Archive for the ‘motivation’ Category

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IT Leaders’ Secret Techniques For Motivating Staff

Friday, September 26th, 2008
Secrets IT Leaders Can Use To Motivate Their Staff

Secrets IT Leaders Can Use To Motivate Their Staff

Now that we’ve discovered that all humans, including those in in your IT department / on your IT team, respond to four basic drives, we are now faced with the really big question: how does an IT leader use this knowledge to motivate his/her staff? It turns out that there are actually a number of possible levers that you can pull…

The Drive To Acquire Is Handled By How You Handle Rewards: This is, of course, a classic staff driving lever. How well your IT department sorts out the good performers from the poor ones, how it matches the rewards that it hands out to performance delivered, and how easily it permits talented staff to advance in the organization determines how well you are meeting your employee’s drive to acquire.

The Drive To Bond Is Handled By Your Department’s Culture: Put simply, this comes down to how much camaraderie exists within the department. Does your staff work well together? Is there openness, teamwork, and genuine friendship amont the people who work for you?

The Drive To Comprehend Is Handled By How You Design Jobs: Are the IT jobs in your department both meaningful, interesting, while at the the same time challanging? These are all critical to meeting the needs of this drive.

The Drive To Defend Is Handled By Your Performance Review Process: If the annual performance review process is seen as being fair and trustworthy by all, and if resources are allocated in a transparent way then this will meet your staff’s drive to defend.

The key take-away for you regarding all of this drive stuff, is that in survey after survey, IT employees reported that when there was even a small enhancement to their ability to fulfill any one of these four drives, then their overall motivation shot up. However, (this is also a key point) all four drives have to be met – missing even one can significantly dampen an employee’s motivation.

Finally, employees have said that the statements and actions that their immediate IT managers make are just as important to their overall productivity as all of the company’s policies and rules. Now that’s food for IT leaders to spend some time thinking about…!

How many of these four drives do you try to satisfy in your employees? Do you feel that you are currently being successful? Why/why not? What is blocking you from doing a better job of meeting these basic drivers of your employees? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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4 Drivers Of Employee Motivation That All IT Leaders Must Know

Wednesday, September 24th, 2008
The Four Drivers Of IT Staff Motivation

The Four Drivers Of IT Staff Motivation

We’ve talked about the fact that sometimes employee motivation can be a lot like performing brain surgery – you’ve got to be careful or you’ll end up doing a lot of damage. If an IT manager can realize that their staff (indeed all humans) have four fundamental emotional drivers that need to be met, then they are well on their way to maximizing employee satisfaction and maximizing productivity. So what are these four drivers that we all respond to?

  • The Drive To Acquire: More! More! More! As human beings we are all programmed to go out and get scarce goods (iPhone?) that make us feel better about ourselves. I think that we can all agree that we feel “happy” when we are successful and we feel “sad” when we fail. It’s not just physical things that we desire, but also experiences and improvements in our social status. This drive is relative – we are always comparing what we have to what those around us have. Oh, and it’s insatiable – we always want more, more, more!
  • The Drive To Bond: We all know about how we bond with our parents, siblings, etc. However, the human creature is amazing because we have the additional ability to extend who we bond with to associations, organizations, and even countries. This is a big one – when we are successful in bonding, then we fell loved. When we are not successful in bonding, then we fell loneliness. For your IT workers, bonding at work is a critical part of who they are. When staff feel proud to be part of an organization (Starbucks?) this can be a big boost to their motivation. It also explains why we get so depressed when we get fired or laid off – we feel that the organization has betrayed us.
  • The Drive To Comprehend: We are creatures that really want to understand the world in which we live. We are constantly using scientific, cultural, and even religious theories to try to make sense of it all. Our reason for doing this is that we want to be able to come up with reasonable responses to things that happen in our environment and to be able to determine what actions we should take next.
  • The Drive To Defend: You knew that this one had to be on the list! When external threats show up, we humans naturally defend ourselves, our family & friends, our property and things, etc. Remember that “flight or flight” thing? Fulfilling this drive leads employees to feel secure, failing to fulfill it leads to strong emotions like fear and resentment. This drive is one reason why mergers or buyouts can be so devastating for staff.

Now that you know what the four drivers of your staff are, the big question is how can you use these drivers to make sure that they are motivated to work hard. We’ll talk about that next time…

How many of these drivers do you see driving your own behaviors? Which one do you think is strongest in you? When managing a team, have you come up with ways to make sure that these drivers are being satisfied? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking!

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Posted in motivation | 6 Comments »

IT Workers Believe That The End Of The World Is Coming (Soon)

Thursday, July 31st, 2008

Why do IT workers have a negative outlook despite increases in IT hiring?

The Wall Street Journal Tech Blog is reporting that the folks over at Technisource Inc. have gone and released the results of a survey on how IT folks feel about their jobs based on talking to about 450 IT staffers. In a nutshell, nobody’s very happy right now.

Right now the U.S. economy is in the dumps, gas costs $4.00+ / gallon, milk costs $5.00 / gallon, and let’s not even get started talking about electricity and home fuel oil costs. However, IT employment is one of the few rays of sunshine in an otherwise gloomy picture. In fact, IT hiring is up about 10%. Yea! What’s so damming is that despite this good news, the survey reveals that IT folks are overwhelmingly negative about our prospects. Clearly we are looking at this as a “… glass half empty…” situation.

But wait, there’s more bad news! Here’s some other doom-and-gloom results from the survey:

  • 70% – said that the economy will get weaker
  • 59% – said that fewer jobs are available (not true by the way – tech hiring is up)
  • 20% – don’t believe that they could find another job
  • 17% – doubtful about the future of their employer

Ok, so now that everyone is thoroughly depressed, maybe we should ask ourselves why there is this apparent disconnect between what IT staff is thinking and reality? Is it that so many IT workers don’t feel that they have the perfect IT job? I don’t think so. Instead, I think that there are at least two reasons (and probably a bunch more). One is that within companies IT staffers are seeing a constant stream of “… we must find more ways to cut IT costs …” emails, programs, and words rolling down from leadership mountain. We all know that this generally leads to headcount reductions and so we await the inevitable chopping to begin.

Additionally, the median salary for IT workers has dropped to $73k in 2008. It was at $74k just last year. It’s not that big of a drop; however, what is much more worrying is that this is the first time that its dropped. It sure doesn’t look like anyone is going to be getting a big raise this year.

To wrap this gloom-fest up, let’s tackle one last question: what’s an IT manager to do? Let’s assume for a moment that you don’t have access to a pot of cash that you can use to boost everyone’s salary. Let’s also assume that you can’t guarantee everyone that their jobs are safe from the chopping block. Do you sorta feel like both of your hands are tied behind your back? Here are three simple steps that you can take to boost team morale and help everyone to become more productive:

  1. Change the focus from the short term to the long term: the depressing news is in the paper (or online) every morning. Change your team’s focus and get them to take a long term view. Have them anticipate how they will feel when the milestone is reached, the project is done, the users start to send their thanks back to the team.
  2. Work On Self Improvement For Each Team Member: You can’t guarantee everyone a job for life, so start to put some life into their job. Specifically, make sure that everyone has an assignment that stretches their abilities and makes them do something that they haven’t done before. Additionally, work out a skill training plan for each team member. You can’t control the future; however, you can help them make sure that they have the strongest resume possible.
  3. Strengthen The Team: Provide every team member with the ability to perform some task that makes the team stronger. Although you may not be able to cheer up each and every team member, if they start viewing their work as supporting the team, then all of a sudden their level of commitment will shoot up.

I’d just like to leave you with a few words from one of my favorite Broadway musicals, Annie:

The sun’ll come out
Tomorrow
Bet your bottom dollar
That tomorrow
There’ll be sun

Just thinkin’ about
Tomorrow
Clears away the cobwebs,
And the sorrow
‘Til there’s none

When I’m stuck with a day
That’s gray,
And lonely,
I just stick out my chin
And grin,
And say,
Oh

The sun’ll come out
Tomorrow
So ya gotta hang on
‘Til tomorrow
Come what may

Tomorrow
Tomorrow
I love ya
Tomorrow

You’re always
A day away

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Posted in employee motivation, it career, jobs, motivation | 14 Comments »

Employee Motivation: What To Do When You Feel Passed Over

Thursday, July 17th, 2008

Employee Motivation is based on being recognized for our work

I recently had a chance to talk with a friend of mine who works as a developer in the information technology department for a major telecommunications firm. I was surprised to discover that he was very angry and was thinking about quitting his job. It turns out that he had just completed a major project. He and two others had put in those non-stop 60-70 hour days. He had been away from home for the better part of two months and he was very proud of what was finally produced.

However, what had gotten him angry was that two other individuals had joined the project late in the game, had not worked nearly as hard as the core group of three had, and in the end they not only got credit for the project’s success, but they also got promotions while the core group of three were not promoted. Is is any wonder that my friend was so angry?

We spend a lot of time recruiting the best information technology employees and then we spend at least as much time worrying about employee motivation all too often only to end up with angry, bitter staff. In the case of my friend, what had gone wrong was instantly clear to me because I’ve done it to myself countless time. I call this situation, the “engineering field of dreams” problem.

Jobs in Information Technology allow us to focus on building things using only our minds and hands (for typing). As engineers we have a bad habit of completely focusing on solving the technical problem that we’ve been assigned and not lifting our heads up until we have a finished product. The problem with this is that we then expect the rest of the world to look at what we’ve made and realize what a great worker we are. In my case, I blame my Mom because whenever I took something that I had made to her she always reacted with joy and surprise and told me that it was the best thing that she had ever seen. Unfortunately, the rest of the world doesn’t work that way.

So what should my friend have done? While he was working on the project he should have realized that he had another job to do at the same time. In IT management speak we’d call this an “overlay job”. Every single day he needed to be managing his career — thinking about what he needed to be doing in order to get recognized for what he was doing and get considered for a promotion the next time an opening showed up. You know what he said when I told him this: “Hey Jim, I just don’t like to brag about myself!” Two quick replies to that: (1) if you don’t, then who do you think will? and (2) bragging would be bad, informing others would be good.

I ended up having a very long talk with my friend; however, here is the gist of what we talked about. He needs to identify who he needs to make aware of his contributions (his boss, his bosses boss, and the bosses of any department that his project interfaces with). He needs to communicate with these people regularly (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday). Communicating does not mean sending them mindless status reports. He needs to send brief, concise emails that provide valuable information such as “We had a problem, but here is how we solved it…” When he sends an email to these important people, he needs to address it to only them — don’t CC them or send it to a distro list. One-to-one sends a powerful message. Finally, he needs to do more than just send emails: he needs face time with the decision makers. I suggested that he use the excuse of “checking to make sure that you agree with the decisions that we’ve made” line to set up a meeting.

So remember: you are in charge of your career and nobody else. As technical professionals we all suffer from a “love my work, love me” syndrome and we need to do a better job of communicating with those in charge in order to move our career along.

Posted in career, communication, field of dreams, motivation | 4 Comments »

Q: What’s Worse Then An Unhappy Worker Leaving? A: If They Stay…

Saturday, June 21st, 2008

Unhappy Workers Who Don't Leave Can Cause Problems

We all know that having high turnover can at best be disruptive and at worst can throw projects off schedule, kill budgets, and doom overall employee morale. So you would think that if you are somehow able to have a low number of employees leaving that everything would be hunky dory, right? Wrong — you might now have lots of unhappy employees who have for one reason or another decided that they can’t leave right now. They’ll keep coming into work each day (or logging on if they are unhappily telecommuting), but they will be dragging their virtual feet and just going through the motions. They are not going to be helping the company be a success.

Why are so many non-leaving employees unhappy? I think that I know the reason and the author Patrick Lencioni has captured them quite nicely in his book “The Three Signs of a Miserable Job”. In his book, Patrick states that he believes that people become unhappy in their jobs when their basic social needs are not being met. Yeah, yeah, yeah — we all love a paycheck and the bigger the better. However, we really go to work in order to have some very basic human needs met: to get a sense of accomplishment, to boost self-esteem, and to feel that we are part of a community.

When we aren’t geting these needs met, Patrick calls the problems “anonymity, irrelevance, and immeasurability”. Great, now you’ve got the silent problem of unhappy IT workers lurking in your department. What to do?

Don’t dispair! In order to reach out and change unhappy workers into committed employees you have to tackle these key issues one by one. One-on-one feedback is the key to providing emplyees with both a sense of accomplishment (they know who I am!) and boosting self-esteem (they like what I do!). Developing a sense of community is somewhat more difficult — in the IT field if this is done incorrectly, it can come across as fake. However, if done correctly you can turn a lackluster department into a team of overachievers. Now that’s something to cheer about!

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Posted in community, motivation, self-esteem, sense of accomplishment | No Comments »

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