LLM Book Knowledgebase

The Game of Work: How to Enjoy Work as Much as Play

35 min read

The Game of Work: How to Enjoy Work as Much as Play

Metadata

Highlights & Notes

Rewarding the behavior you want repeated is obvious, but we often don’t do it. I have found that knowing the rules, or the field of play, empowers people to innovate and take risks, without worrying if they are putting their job or career at risk. People like playing games because they know the rules and the score. We play games to win. When we don’t know the score or the rule, which is unfortunately the situation all too often for most people when they are at work, we tend not to want to play or we play safe.

Coach John Wooden said, “It is what we learn after we think we know it all that really matters.”

Zig Ziglar said, “You can get anything you want if you help enough people get what they want.” That is the bargain of life.

The five principles of the Motivation of Recreation are: Clearly defined goals Better scorekeeping and scorecards More frequent feedback A higher degree of personal choice of methods Consistent coaching

It has long been accepted by psychologists that people stay where they are treated well and leave when they feel unwanted or underappreciated. That is true, has been true, and will always be true in marriage, family, and work.

People will pay for the privilege of working harder than they will work when they are paid. —Chuck Coonradt

First, in recreation goals are clearly defined: shooting a deer; winning a game; beating your previous time. The desired result is clear and easily measured.

Second, in recreation the scorekeeping is better because it’s (1) more objective, (2) self-administered, (3) peer audited, (4) dynamic, and (5) it allows the player to compare current personal performance with past personal performance as well as with an accepted standard.

In recreation, everybody knows how to keep score. In business, however, sometimes the strokes don’t count. Frequently workers don’t understand the scorekeeping system. Sometimes nobody cares. All too often there is too little objectivity in business scorekeeping.

You feel like a winner because you are not comparing your performance to some unrealistic standard.

In recreation, the scorekeeping enables you to receive immediate and realistic feedback. You know at all times how you are doing.

Scorekeeping is an effective form of motivation if it is objective, self-administered, and peer audited.

Third, in recreation feedback is more frequent. Everyday, everybody needs to know whether they are winning or losing.

Feedback is the breakfast of champions. People who want to get ahead, who want to win, who want to improve and get the job done—these people want feedback. If you don’t think feedback is important, go count the mirrors in your house.

If you want to improve the quality of performance in any area, you simply improve or increase the frequency of feedback. If you have a problem and you are getting a quarterly report, change it to a monthly report. If that doesn’t do the job, turn it into a weekly or daily report. By increasing the frequency of your feedback, you have more opportunities to catch and eliminate problems of a solvable size.

Fourth, in recreation participants feel they have a higher degree of choice.

When people feel that they have no choice in what they are doing, they lose their enthusiasm, and performance suffers.

Fifth, in recreation they don’t change the rules in the middle of the game.

In business, however, rules are frequently changed in the middle of the game.

Changing the rules in the middle of the game adds to the uncertainty of the game. Good managers seek to minimize uncertainty. Workers, like athletes, perform better when they know where they stand, when they know the score. A feeling of certainty creates a sense of security about working conditions. Managers cannot eliminate all uncertainty, but by not changing the rules in the middle of the game, they can go a long way toward minimizing uncertainty.

In the workplace, when expectations are clearly defined and uncertainty is minimized, it is easier for people to have the satisfaction of meeting expectations.

Professional athletes are paid to play. But the enthusiasm and the power of their involvement come from the elements of the game, not the amount of the paycheck.

In the absence of clearly defined goals, we are forced to concentrate on activity and ultimately become enslaved by it. —Chuck Coonradt

If you took the goals out of any sport, you would remove the most significant aspect of recreational pursuits—goal setting and goal striving. There is something inherent in us to want to do things better, faster, higher, shorter, longer—and to win.

Goals are the main reason people will pay for the privilege of working harder than they will work when they are paid.

Goals in recreation are clearly defined, and as a result, motivation in recreation is at a higher level than in business.

Goals that are not written are merely wishes. There is something in the act of writing a goal down that makes it real, gives it permanence, removes it from the realm of fleeting whims. Goals that are not written down are easily forgotten or changed; written goals that are reviewed regularly become reality. Unwritten goals cannot be read and reviewed. When goals are not written, the power of conditioning through repetition is lost.

A team’s goal is not just to win the championship or to be the best. Good goals are detailed and specific—yards per carry, number of offensive and defensive plays, plays per series. Goals must be broken down into a specific plan, in writing.

Whose company do I work for? Mine. Whose boss do I work for? Mine. Whose income am I most concerned about? Mine. I, me, my, mine. Whose goals are the most important to me? Mine.

Goal setting and goal striving become truly effective only when team or corporate goals become the same as personal goals—when it becomes my team or my company. If you look at the employees of the finest organizations, the ones that we admire, they talk about “my company.” These employees have entrepreneurial instincts to help ensure the success of their companies because their personal goals are intertwined with the company goals.

In basketball and football they count the points you score, not the ones you miss. But in life many times we will do 80 percent of the task and then when asked to report on it say, “Nope, I failed.”

We must be willing, as the old song says, to accentuate the positive. The mind rejects negative goals; they are hard to visualize.

Paul J. Meyer insists, “Definite goals produce definite results. On the other hand, indefinite goals do not produce indefinite results. They produce no results at all.”

Goals are best stated in units of measurement that don’t change.

Goals must be measured in something you can see. Percentages are too vague. The sales representative may say to the sales manager after a long period of thought and soul-searching, “My goal is to increase my volume by 25 percent.” “Great,” responds the sales manager. “According to my records, last January you achieved 10,000 unit sales. According to your goal you’ll get 12,500 this January. Fantastic!” “Wait a minute,” says the sales rep. “There’s no way I’ll get 12,500 in January, but the 25 percent increase will be a cinch.”

Even dollars are better than percentages. Goals must be stated in pounds, units, calls, boxes—things you can see and touch.

Organizations can measure labor in at least four different ways: 1. Labor costs in relation to dollar sales (Most accountants prefer this measurement) 2. Dollar sales per person-hour 3. Invoices or customers served per person-hour 4. Pounds or tons produced per person-hour

The point is that labor-control goals are best accomplished by using specific, easily measured quantities. Managers don’t have to translate. Audibles cannot be called at the line of scrimmage, as is sometimes necessary, unless everyone has been told their meaning before the game begins.

If you don’t have a deadline, you don’t have a goal. Goals must say how much, how many, and by when.

Deadlines allow the student who has slept in all term, not able to get out of bed before 10 a.m., to stay up all night studying for a midterm exam. Deadlines account for 40 percent of the money raised in any telethon to be raised during the last 20 percent of the time. Deadlines are covered in one of Murphy’s Laws that says, “The first 10 percent of a project requires 90 percent of the time allowed for the entire project to be completed. The second 90 percent requires 90 percent of the time allowed for it, and that’s why it takes twice as long as it should.”

Deadlines are the foundation of commitment. Deadlines are the adrenaline boosters. Deadlines are the instigators of achievement and inventiveness. A goal without a deadline is merely a philosophical statement.

The reason most of us don’t make more money than we do right now is because we don’t know what we’d do if we had it. It sounds odd, but it’s true.

“You must first set goals to become before you attempt to set goals to have.” The goals to become are the intangible characteristics that make winners what they are. You cannot, for example, become a great skier if you have a strong fear of injury.

But we can and do change with goals or traumatic experiences. Winners are champions of change and choice.

Any goal without a benefit statement has no motivational value. Goals must be realistic and obtainable, and they must also carry a promise of reward if achieved.

When you have a tangible reward, reaching a goal becomes a want to instead of a have to experience, and that makes a big difference.

Every company must have overall organizational goals, followed by divisional and departmental ones, and then the individual goals of each member of the organization. All those goals must work together.

Individuals are motivated by needs and wants. An organization that not only understands the needs and wants of its workers but to a certain degree even influences those wants will be better able to get maximum productivity out of those workers.

Many of us are trained from early childhood not to want. Maybe a well-meaning Sunday School teacher implied that we cannot be rich and righteous at the same time. But we cannot increase our motivation until we increase our desires. Having goals means having desires.

Teamwork is based on great individual execution.

Scorekeeping is the heart of athletics, and it must be the heart of every successful business.

Every sport has its scorecards, scoreboards, and stat sheets—and so must every business. Business managers must be on constant lookout for new measurements to improve productivity.

The primary responsibility of managers is to set the rules and create the scorecards. Archaic scorekeeping systems, or no systems at all, force employees to wait, wait, and wait for feedback from management, thinking, “I won’t venture beyond where I am until I know how well I did.”

Never make a negative generalization! Even if you think it is true, it will do more harm than good. Instead, when describing a negative situation be ultra-specific. How much are sales down? How many calls did not get made? What specific behavior is it that you are concerned about? Don’t make wandering generalities.

So, first, measurement is relevant to the process. It tells you what happened, especially on the bottom line.

Second, measurement is usually exact.

Third, exact measurements make work as enjoyable as play because participants have a way to win.

There are three kinds of workers or players. 1. Those who know they are winning. 2. Those who know they are losing. 3. Those who don’t know the score.

People play and modify their behavior based on the feedback of their progress against an acceptable standard—the scorecard.

Winners keep track of results. Losers keep track of reasons.

You cannot sit by as a spectator in the game of work. You must trade your season tickets for a pair of shoes and come down on the field, the only place where points can be scored.

Avoiding euphemisms vastly improves the level of communication.

There is too much truth in exact measurement for some people. Losers don’t have the courage to face the truth of exact measurement. They want to run away from the truth by focusing on activities instead of results. When exact measurements are made, things are brought into clear focus, and there is no place to hide. If you have the courage to keep score, even when you are losing, you will win more in the long run. The elimination of uncertainty through scorekeeping increases the ability to take calculated risks.

We have to have the courage to communicate accurately, to get to the bottom line.

Growth is no good unless it is profitable and funded from earnings. Legitimate earnings always were and always will be the best indication of a healthy company.

Remember, there is no such thing as a cash-flow problem by itself. A shortage of cash is the result of other problems that you can do something about by keeping score.

Scorekeeping must be simple and objective.

  1. Scorekeeping must be self-administered. A scorecard is most effective when it is kept and updated by the player, as in golf and tennis.

Self-administered graphing and scorekeeping is best.

When people keep their own scorecards, they know whether they won or lost that day and also how much they improved, regardless of whether or not the coach had a bad day. The players will also correct any deficiencies in their scores before the cards are turned in. Our self-concept or self-image is based on what we know and can prove about ourselves. Many cross-country runners start a race with one foot forward and their right-hand fingers resting on their left wrist, ready to start their own stopwatch when the gun goes off.

  1. Scorekeeping must offer a comparison between current personal performance, past personal performance, and an accepted standard.

The success of a scorekeeping system in recreation depends upon how well it compares current performance with past performance and with the accepted national average. Too often in business we generate a scorekeeping system that tells how well we did only in comparison to an arbitrary, artificially imposed standard.

Scorekeeping should be dynamic. It should allow players to review their performance during the game. In your business, is your scorekeeping more like ice hockey or figure skating?

The measurement principles discussed in this book need to be introduced carefully into the workplace. There is almost always resistance to change, and managers or employees who in the past have focused their attention on activity can be intimidated into inactivity by the threat of disclosing performance they may feel is less than acceptable. The truth can be painful and frightening. Employees who are sold on management by measurement and want to get involved of their own free will and choice generally benefit the most from the measurement system.

Scorekeeping exists primarily so that we know when to begin the party.

A good scorekeeping system allows the worker or manager to establish his own self-worth in the eyes of his peers, subordinates, and supervisors. Everybody becomes more accurately and justly rewarded, stroked, or chastised, based on accurate performance records or scorecards.

When performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and reported back, the rate of improvement accelerates. —Thomas S. Monson

Sometimes we hear about coaches who have talented players but cannot produce a winning team. They are not able to manage their resources to produce results, and they are eventually fired.

When all the micro-measurements are in place, the macro-measurements will take care of themselves.

  1. Increasing the frequency of feedback improves the quality and quantity of performance. If you’re having a difficult time managing your labor resource and you’re measuring it monthly, then go to a weekly measurement. It will improve.

You may think it will take too much time to administer all these measurements. Meaningful measurement takes no time at all. In the example of the file clerks and in example after example we see that the small amount of time it takes to count results is minuscule when compared with the improved results.

  1. When feedback is illustrated on charts and graphs, the impact is even greater.

In other words, the feedback—the “score”—becomes even more clear because it is graphically displayed, thus ensuring even better performance.

Remember, in the absence of clearly defined goals and accurate scorekeeping, we are forced to concentrate on activity and ultimately become enslaved by it. The goal of every business must be to get to the point where everybody on the team has an individual scorecard. Without clearly defined goals and precise scorekeeping, workers will continue to pay for the privilege of working harder than they work when they are paid.

Ninety seconds, and the world was wondering if the tennis match would go on. And yet how often do we put off giving employees feedback on their performance? Do we avoid it because we don’t like confrontation? Are we unwilling to sit down and explain what we need to have done, what the employees are doing right, and what they need to do to improve? Sometimes we put it off and put it off and finally walk up and say, “I’ve decided to give you twenty-five dollars more a week; be happy with that and go home.” We need to do better than that.

Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. —Mark Twain

Our lives are comprised completely of have-tos and want-tos. We enjoy the things we want to do; the things we have to do, we are usually not too excited about.

And in the workplace, if you will trust your people to make the choices that they can make, they will become winners. There are leaders that treat people as if they were important or unimportant. To people they consider important, they insist on explaining why, to unimportant people, they simply tell how. We can tell how someone feels about us by the way they talk to us. Important people are allowed to make choices. Unimportant people have their choices restricted. What you need to look at is what you are communicating about your players based on the choices you allow them to make.

Workers need to understand the reasons behind the things you ask them to do. They need to help negotiate the results that are expected. They need to be allowed to help determine what the company will become, because when they go home and talk to their neighbors, they are their company, and they need to have a choice about what they are. Finally, after all these things have been settled, people need to be allowed to use whatever methods they are comfortable with to bring the goals to pass.

We can go one step further: Attitude is the prime cause of behavior.

This brings us to a problem facing most coaches. They may be able to specify what behavior is required in a player to produce the desired result, but they don’t know how to mold the attitude so the desired behavior can be achieved.

When you are coaching you must understand that success is the result of behavior, which is determined by attitudes, which are formed by conditioning, which takes place through repetition.

Winners in business also understand the conditioning process and the need for repetition, and they do everything in their power to use this powerful force to achieve success and results.

Repetition influences our conditioning. Our conditioning influences our attitudes. And our attitudes influence our behavior—the things we choose to do. Thus, we can directly influence ourselves and our people to make the choices that will bring success.

If you want to motivate your workers, if you want them to feel like members of the team, if you want them to work as if the company belonged to them, you must give them the freedom to choose the way to succeed. If you do, they will come through for you—beyond your wildest dreams.

Great managers constantly seek to minimize uncertainty. —Chuck Coonradt

You can’t go out and start playing until your field of play is clearly and completely established. The boundaries must be in place before you can set the goals and begin to play the game. Even in a casual game of touch football or sandlot baseball, the kids will decide the boundaries before they start playing.

The point here is that if you are going to play a game, you’ve got to know where the out-of-bounds markers are. You must have a general overview of the field of competition. You can’t take credit for performance outside your assigned area.

You cannot change the rules in the middle of the game without destroying the self-confidence of the player.

In business, freedom is greatest when boundaries are clearly defined.

My freedom and security are greatest when my boundaries are clearly defined.

Since I didn’t know where the boundaries were, I had to restrict my performance in an effort to avoid going out-of-bounds.

Think about it. A person in almost constant fear who did not know what would get him fired.

In recreation we start with a clear definition of the boundaries, and we establish goals within those boundaries. In business, many times we start by establishing goals without first having the boundaries clearly in place. That’s why it’s often difficult to know if goals are realistic or not. The boundaries must precede the placement of goals in business as well as in sports.

One of the biggest problems in business today is people are not being told what is expected of them. Every person has the right to personal freedoms and self-determination, but to get the job done—in sports as well as in business—somebody has to stand up and say, “This is what we are going to do, and this is how we are going to do it.”

In the absence of a clearly defined field of play, uncertainty thrives and performance suffers. With a clearly defined field of play, players know the boundaries within which it is possible to win.

Everybody is born with an equal chance to become just as unequal as he or she possibly can. —Anonymous

There’s a lot being said today in America about fairness. Everything is supposed to be fair, and there are a lot of people who think that fair and equal are the same thing. Winners have a different philosophy that can be summed up in the following: “Everybody’s born with the equal chance to become just as unequal as he or she possibly can.”

“Henry, why do you like to sell?” He said, “Because of the competition.” He explained that every time a salesman meets a potential customer, a sale is made. Either the customer buys the product, or the salesman buys the customer’s excuse.

A third thing Lombardi said is, “You don’t win once in a while. You don’t win occasionally. You don’t win by accident. Winning is a habit, just like losing.”

Winners are ready to play. They don’t show up for sales appointments without order forms. They don’t show up without a game plan.

In business, too often our dedication to constant activity eliminates the essential focus on preparation. If we are to be or to produce winners in our companies, we must take the time to prepare. We must take time to clearly define our results-to-resources ratios for each of our key performers. We must take the time to give them the opportunity to construct a game plan, scout the competition, and build a strategy before we simply send them out to play.

It may be difficult to differentiate this self-assurance from unfounded cockiness, but the proof is in the performance. And the winners always expect to win. Always.

Losers tend to be general and negative. Negativism is the antithesis of a winning attitude. Negativism is the most destructive force that any of us come in contact with, because it robs us of those good feelings we should have about ourselves. Negativism is an evil force. Negativism is like a cancer of the mind.

See what this salesman did? One of twenty calls went sour, so he made a negative generalization about the whole day’s work. When you describe a negative situation, always be ultra-specific. Don’t let the negative wandering generality rob you of a positive mental attitude.

Winners say “I,” “me,” and “our.” Losers say “they,” “them,” “those guys,” and “management.” Losers use the language of noncommitment.

We, as coaches, have the responsibility to establish the emotional and attitudinal climate of our team, our company, our business—and there should be no place for loser’s elbow, the language of noncommitment.

Think about all the people who are trying to change the rules today. They are trying so hard to make things fair and equal that they never get into the real game where they can win.

We will always have leaders and followers, winners and losers, people who add to and people who take away. A lot of things need changing, but winners don’t try to change the rules in the middle of the game; they seek only to understand them well enough to win.

How many times have you heard this one? “If you want to be a winner, you’ve got to pay the price?” And they always say it as if they had just had a dill pickle. “Pay the price, it’s going to hurt.” “No pain, no gain.” “Take another ten laps. Don’t stop when the blisters pop.” “Lift the bar until you can’t lift it anymore, and then lift it one more time.” Losers pay a price, too, but winners pay it willingly.

There was no agony, pain, or disappointment. Just a smile, the expression of a winner. And behind the camera, in full view, Eric could see a picture of the gold medals he was going to win. Winners pay the price willingly because they know it’s a bargain. And when you concentrate on the end result, the obstacles melt away in the intensity of the preparation.

Winners are more willing to pay the price as the coach becomes more skilled at painting vivid pictures of the end results or benefits. Putting the why into our communication brings about incredible performances from the players.

Winning and goal setting are synonymous. You can’t win unless you know what victory represents. There are a lot of losers who work just as hard as the people who win, but they never figure out when to stop and celebrate. But, most of all, winners are goal setters.

Winners are goal setters, and the rise or fall of every organization is based on the ability of individuals in those organizations to set and achieve goals. Setting a clear goal will give you more motivation than someone holding a gun to your head or a thousand-dollar bill in front of your nose.

Goal setting is the strongest force in the world for human motivation.

The big difference is that the people in the 3 percent group have prepared written goals with specific plans for reaching those goals. Not very many people are willing to do that.

Why don’t people like to set goals? Why don’t people like to write them down? Some people don’t like to measure performance—fear of failure, perhaps. Some people are lazy. But look at what they are passing up. Rich people live longer and better and seem to be happier. And, contrary to all the publicity, the people in this group have fewer divorces.

Written goals are not opinions or whims or wishes. Writing goals is the key step that turns dreams into reality. It makes the difference between losing and winning.

If you are going to be a successful duck hunter, you must go where the ducks are. —Paul “Bear” Bryant

What this manager really wanted was for me to get his employees looking at the scorecards and goals instead of making excuses for bad performance. He wanted specifics, not generalities. Winners are specific.

First, take the 20 percent of your accounts that account for 80 percent of your business and establish a goal for a 25 percent increase in that group of accounts. If accomplished, this increase can replace all the business obtained from the other 80 percent of the accounts. Any business at all from the other 80 percent will be increased business. This is the first step. The second step is to take the next 40 percent of your accounts that traditionally accounted for about 16 percent of your business and set a goal to double the business from this group of accounts. This is a reasonable, logical plan, giving you the opportunity to build a 32 percent increase into your sales and still generate excess accounts that are available for redistribution to young, aggressive new sales people.

By keeping score you can have your cake and eat it, too.

In business we often hear—and my father the grocer has repeated it many times—that we cannot afford to ignore any customer. Every one is important. Although this is true, applications of the 80–20 Principle occur so often and with such force that it cannot be ignored.

If you are going to hunt ducks, you must go where the ducks are. And if you are going to kill giants, you must spend your time in the beanstalks, not in the pea vines.

Losers refuse to face up to such facts. That is why they lose. But winners face up to what is really happening—they even keep track of it. That winning attitude gives them the knowledge they need to win.

If winning isn’t important, why do we spend all that money on scoreboards? —Chuck Coonradt

We are, in most instances, doing less work with more people today than we were ten years ago.

My point is that you need to know what is happening, to know if you are winning or losing. Management must provide workers or supervisors with a realistic and clearly defined expectation so that they have a chance of knowing whether they are winning or losing. The purpose of the RRR is to do that very thing.

A word of caution: the concept of measurement is sometimes regarded as punitive and must therefore be approached carefully and sold to the players as a benefit.

If people can be sold on keeping score, out of curiosity or in an effort to do something fun with their job, you have succeeded. If you can, through motivational communication, provide them with the why in your thinking and share with them the importance of their participation, you will have a commitment that will last as long as you continue to reinforce it. The RRRs can be sold and merchandised.

Be tough on yourself and you will be more effective with your people. Get behind the idea. Get involved in it and get interested in it, and you will find that you can be the coach, the leader, and the team captain we all want so much on our team.

You may not, on your first attempt, come up with a perfect measurement, but if you will begin, if you will have the courage to try it and watch closely your own results, you will be more capable of producing results in others.

Freedom is greatest when the boundaries are clearly defined. —Chuck Coonradt

First, winners believe in themselves and see a relationship between past accomplishments and the future assignment.

“All coaching is, is taking a player where he can’t take himself.”

Second, winners have commitment to the team’s direction. They see a direct relationship between the company’s goals and their own individual goals.

Third, you’re looking for coachability. For every recognized winner there is a coach in the background. Winners recognize that good coaches have knowledge and information beyond their own capabilities, and they are willing to assimilate this through the coach. They are open to the leadership of others. The great ones have mentors.

Truly the difference between good and great is just a little extra effort.

As you look for winners for your company, and as you seek to establish a winning environment, think about the difference between winners and losers in baseball. A .200 hitter is moved about by managers about as often as they change their socks. A .300 hitter like Ken Griffey, Jr. is so valuable that when he fights with his manager, can you guess who they fire?

Look for the potential employee with the slight edge of excellence.

The great coaches are those who constantly seek to minimize uncertainty, and that begins in the hiring process in which you establish the field of play.

When I’m finished, the applicants have a clear picture of the field of play, a way to measure their performance, the record book so they know what to shoot for, and a clear understanding of my expectations.

Recent statistics reveal that 99 percent of all the professional baseball players who have signed a contract since the beginning of the year have never appeared in a major-league game.

Too many managers turn over leadership responsibilities to the wrong people, abdicate the coach’s role, and then spend the rest of their supervisory time with employees trying to keep them out of the terminal out-of-bounds area.

My recommendation is that when you hire new people, you don’t let them out of your sight for the first forty-eight hours. Have them in all your meetings. Take them to lunch. Don’t even let them go to the restroom unless you know they will be alone in there. There’s only one chance for a first impression. Make sure new employees get a clear understanding of the correct field of play right from the beginning. It will save a lot of problems later on and could even make the difference between success or failure for an employee.

The first thing a good coach does is establish the authority he/she will administer with the members of the team. It usually starts with the rules of the road, a list of acceptable and unacceptable behaviors that the coach expects from the team. They also outline the consequences of violations of these rules of the road: suspension, or being released from the team.

It actually allows the coach to coach more gently, because consequences are clearly defined.

All coaching is, is taking a player where he can’t take himself. —Bill McCartney (Coach of a college championship team, who later became the defensive coordinator of a Super Bowl team)

What is motivation? If you split this word in half, the first word you have is “motive.” And if you add one letter to the back half, you have “action.” Motivation is a motive for action—a reason to do something. Motivation is always present. It may be good, bad, or have no morality at all, but it is always there. It’s happening, or not happening, now. It’s not something you can buy in a box or bottle and put on a shelf.

Sometimes salespeople get to a point where they would rather sit in the office and starve than get out and work. Most offices have people who are starving to death. The best thing you can do for them is fire them. People are self-determined. You’ve got to let them do what they want to do. If they want to starve, you can’t stop them, but you don’t need to pay them while they are doing it.

You can’t win with fear.

Whereas donkeys may respond to whips and carrots, people don’t. People respond best to their own goals, if they have them. You don’t need to treat people like donkeys if you understand goal striving. Reaching goals is a form of winning. People like to win. People who are trying to win by reaching clearly defined goals don’t necessarily need carrots or whips. Winning is its own reward. Remember, there is no such thing as an unmotivated person. Goal setting harnesses that motivation and channels it in the right direction. Through proper goal-setting techniques discussed in chapter 2, a person’s desires, wants, and needs can be directed into purposeful activity.

The third and most effective form of motivation, self-motivation, takes place when people are allowed to choose their own rewards, set their own goals, and decide how they will accomplish those goals. People can be highly motivated in sports because they know nobody is going to change the rules or the boundaries in the middle of the game.

The key to motivation is providing motives that outweigh the desired actions.

Whenever the motive outweighs the action you are going to get results. Everybody in the world has a balance beam in his head. Motivation is simply the process of piling things on the motive side until movement occurs and the action gets off the ground.

When people ask you with their mouth or their eyes (not all questions are asked with the mouth) “Why should I?” or “What’s in it for me?” they are attempting to become self-motivated. They are saying, “Manager, my beam’s not tilted yet.” “I haven’t decided to go.” “Help me out.” “Let me understand more.” “Tell me again.” “Motivate me!”

He had the uncanny ability to match the motives of his followers to the things he wanted accomplished. Great motivators can get a group of people to accomplish a single objective for a variety of individual reasons.

The point I am making is that nobody can motivate a stranger with consistency. Your ability to motivate people is directly related to how well you know them and how well you’re able to match company goals with their needs and desires. You need to know as much as possible about the people you want to motivate.

And the reverse is true, too. They need to know as much as possible about you, the manager, and the company, too. Nobody can do what you do unless they know what you know. You cannot expect people to think the way you think unless they have the information you have.

If you want to get more self-motivation in people, get to know them better. If someone in your office is worried about getting bread on the table next week, you must know about it. If you’ve got someone with a $10,000 balloon payment due on a piece of real estate next month, you must know about that, too. Know what your people need and let them see that you and your organization offer a way for them to get it. They may not stay with you forever, but they’ll perform better while they do.

Everyday, everybody needs to know if they are winning or losing. —Chuck Coonradt

Though that initial meeting was tense, it was as it should have been: the CEO communicated clearly with his top managers, telling them exactly what he expected from them.

One was that if we asked new salespeople to sell one contract their first month and two their second month, we were telling them that they had to double their productivity in one month—their first month, the hardest month of their career. That was no good.

  1. Get your first sale as quickly as you can, wherever you can, from whomever you can, for whatever price you can. (We even considered taking a lower price in an effort to give the new salesperson a good closing experience as soon as possible.) 2. Get your second sale in less time than you got the first one. 3. Get your third sale in less than the average of the first two. 4. Continue to beat your average.

Why can ten people with a volleyball and a net achieve teamwork, goal-directed activity, and become a well-managed work team in a matter of minutes at the company picnic, but those same ten people can totally fail to achieve that kind of harmony on the job?

The answer lies in providing the keys to “Enjoying Work as Much as Play.” The Game of Work examines the phenomenon that people often work harder at sports and athletic endeavors than they do at their jobs. Why? Because in sports a participant has constant feedback on how he or she is doing. The score is known and the effort necessary to win is established. In work, feedback is often unreliable, inconsistent, or nonexistent. The participant seldom knows the score or what it takes to win.

Backlinks