangible Success Indicators: It is important to realise that if your core purpose remains fudgy and vague (‘helping the poor’), the organisation will never know if and when it achieves its purpose. Clearer the core purpose, clearer the goals and objectives the organisation delivers, and the organisation knows when and how it is delivering these.

3. Know Your New Competitors: Non-profits need to know that they are no longer competing with themselves. The new businesses and enterprises are setting new benchmarks which have potential to transform the entire non-profit sector landscape for the better. These offer new opportunities for collaboration.

If You Want Success, Be Prepared to Burn All Your Bridges©

We live in an age of options and choices. The more the merrier. Right from childhood, I grew up believing what I was told – ‘always make sure you keep all options open, whether it be what field choose to study or in your career’. Looking back over my career, some of my most successful moments came when I was pushed against the wall and had no choice left. Over fifteen years ago, having worked for a large charity in several countries, I decided to launch myself into consulting work. I spent days visualising and planning my career as a consultant which I knew I would love doing. However, when it came to taking action, I could not bring myself to take the plunge as the uncertainty of starting a consulting business on my own was too much of a risk. My reasonably comfortable job which brought an assured paycheque every month was a strong attraction, although I was trying to take gradual steps towards my launch. To leave my job I needed to make sure that I had obtained enough work for at least the first 8-12 months.

That moment, however – the day I would have enough work in my hand before quitting - remained elusive even after five years of planning. Meanwhile I changed job and started working for another organisation, in a position which brought me still bigger paycheque. The idea of consulting career was still lurking in the back of my mind. However, the right moment to quit and launch into a new career remained elusive for another year. Things then started to take a turn for the worse in my job. After a brief honeymoon period in the new organisation, I became increasingly frustrated with what I was doing. I did not quite like the working culture of the organisation, and my own performance on the job left both me and my employer dissatisfied. It soon came to a point where I knew it was pointless to continue there. I also realised I did not want to get back to the kind of job I was doing in the previous organisation. Further, I feared, having changed job only a year ago, putting myself back on the job market was hardly going to do my career a favour.

This is when my idea of launching my consulting business took a grip. I did not want to continue where I was working, I believed my chances of finding another interesting job were slim – if for nothing else, my relationship with my then employer meant that I would have difficulty even getting a good reference. In other words, I had burnt all my bridges – I could no longer rely on another employer to give me a paycheque every month.

It took me only another two weeks to quit my job. I still had no assignment in hand, had no idea where my first assignment would come from. I even did not have a business plan for my consulting business, but I knew whenever I would have one it would be great. It took another six to eight weeks before I registered my company, had a business plan, and had a loan for £ 40,000 from a bank – my consulting business was launched. I had no idea how I was going to repay the loan, but I knew I needed this to make sure that at least I didn’t have to worry about cash flow, and I also knew by then that I would make a good success of the consulting business.

Fortunately, I did not have to regret these decisions even once in the last eight years.

I have often wondered since then, what made me take this risk – with a family of three children to look after - when I could have continued to have a reasonably comfortable risk-free job, fetching me an assured income?

It lay in making the switch in my mind from having a goal of setting up a consulting business to making it a MUST – convincing myself that I had no other option except to set up a consulting business. I was not prepared to find myself or accept another job. I made my level of expectation a ‘MUST’.

As I think about it, I begin to realise that whatever I have achieved in my life has been the result of the level of acceptance I set for myself. I have ever only got what I was prepared to accept, not what I expected.

Managing Staff Morale during Organisational Change

Managing change is always a tricky challenge for a leader, whether you are considering a small change to specific processes within the organisation, or an organisation-wide change involving restructuring. It is common for staff and managers to feel insecure and intimidated by any change, no matter how clearly this is articulated by the leadership. If change processes get protracted, this leads loss of staff morale.

Communicating a vision for change is much more than articulating the rationale for it. Logical explanations and fancy PowerPoint presentations do not reassure people’s feelings of insecurity, nor uplift their poor morale. Many organisations, during such periods of change, design incentives and rewards – like tangible rewards for certain achievements, family events for staff, special ‘thank you’ cards – for staff. Good leaders know that even these tangible incentives do not change matters when morale is low, and uncertainty is on the horizon.

Morale is to do with what is called state, i.e., how people feel internally. Think of it like this: some mornings we get up from bed and feel very low - if you ask yourself the reason, there probably isn’t any rational one behind it. The same goes with collective feelings - although consciously people may be 'going along' with the organisation's flow, there may be something that puts people in a 'low state', feeling low in confidence, low energy and low in enthusiasm. To deal with this, you need leaders to understand and acknowledge that low morale is to do with 'state' -- not material benefits -- and this can be addressed by only two things:

(a) showing (not just telling them) people a future state, with illustration and examples and vivid stories of how good or great things will be once the changes happen, stories they can connect to; and

(b) making people visualise what great contribution /role each of the staff will make to move the organisation forward.

Does this mean that each staff need to be reassured that their jobs will not change (or disappear), or that it will be business as usual? Absolutely not. What people value in a change process is that they are not disempowered, personally and professionally. Successful change processes, even when they require painful readjustment, put emphasis on personal growth and learning for staff which strengthens their self-confidence and self-esteem.

In brief, low or high morale is to do with how people feel their life /work is of value to others. Good leaders know how to positively contribute towards making people feel valued and empowered.