ABSTRACT
You can’t motivate people. There, I said it. It’s a bold statement, but I stand behind it. Motivating others is a myth. People come to the job site with their own intrinsic set of beliefs about such things as work ethic, personal responsibility, pride of ownership, and a general sense of what doing a good job means. Having said this, you may well ask: Does this mean that people can’t change their outlook on life? Couldn’t an irresponsible person learn to become responsible, and a slacker aspire to be a hard worker? Sure they can. In fact, we’ve all seen examples of just such turnarounds-maybe even in our own lives. But generally speaking, when this change occurs, it
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isn’t due to something that a leader did. There is no magic button that will suddenly light the fire inside of someone if the spark doesn’t already exist. What a leader can provide are clear standards, feedback regarding how someone’s performance measures up against these standards, and his or her availability to provide assistance or suggestions for improvement. The rest is pretty much up to each individual worker. Trust me; no amount of inspired leadership can rouse a nonperformer unless it is already within him or her to be awakened. Understanding your limitations as a leader is actually a good thing. Many leaders assume too much personal responsibility when their employee’s act badly and end up wasting far too much time, energy, and stomach acid, trying to figure out “how to get through” to them, often to their team’s and their company’s detriment. There is one such example that bothers me to this day. A project executive (PX) who had been promoted because of his sales ability proved most vexing to all who worked with him. He was intelligent, presented well, was good with people (at least on the surface), and at first blush, the owners loved him. But after the sale was secured, and the honeymoon was over, his behavior rapidly deteriorated. He disappeared for long periods of time and often failed to show up for meetings that he himself had called. Worse, he could never be counted on to produce any of his deliverables. The company spent close to two years trying to convince him to do his job; they praised him, scolded him, told him how much they needed him-but to no avail. In the meantime, his teammates put in extra hours picking up his slack and were often called upon to make excuses for his unexplained absences to an owner who was increasingly questioning the value he added to the job. All in all, a true Lean disaster. In the end, the company finally had to let him go. In retrospect, rather than being preoccupied with his potential, top managment would have been much better served cutting their losses before the PX’s impact on productivity, quality, and owner perception became so detrimental. In the end, despite all of their good intentions, all they ended up really doing was enabling his Lean-killing behaviors.
