Three More Productivity Basics
In a recent blog we nominated “Increase Your Productivity” as one of only four ways to increase profits and then focused down onto increasing “human productivity” by acknowledging ten common behaviours, the first three of which were:
1.People move away from discomfort and towards Comfort
2.Negative reinforcement promotes erratic responses
3.Consistent reinforcement quickly sets behavioural patterns
We’ll take a look at the next four in that series here:
4. Rewards Can Cost A Lot, But Be Valued Little
“Rewards” generally have a cost, so if you have a strong, rewards-based system of reinforcement, it has the potential to be expensive. In other words, you almost have to “buy” or “bribe people for” the desirable behaviour.
Ironically enough, while that may be seen as a bad outcome from your point of view, it is almost invariably seen as a poor arrangement from the point of view of the “bribee”, too!
Recognition, on the other hand – acknowledgement, praise, gratitude, icons such as trophies and awards – are usually low- or no-cost items, and yet uplift and honour both parties. Continuing the irony: Bribes can lose their effectiveness (they have to be bigger and bigger to work) while recognition just seems to keep going and going.
So, if recognition has a low cost but a high perceived value, what could you do to apply this principle in your business to uplift and empower people, while shaping their behaviour to provide better outcomes?
5. Three Parts Recognition To One Part Reward Is The Best Glue
Experience has taught us that pure recognition can look a bit thin after a while, and consistent, long-term pure reward systems just “rot” and cease to work, so what is the ideal balance.
Start with providing three parts recognition (and make it different types of recognition: public praise, an award, promotion, etc), to one part reward and, where possible, keep the reward non-monetary. You’d be surprised how little value may be placed on a $100 reward, and just how much value may be placed on two Gold First Class Theatre Tickets, or a meal for two (of the same or even lesser value).
I know of at least one case where a winning real estate sales team were “rewarded” with a trip away together for two years and, in the third year, when the reward was swapped to a cash equivalent, the entire team under-performed. They were demotivated by being offered money in place of a fun holiday together.
If you were to design a “recognition-and-reward system” that fitted your operations, what would it consist of?
6. People Can Learn To Expect A Better Outcome
“Positive people produce more consistent and more positive results.” There is likely to be no surprise for anyone in that statement – but not everyone who joins your team in necessarily going to come in with a positive orientation (though we hope this would be among your selection criteria).
One of the more rewarding tasks of any leader is to lead their team members to dream a better outcome, and to then to move them to achieving that dream.
If you help people to achieve in a team, things that they believed were beyond them individually, they will do practically anything to maintain or repeat the feeling they derived from that achievement.
What can you do to encourage your team to “dream big” and then to Coach them to achieve that dream? What is that likely to do for morale (yours and theirs)?
7. Good Feelings Are Rewards
When you make someone feel good about themselves, and about what they are achieving – or even what they are “working towards” – you are already creating a form of reward that we all value. We tend to come back to situations that give us that type of feeling; tend to do the things that will invoke them again.
On the flip side, bad feelings about failure or lack of progress or frustration or lack of appreciation, are “punishment” (or at least “pain”) of a sort and we naturally tend to avoid situations, activities and people that give rise to them. (For an excellent story on the cost to productivity and morale caused by a toxic workplace, read “Fish” by Stephen Lundin).
We can extend this one a little further and look at the fact that consciously creating a warm, nurturing, physically and emotionally safe workplace will be seen (by the good folk, at least) as a form of on-going reward that you create for them, and they’ll tend to be uplifted by it.
How could you employ this particular insight in your work situation? What is likely to be the response if you did?
The Last Three
The last three behaviour facts of which any good leader must be aware are:
8. Can optimism be its own reward – and motivation?
9. Why focus on the behaviour?
10. Whatever you focus on will increase.
If you’d like the full set of Ten Motivation & Productivity Basics, just click.
