Posts Tagged ‘managers in 21st century’
- Image via Wikipedia
I’m not moving until I can see the cheese
And Google is not coming without lots of keywords. This post is about MOTIVATION and all the misunderstandings and controversies that seem to swirl about us endlessly.
1 Motivation is distance to your goal
The mouse runs faster when it sees the cheese!
Motivation is not constant. We aren’t motivated by cheese. We are motivated by distance to the cheese.
Motivation gets stronger when we can see what we want and our goal comes tantalizing closer as we move toward it.
2 Motivation blinds us
When the mouse sees the cheese, it moves towards it . . . and the mouse trap.
That’s why business people and politicians like greedy people! So easy to dazzle. So easy to trap.
3 Motivation is never so strong that we ignore a better cheese
So we put the cheese where the mouse can see it, and the mouse takes off . . . Will it keep going, no matter what?
Yes, . . . unless we put a better cheese next to a dull cheese, or a duller cheese a little closer. Our mouse is as fickle as the English weather. It doesn’t matter whose day it spoils, the mouse will go where it is easier or better.
We make rapid calculations about what we will gain and change direction in a flash!
4 Motivation makes us stupid
Yet, when someone moves the cheese, we are temporarily confused. The trouble is that seeing the cheese focused our attention. And we forgot everything else. We forgot that other cheese exists. We forgot there are other routes to the cheese.
Take away the cheese suddenly, and we get cross and disoriented. Though there are plenty of alternatives, for a moment we can’t see them or remember them.
5 Motivation needs to be simple
And if we put two equally attractive cheeses in opposite directions, one to the left and one to the right, we get a confused mouse.
Come on cats, now is your chance.
Worse, if two or more mice are discussing which way to go, we may be there all week.
We need to toss two coins – the first to see if we go together or in different directions, and the second to see which way we go. Most times we just argue. We don’t think of laying out the problem so tidily. Two cheeses – we can have one or the other. Shall we go together or not? If not, who goes first and in which direction? If we are going together, in which direction?
Action is hard . . .
We can’t move, we won’t get moving, until our choices are simple and the end is in sight. We are easily distracted by alternatives and paralyzed by thought.
. . . and action it is also dangerous
We are easily entrapped by our greed – or to be kind to ourselves – easily engaged by the plain fun of scampering towards our cheese and wolfing it down.
Someone has to manage the cheese
We do have to work hard to keep the cheese-system simple and to fend off distractions. While we are busy managing the cheese, we make ourselves vulnerable because we are just as blinkered in that goal as the cheese-chasers are by the cheese-chase.
So we need people to manage the people who manage the cheese
This is beginning to sound like a nursery-rhyme.
We do need lookouts to watch out for when we are getting blinkered.
We also need our lookouts to challenge us and to ask why we need to chase this cheese at all? Well, the answer is as always, for the fun of it. We’ll chase something, just for the fun of it. So, the question is which cheese will we chase? And who will be sufficiently above the action to referee the debate and not get blinded by the thrill of the chase?
We do need some people to manage the people who manage the people who chase the cheese. That will be their job, their only job. Because if they get involved in the action, they will be blinkered too. We will give them their share of the cheese if they ask us, over and over again, whether we should be chasing the cheese at all.
We must have these people. Or the cats will have us
Work psychology: 2008 AD
Posted on: November 11, 2008
Do you know what work psychologists do?
Thirty-one years ago, I decided to study psychology. And for 28 years, I have practiced as a work psychologist. Can you imagine my surprise when some readers said this blog was their first encounter with my esteemed trade? So what do we do?
What do we do all day?
I love being a work psychologist and I think it is important for you to know I go to my ‘office’ every day with a spring in my step, looking forward to the people I will meet during the course of the day. Most of our lives are spent ‘on the road’. We usually work at our clients’ factories and offices, and we need strong arms to carry around briefcases laden with confidential papers. When you see us, we are likely to be taking part in some HR exercise – recruitment, selection, or team-building, say. When you don’t see us, we will be reconciling paperwork, doing computer work, or talking to senior managers about the direction of the company, and ways to organize, lead, up skill, confront challenges, and look after each other.
Why do clients hire us?
We deal with the pulse of the organization. Ideally, we want everyone to enjoy their work as much as we do. There is fascination in what we do, but little mystery. Our understanding of how organizations work has grown in leaps and bounds over the last 100 years. The last ten years have been particularly interesting as the limits of old ‘mechanical’ organizations have been reached and we’ve begun to embrace the fluidity and flexibility of the internet.
The psychologist’s role is to bring to the party up-to-date information about the way work practices are changing around the world, hands-on experience of changes in other companies, and deep commitment to supporting you as you think through changes in the immediate and foreseeable future.
What is special about what we do?
Just looking at us work is not sufficient to see the value we add. You can see us talking to people – lots of people do that! You see the briefcases – a prop?
The key to what psychologists do is deep training and ongoing exposure to work situations around the world. When we talk with you, we are not asking whether we like you. Nor, are we are asking about things we want.
Our interest is in accurately understanding your motivation and your circumstances, reflecting them against the changing world of business and work, and helping you work through the mix of emotions you feel as you cast your story in terms of today’s economic conditions – globalization, credit crunch, and new technologies.
This is a complicated process. Even in the simplest business, we have on the one hand the things we want, and one the other, ‘what’s out there’. And that gap in knowledge is not all we cope with. When we really want something, we feel fear and trepidation. Our job is to stay with you while you work through your anxiety and take the first step towards what will ultimately be success and very deep satisfaction.
Psychologists understand this process, see it is normal, and are there to help steer you through all three questions: you, your opportunities, your emotions.
When we work in most modern businesses, 5, 10, 15, 10 000, 100 000 of us are going through the same process. When I decide, for example, to pursue my story in certain ways, my actions change your circumstances. The key to good organization is that the give-and-take between us as we follow our own dreams strengthens us individuals and as a group. Therein, the discussions we hold with senior managers.
Some case studies next? Do let me know if I have made it any clearer what we do for a living!
Even if it is only out of curiosity
Now who said that? Colin Powell, I believe, speaking to HR managers in the UK.
Culture, attitudes, behavior
My friend Steve Roesler at AllThingsWorkplace posted today on workplace culture, and how hard it is to change behavior. This is a central topic in social and organizational psychology. Can we change an attitude without changing behavior? Can we change behavior without changing culture? What sustains culture?
Earlier today I read a similar article in TimesOnLine on whether politicians can change British drinking culture by decree.
David Aaronvitch used a neat phrase:
“Fashion, popular culture, whatever you call it, found a way round authority, because it didn’t depend upon authority, or even upon establishment approval.”
This is the same phenomenon that Steve is talking about: informal culture and power. Should we despair as the TimesOnLine suggests? Brits are drunks – live with it and laugh at politicians nannying us again? Can cultures be modified?
How do we change patterns?
My social media friends will phrase this differently: can we organize viral campaigns?
I think we often put the cart before the horse.
Change effects tend to be spiral, or recursive. In other words, the change creates the change. And a forward change can cause a backward effect, necessary for the forward change.
So why the cart before the horse? We want the cart to be moving along with the horse following.
To get change, we have to join in. We have to be there in other words. We have put ourselves out there and be changed in the process. We have to believe that cart is worth pulling. We have to notice when it starts to roll back and judge whether to roll with it or dig our heels in. We have to believe in it enough to feel the harness rubbing . . .
It is the linkage that is critical.
Being a player
In organizations, it is the willingness to be a player: to really put our money on the table. Willingness to win and to lose with everyone else.
- Are we willing to sit at the table and make tough choices? And be accountable for the consequences?
- Do we believe in our people enough to be accountable on the bad days?
- Can we have the courageous conversations about what is truly rotten?
- Can we accept the challenge about how we have treated people?
- Can we do all of this will only one end in mind – keeping the group there for its members?
We don’t want to be talked at. We want to talk with people who are also vulnerable in that their pride, future, pleasure, is also at stake. We want to talk seriously with people about why we are doing this, whatever this is, and authentically discuss what is at stake for everyone.
Can we link our our futures to that cart?
Leading from within
This is the competency that HR Managers struggle with.
This is the competency that I hope social media managers will learn early ~ to be a player.
flowing motion 
Recent Comments