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Purpose, Autonomy, and Finally: Mastery

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

 By William Seidman

Dan Pink in Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us names autonomy, mastery and purpose as key factors in creating intrinsic motivation.

He describes them as equal, but Cerebyte’s experience is that purpose is the foundation for the other two. People are inspired and motivated by a sense of purpose — and it inspires them to put in the extra work that creates mastery.

In turn, purpose-driven mastery creates trust which allows organizations to provide autonomy.

Once in place, these factors are self-reinforcing, but they start with purpose.

Purpose is the positive deviant’s “social good” and is the foundation for motivating others.

Want to read Drive with a group? It’s the New Yorker Online Book Club’s March pick.

Posted in best practices, business, company culture, organizational change, organizational culture, positive deviance, positive deviants | No Comments »

Intrinsic Motivation: Doing Things Because They Matter

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

By William Seidman

I’m excited about Daniel Pink’s book Drive: The Surpising Truth About What Motivates Us.

Pink thinks “there’s a mismatch between what science knows and what business does.”  Intrinsic motivation, according to Pink, is what really motivates people. He calls autonomy, mastery, and purpose THE motivating forces, and the old carrot-and-stick approach “a lazy, dangerous ideology.”

Numerous good studies have shown that people want autonomy at work, and that it’s a better motivator than money. 

Drive is consistent with Cerebyte’s approach. We focus on the knowledge of an organization’s positive deviants. Social good is a powerful motivator for these workers. They’re driven from within and by the pleasure of doing things they care about — and that really matter, both to them and to their organization.

Posted in best practices, business, company culture, knowledge workers, organizational change, personal change, positive deviance, positive deviants | No Comments »

Changing Attitudes and Opening Closed Minds: Leaders Who Need Leadership

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

By William Seidman

We’re working on several leadership programs right now, leading an organization through a transformation.

We have built decent best practices that are different from the usual. We’ve been emphasizing “authenticity.”

When we talk about deploying the best practices, though, we get stuck.

After a lot of conversation and thought, we realized that the leaders who most need enhanced leadership capabilities are executives most convinced they are already great leaders. This mindset  is a good part of why they are powerfully resistant to considering their own need to grow and change.

Ironically, the best leaders are those who seek  out —  and are open to –  growth opportunities. They’re easy to work with but don’t need the development.

How do you you engage “leaders” who are so resistant to learning from others?

Posted in best practices, business, company culture, leadership, management consulting, organizational assessments, organizational change, personal change | No Comments »

The Art, Science, and Imperfectability of Organizational Change

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

By William Seidman

I’m working with one of our corporate customers to change their culture and business processes.

During ten weeks I’ve worked with 300 managers. The program has made incredible progress but isn’t complete.

I met with some of the key managers; some were disappointed in the progress we (and they) were making.  These managers said although they recognized that the company culture had changed for the better, some people hadn’t fully bought in.

How many people weren’t yet on board? 15 out of 300 — a pretty good ratio (95% success rate)  for any organization!         

Many managers have what I came to describe as an expectation of perfection. In their view, a change can be called successful only if it is total.

We talked about the progress that has been made and the imperfectability of change.

They relaxed and were able to see the good side. In fact, change that lasts is often slow and usually “imperfect,” but progress is definitely possible.

Posted in best practices, company culture, management consulting, organizational change, organizational culture | No Comments »

Headquarters versus The Field: Replace “versus” with “Working With” for Great Results

Monday, December 21st, 2009

By William Seidman

I’m working with a company that has both a very strong corporate headquarters culture and a very strong sales and field operations culture.  But these two vitally important parts – headquarters and sales — are often disconnected from one another and, even worse, at odds with what should be shared goals.

Headquarters designs programs that are forward-looking and innovative but, according to the people on the ground, are difficult to deploy.  The result is that the people in sales - in the field - are so focused on daily survival that they tend to produce great short-term financial results, but have neither the time nor the energy to learn new things.

Conflicts between headquarters and sales and operations result in good ideas from headquarters being derided as “fads of the week.” Often the innovative concept is discarded or, if the new idea is tried, immediate revenues may decline.

But when headquarters and the field align around a new idea, the synergy can be powerful.

How to get them to align?  Headquarters needs to be more aware of what’s really going on in the field and adjust programs to fit these conditions.  Headquarters must reduce its constant pressure for immediate numbers. The field has to be given support for learning something new. This takes time and often results in lagging numbers.

Both changes in behavior are difficult for executives to manage because they require everyone to take some risks.

Cooperating for a change can be nerve-wracking for companies since it simultaneously puts immediate revenue and the future at risk. But our experience has shown us that this cooperation ultimately produces great results.

Posted in best practices, business, company culture, getting change to "stick", management consulting, optimization, organizational change | No Comments »

Talent, Ideas, and Patience: So Many Great Ideas Take Time to Pay Off

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

 By Rick Grbavac

Jim Clifton, CEO and Chairman of Gallup,  comments in The Gallup Management Journal :

“In the world we’re competing in now, solving problems isn’t about spending money. It’s about understanding and managing ideas and talent — and states of mind. That’s where the new leadership breakthroughs will be. Leaders who can quantify states of mind and make decisions about their constituencies based on that information are the ones who will lead the world.”  

This makes perfect sense to me.  But when he goes on to say that companies have maxed all of the benefits of performance improvement ideas, I think he has been sitting in his office a little too much. I think leaders have a tendency to want to talk about the next shiny ball and have trouble staying with good ideas that just take time to fully pay off. 

The idea of tapping into the ideas, beliefs and actions of the 1 in 10,000 is exactly the right idea.  He just left off the part about getting the other 9,999 to embrace those ideas and truly elevate performance.

Posted in best practices, business, company culture, leadership, management consulting, optimization, organizational culture | No Comments »

Re-energize and Passion-up: When Good Female (and Male) Managers Want Out

Friday, October 9th, 2009

By Rick Grbavac

Smart women in management make companies stronger and keeping them requires concentrated programs. This comes from the research that economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett performed in preparing her newest book, Top Talent: Keeping Performance Up When Business Is Down. In tough times, “high-powered women were more than twice as likely as men - 84 percent compared with 40 percent - to be seriously thinking” of leaving their companies.

In her article “Are Your Best Female Employees a Flight Risk?” Hewlett asserts that women were not thinking about leaving to spend more time with their families but, rather, because “they no longer felt challenged by or passionate about their work.” So companies such as Intel and Johnson and Johnson have created programs to address issues directly related to their senior management women. 

The idea in the article that jumped out at me was the idea of women managers losing their passion. I don’t think that this is a problem only for women executives. All knowledge workers from time to time need to re-energize and passion-up. The lull in business activity over the past year weighs heavily on all of us. It is time to re-vision, energize yourself and passion-up for this economic recovery.

Posted in best practices, company culture, employee retention, employee turnover, knowledge workers, management consulting, organizational culture | No Comments »

Transformative Change’s “Ah-ha!” Moment

Monday, September 28th, 2009

By William Seidman

In setting a goal of transformative organizational change, management typically goes out and presents sweeping images of the future, which people tend to regard as meaningful but distant. We continue to work toward these changes until, finally, there’s a moment when it isn’t so distant: the transformation is  palpable or, even, visible.

Then there’s that moment when each person knows the change is real — and it really hits them.

This has happened to me twice in the last few weeks. A service person was going along fine until she hit an “avoid” section of her old program that told her that a key aspect of her program was being obsoleted.

She just froze. She couldn’t believe it.

The other was a senior manager who was reviewing the summary portion of our persuasive technology. When he got to the portion that would be summarized to him, he realized that this was for real. He was going to be holding others accountable for a significant change, but he was going to be accountable, too.

For both of them, there was a moment of terror.

Ultimately, this was good because the terror happened in safe environment and could be worked out.

But the moment of the realization was very clear and specific and not always completely comfortable. It’s an important part of the process and something we prepare for and support.

Posted in business, company culture, getting change to "stick", management consulting, organizational change, training | No Comments »

From Transactional to Transformational: Teaching People to Think Big

Sunday, September 27th, 2009

By William Seidman

I’ve been working  on trying to make a transformation inside two organizations that are focused on the transactional.  In fact, they’ve been completely transactional: driven by tactical, daily transactions - daily orders, daily service requests. They quite literally have been pedaling as fast as they can.

One is a sales organization, the other is a service organization. Each would like to change its culture to one that emphasizes sustained client relationships.  

Organizational psychologist Ron Riggio’s distinction between the transactional and the transformational applies to organizations, too.

The direct customer contact people like the idea of becoming transformational because transformational jobs are much more interesting than transactional jobs.. The managers are having a hard time; most became managers because they were better at transactions than their peers.

Now they are being asked to lead a transformation - and they don’t know what to do; they keep trying to convert things back to transactions, which block the change to a transformational environment.

Our challenge is to help transactional people to become transformational people, because only then can lasting change occur.

Posted in best practices, company culture, getting change to "stick", management consulting, organizational change, personal change | No Comments »

Inspired and Energized by Positive Deviants

Sunday, September 20th, 2009

By William Seidman

“Positive Deviance is based on the observation that in every community there are certain individuals or groups whose uncommon behaviors and strategies enable them to find better solutions to problems than their peers, while having access to the same resources and facing similar or worse challenges.”  — The Positive Deviance Initiative

It’s such a pleasure to work with positive deviants: they have energy and great ideas, and are consistently positive about themselves, their clients, and their company. It’s an energetic optimism stemming not from a Pollyanna view, but from intelligence, creativity,  and clear thinking.

Someone then asked me how positive deviants effect change in an organization:

* Their positive energy excites others
* Their customer-focus makes others more client-centric
* Their efficiency at managing their work sets a great example
* Their experiences in becoming so great are a path for others

Positive deviants really are the best resource for companies who want to improve. Are you listening to yours?

Posted in best practices, company culture, organizational assessments, organizational change, organizational culture | No Comments »

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