
Why Your Employees Are Losing Motivation - vijaydev
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/5289.html
======
kowen
For those interested in this subject, I would suggest looking into ROWE -
Results-Only Work Environment.

<http://gorowe.com/>

The basic tenet of ROWE is to stop doing busy-work, and start doing only what
matters. Stop wasting everyone's time. All meetings are optional. You work
when and where and how you like, as long as the job gets done. That's key, by
the way... _as long as the job gets done_.

The most common objection in the corporate world seems to be "but how will we
know if people are doing their job if they aren't in the office from 9 - 5?"
and the answer, of course is "how do you know now?" (hint: for the most part,
you don't, unless you have clear goals and are judging people solely on output
rather than on face-time etc.)

In a start-up this is hardly an issue!

~~~
robryan
A problem I see in a big company with judging people on their output rather
than closely monitoring their hours is that if you do have an employee that is
only doing say 2 hours work a day but is getting as much done as some of the
people putting in 8 you want to identify them and give them adequate
compensation so that you get the full time out of them and as a consequence
get more done.

I think flexible work hours are great in a motivated group with clear goals
but they could be costly if you have an unmotivated group doing it for the
paycheck.

~~~
kowen
> _only doing say 2 hours work a day_

Right! However the employee actually has a couple of choices at this point...
either they can have a lot of free time, start a startup, go snowboarding,
etc, or they can go to their manager and negotiate. From what I've heard, both
of these actually occur.

Another interesting trend is that employees tweak what they're doing and start
working more efficiently, increasing a teams output by as much as 35% without
working "more".

> _[it] could be costly if you have an unmotivated group doing it for the
> paycheck_

It would appear that lack of motivation shows up in lack of results and the
unmotivated group quickly has to find another job. In one case, a company
fired nearly 90% of a particular department, but the retention rate sky
rocketed, so their costs went way down, even when you include the cost of
having to look for and hire new people.

------
abstractbill
_A critical condition for employee enthusiasm is a clear, credible, and
inspiring organizational purpose: in effect, a "reason for being" that
translates for workers into a "reason for being there" that goes above and
beyond money.

Every manager should be able to expressly state a strong purpose for his
unit._

Out of all of these points, I'd say this is the most important. If you can't
tell people _why_ they're doing what they're doing, and convince them that
it's important, then you've lost already.

~~~
abyssknight
I wanted to post a long comment about my current journey in corporate life,
but really, this is all that needs to be said. If you feel like you have no
purpose, you will have no purpose, and you will get used to it. Don't.

~~~
smwhreyebelong
Can you elaborate ? I have been in similar situations before where the
organization didn't have a purpose and the strictly top-down management didn't
have that much experience to know that they were headed down the wrong path
(even when the employees told them so)

It was pretty hard to motivate oneself in that environment. Even when you tell
yourself that you have a purpose and try to do your best, you always know what
the reality is.

~~~
abyssknight
Sure, glad to. You can also ping me off HN if you want.

For me, the realization started at my last job. We were a really small, but
matured startup from the dot com boom. I joined, and stayed a single year. I
left because we had no purpose, or rather I didn't know where we were going or
why. The CTO made goals for me, and basically they equated to building new
products and features into our existing offerings. The only problem was, no
one knew what those should be. So I spent the better part of a year just
building things, throwing them away, and building them again.

We went to a company meeting, a once a year affair, and I finally met our CEO.
He told all of IT to stop building new things. I figured, okay, we're going to
stop and do some bug fixes. I got back to the office, and absolutely nothing
changed. One layoff, a few server outages, and countless prototypes being
thrown out I'd had enough. So I did what I thought would be my out, I applied
for a new position at a huge company. One that would have to have a forward
vision to survive, and a budget to keep me up to date and well paid.

I ended up where I am now, and at first everything was clear. Our objectives
were laid out in requirements, the requirements made sense (mostly), and when
we met them everyone was happy. Until the customer got ahold of it. Which was
fine, until the customer completely changed their mind.

Everything started to sound familiar at that point. We would promise the
impossible, deliver what we could, and almost never push back. We started to
develop things before they were fully spec'd even while keeping a waterfall
development model. It was just... messy.

The only difference between this and my first position was that the goal was
clear, but the true question of "Why are we building this?" was still not
answered. I've built or helped build about 4-5 systems for the Fortune 50
company I work for over the past two years. Of those, I would never use any of
them. Ever. The total audience for our usual application is maybe 50 people,
and they _have_ to use it to do their job.

So I learned that even having a purpose can mean nothing when that purpose is
futile. I've been rewriting legacy applications in an already legacy
framework. Of those applications, most of them could have been covered by
building one standard application that handled a more generic use case.
Instead we built each one, individually, on top of archaic tools and
frameworks.

I'm ashamed to admit that I've gotten used to being less than optimally
productive. I've learned to put things off, and to manage expectations. I used
to burn through line items, and get things _done_ , but all that seems
meaningless when you have no idea where you're going or why.

So now, in an effort to fix it all, I've joined the leadership program at my
division of our company. Unfortunately, I can't move on to my next assignment
until June. The program promises to give me more visibility, experience and an
accellerated career path. The best part, though, is that I get to change
positions every 6-9 months.

Sounds like it is just what the doctor ordered, but only time will tell. For
now though, I remain incredibly burnt out. They want spell check implemented
for everything on their 50+ field form, using a vendor supplied input field.
Meanwhile, the viewstate is hovering around 1.5mb and we still don't have a
session database.

~~~
dasil003
Great post! I think my main attraction to startups is that there is a much
more reasonable chance of answering this question successfully. That is,
everyone can put their heads together and come up with a coherent plan of
action, which though certainly imperfect, at least has well-understood
reasoning and awareness behind it.

In a large company it's orders of magnitude more difficult to create a
persistent vision. Certainly with the right management talent it can be done,
but it's damn hard and I have no strong desire to be a part of it (though I
would join a well-oiled corporate team).

~~~
smwhreyebelong
I once worked for a well-oiled corporate team. It was actually a startup team
acquired by the big company. That was the best work experience I have had so
far. The team members got along really well and everyone worked really hard
and was at the top of their game.

I have worked at a few other companies since then (big co, small well funded
team at medium co, small co) but haven't found anything quite like that
experience. I guess that's why it was a successful team: people were really
productive and looked forward to coming to work, truly enjoying the work
environment.

EDIT: The team knew where they were going and what the priorities were. The
clarity of vision and enthusiasm goes a VERY long way towards creating a
winning team.

------
illumin8
Good tips. I love my job right now, salary is good, work is not too hard, I
have time to learn new skills. However, one thing that is frustrating is that
there are those on my team that refuse to work and management never
disciplines them for any reason. They are allowed to just collect a paycheck,
while only putting in about 2 hours of actual work every week. This is
mentioned in the article.

Any tips for me? Just suck it up and try to do good at my job is what I've
been doing for the last 3 years, but sometimes it gets frustrating.

~~~
jswinghammer
That's been every job I've ever been at. I think employers are just too nice
sometimes. It works in your favor when something comes up and you need them to
be understanding but it's hard to stay motivated sometimes when you either
need to clean up after someone's mess or know that someone just isn't doing
anything. With some people I'd rather them stay out of the way than have to
fix the build every day or redo pages they did because they did something
crazy.

~~~
illumin8
Good point... sometimes it's better not to get much work from some people.
They do more harm than good.

------
elptacek
Curiously, I'd come to a few of these conclusions myself since I started
working for my current employer. A lot of people make that sort of Knowing
Face when I tell them that I work for my husband. Sure, switching from being
the boss to being the bossed, during work hours, leads to some occasional
friction,... :-) But because of our unique relationship, there is a measure of
equity and communication that I've only ever felt from one other employer (and
that only from my immediate superior).

At least one of my former employers would pat himself on the back after
reading this, completely blind to the impact on moral of his constant threats
to fire us. So while these things make sense when you read them, obviously
some self-(awareness|respect) is necessary to understand and act on them.

