The 3 Things That Keep People Feeling Motivated At Work

As part of TED’s ‘How to be a Better Human’ series, two researchers, Richard Ryan and Edward Deci, developed an idea called ‘self-determination theory’. Self-determination theory essentially argued that people are motivated when they can determine for themselves what to work on and how to work on it.

Below, I’ll outline the three main drivers of motivation according to self-determination theory — autonomy, competence, and relatedness — and I’ll provide practical ways to leverage the power of each.

1) Autonomy

This refers to how much people feel they can influence the work they do or control the output and outcome. It outlines how much say a person has in the way they do something.

The opposite, of course, is being micro-managed. If micro-management is about being told what to do and how to do it, autonomy is getting the person involved in deciding how it’s going to be done and showing creative initiative to get there.

·        Analyze how many times you ‘tell’ people what to do, versus how many times you ‘involve’ them in decision-making.

·        Mutually assign tasks and objectives for people, identifying and agreeing deadlines

·        Give them more freedom on how the task is completed, within certain guidelines.

·        Communicate the progress people are making to achieve the goals they are set.

2) Competence

We’ve always stated that a vital aspect of people’s drive is to learn, grow and develop. Becoming ‘better at stuff’ is one of the keys to motivation, so assist and support in helping team members to develop their skills.

·        Limit the amount of constructive criticism you offer. The research showed there were links between poor feedback mechanisms and poor motivation.

·        Share successes with people so they can see how much they’ve grown by taking more responsibility.

·        Give positive feedback when you can, specifying exactly what you are happy with so it can be repeated.

·        Look for opportunities to get your people learning and developing on the job, not just on training courses.

3) Relatedness

The research showed that, when people feel a connection between what they do and the bigger picture they are serving, there is an increase in motivation.

·        Ensure team members have opportunities to connect with others, even on a virtual basis.

·        Show people how the role they play interacts and contributes to others’ work, hence reducing the impacts of silos within the business.

·        Create a connection between their role and the mission of the organization.

·        Allow people to interact with each other more, so the feeling of belonging is enhanced.

Relatedness refers to the sense of feeling worthwhile and being able to contribute to the overall goals of each other as well as the company. You can naturally see how and why this would be a key driver of motivation.

When people have the ability to determine how they work, the means to judge their progress and the feeling that their work helps other people, they can’t help but be motivated to get to work.

Lean Tips Edition #296 (#3466 - #3480)

For my Facebook fans you already know about this great feature. But for those of you that are not connected to A Lean Journey on Facebook or Twitter I post daily a feature I call Lean Tips.  It is meant to be advice, things I learned from experience, and some knowledge tidbits about Lean to help you along your journey.  Another great reason to like A Lean Journey on Facebook.

Click this link for A Lean Journey's Facebook Page Notes Feed.

Here is the next addition of tips from the Facebook page:

Lean Tip #3466 – Deliver Coaching on the "Shop Floor"

The majority of your teaching and coaching should happen in the workplace where the process and the teams are operating. This ensures that there is a clear link between what the employee is learning and the environment in which they act in. In the case of manufacturing companies this would be the shop-floor while for service companies this would be where the process is operating or the service delivery to customers is provided.

Lean Tip #3467 – Help Employees Break the Problem Down into Parts

Teach them to break the problem into milestones or target conditions which need to be achieved on the road to achieving the final outcome. This not only ensures regular focus on the process on its way to achieving the final outcome but also makes sure that actions are taken early if things go off the rails. Review progress using a PDCA structure.

Lean Tip #3468 – Let Them Think for Themselves

Never provide answers to the person you’re coaching. Your approach to teaching has to be through a series of questions that helps the person to find the answer. They should learn through their own discovery as they work on the project and wors on the questions posed by their coach. The process of asking-questions to help the individual come up with their own answers – also known as the Socratic method - unfurls the thought process of the student.

Lean Tip #3469 – Teach Employees Not to Assign Blame to Individuals

Inculcate into the individuals that you mentor that problems happen because of process and the system not because of people. So whenever someone reports a problem or blames someone, the first response has to be to go and look at the process / system and not to point the finger at any one individual.

Lean Tip #3470 – Help Them Learn to See

Teach the change agents the power of observation. Employees need to be taught to look for both explicit and implicit things in a process. Can this be taught? Yes, it can be. Observation is not just about the process but also about the customers, the context in which the process functions, etc.

Lean Tip #3471 – Ask Guiding Questions

Open-ended, guiding questions lead to more detailed and thoughtful answers, which lead to more productive coaching conversations in the workplace. As a manager or leader, it is critical that you develop strong relationships with your employees. This will help you determine if your employees are curious, have the capacity to perform and improve, and what kind of attitude they have toward their work. 

This is where communication skills and emotional intelligence really come into play. Managers must guide conversations both by asking questions and listening, not by giving directives. Employees learn and grow the most when they uncover the answers themselves, making the techniques of coaching highly effective.

Lean Tip #3472 – Recognize What’s Going Well

Coaching (successfully) in the workplace requires a balance of criticism and praise. If your coaching conversations solely focus on identifying what’s not working and how the employee needs to change, it can be demoralizing rather than motivating.

Recognizing and valuing an employee’s strengths can provide a solid basis for growth and development. However, it’s important to avoid using the “compliment sandwich” approach, as it can often come across as disingenuous and lacking in authenticity.

Instead, take the time to genuinely recognize specific areas where the employee excels and let them know that their efforts are valued. Additionally, it’s important to consider how the employee prefers to be recognized. Some individuals thrive with frequent recognition, while others find occasional acknowledgment sufficient. Understanding their preferences, whether they prefer public or private recognition, is crucial in fostering a positive coaching management style. Openly communicate with your employees and ask about their preferred coaching techniques and examples of effective coaching in the workplace.

Lean Tip #3473 – Listen and Empower

Coaching requires both encouragement and empowerment. As a manager and a leader, your job is to build one-on-one relationships with employees that result in improved performance.

Your employees are likely to have a lot of input, questions, and feedback. It’s important for them to know you care enough to listen to what they have to say, so encourage them to share their opinions.

Some employees will have no problem speaking their mind, while others will need a LOT of encouragement before they share an opinion with you openly. Once they do open up, be sure to respect those opinions by discussing them, rather than dismissing them.

Lean Tip #3474 – Give Them Goals to Aspire To

Great performance coaches identify strengths and weaknesses within individual employees and help them take advantage of what they’re good at. This knowledge of their own skills and competencies allows employees to target goals that align with their strengths, and perhaps aspire to promotions and leadership roles.

Lean Tip #3475 – Empower Your Team to Manage Themselves, and Achieve More

Self-aware and communicative employees are engaged, empowered, and motivated. Armed with concrete knowledge about what they’re capable of and how they can continue to improve their performance in the office, employees are likely to be more proactive about managing their own advancement and goals in the workplace.

Lean Tip #3476 – Implement Continuous improvement Based on Customer Need

Unlike what many people think, sales (and other) departments have a big impact on the production system of a company. From my experience, most of the time those departments are disconnected from the production system and the needs of the customer.

Remember that the Lean principle of “Pull” is not a concept to be implemented in production areas only. When trying to optimize your processes, always look at the system holistically. Focus your investment on real customer needs.

Within an organization there are internal and external customers. Internal customers are people who work in the various departments that we produce work for. External customers are the end users outside of our organization. An improvement is only useful if it improves upon something that customers value. Before doing any work, we must be aware of who the customer is and what is their conditions of satisfaction to be able to deliver the desired value.

Lean Tip #3477 – Reduce Non-Value Added Activities

Draw a Value Stream Map and connect the production areas with non-production areas. Teach your people to distinguish between value added activities, necessary non-value added activities, and waste. Standardize your processes. Even creative processes can be standardized. Some experts say that around 80-90% of a supposedly creative process is composed of repetitive processes or methodological steps.

Lean Tip #3478 – Implement 5S & Housekeeping

Without having a well-organized office environment, it will be quite difficult to implement any Lean continuous improvement program. These simple traditional lean tools do not need much investment. 5S and a Kanban system can improve organization and efficiency.

Lean Tip #3479 – Use Visual Management to Control the Workflow

Use visual management principles to provide visibility of work-in-progress (i.e., status of orders, projects, reports, etc.). A visual communication system ensures that standards are in place so that work is completed on schedule. Visual Management should be implemented in the office areas as well as in production areas.

Lean Tip #3480 – Take Advantage of Digital Tools

First, I recommend the use of traditional manual solutions and tools such as color cards, post-its notes, and boards to standardize the process. When you have standardized the process, you can take advantage of digital tools including apps, touch screens, and cloud computing tools. My recommendation is to start with less sophisticated or free versions of applications and software. Once you have mastered the rules and routines, search for more powerful, expensive, or sophisticated tools if needed. Remember the 8th principle of the Toyota Way: “Use only reliable, thoroughly tested technology that serves your people and process”, a principle not yet well understood by many companies.

Lean Quote: Let Enthusiasm Drive Your Leadership

On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on this journey because without learning we can not improve.

"Spring work is going on with joyful enthusiasm."   —  John Muir

Enthusiasm; intensity about a subject; willingness to engage others on their terms with respect to the threats and possibilities; deep knowledge about the subject; examples from one's own experience - all of these are marks of passion.  These are attributes that can be studied, learned, and acquired over time.  They grow from believing that there must be a better way for your organization to survive and prosper in a competitive world.

Passion is everything. Without passion there is no drive to succeed. It is the fuel of the will, and everything you do as a leader must express your passion. Passion is contagious and is easily shared. Passion will bridge moments of weakness and will drive you past your failures while reaching for your goals. Passion radiates from you and is easily detected by others.

Enthusiastic leaders are able to make visions come alive. They do this by being inspirational, and passionate and by breathing life into the vision via their enthusiasm and energy. Enthusiasm is infectious and makes leaders more credible. It’s the exact opposite of being dull and boring. It’s the enthusiastic transmission of energy that brings a vision to life for the leader’s followers.

A leader without passion isn’t a leader. He’s a paper pusher. Or a taskmaster. Passion drives a lot, and you can inspire so much in others through your own passion and enthusiasm. That doesn’t mean you have to be constantly cheery; it means you’ve got to believe in what you’re doing and what your company is doing.

The team will feed off your energy, your example. They will sense and follow your motives, so keep it positive. As you cultivate these behaviors in your own life, you will reap the benefits. Let enthusiasm drive your leadership.

Exposing The Common Myths of Standardized Work

A couple days ago I posted an article on standard work as a mechanism for facilitating and empowering improvement. By documenting the current best practice, standardized work forms the baseline for kaizen or continuous improvement. As the standard is improved, the new standard becomes the baseline for further improvements, and so on. Improving standardized work is a never-ending process. Standardized work is one of the most powerful but least used lean tools.

Unfortunately, there are many myths regarding standardized work that if followed create a flawed system. To prevent you from falling into this trap I will attempt to debunk several of these myths.

Standard Work Is Permanent

A common misconception is that ‘standardized’ is assumed to be permanent. This is not the case. It’s just the best way we know how to do the work today. Continuous improvement is always encouraged, once the current best method is understood and practiced in order to establish a stable foundation for further improvement.

Standard Work is Self-Created

Some think employees develop their own standardized work. The initial work standard should be developed by engineers (process owners) working with operators who are part of a team. Group leaders and team leaders then have responsibility for training employees on the standard work and soliciting their input. Once the process is operating at some level of stability, employees are challenged to develop better methods, but the methods are always reviewed by others, including management.

Standard Work is a Rigid Framework

Another common myth about standardized work is that many think of a rigid work environment where workers aren’t required to think. This is totally the opposite as I said above. Operators are part of the creation of the work standard and then are challenged to improve these methods. The standard creates a baseline by which improvement can be measured. Ideas should be discussed with group leaders and considered depending upon the consensus and buy-in from other members and shifts. Once consensus is reached then experimentation can be done to determine the effectiveness of the improvement. If it is deemed an effective change then the standardized work can modified and everyone trained in the new method.

Standard Work Reduces Training Needs

It is also believed that with standard work you will know everything about the job and therefore be able to train anyone to do the job. Standardized work is the process used by operators to define their work method through documentation and visual postings. This is often misinterpreted as a fully detailed description of the work and associated standards. Anyone who has read the standard work sheets would see that the work description explains the work elements in basic terms - not nearly enough information to read and fully understand the job. Job Instruction Training (JIT) is the method commonly used in Lean to transfer complete knowledge of a job to a team member. In my experience anyone who believes that a job is simple enough to distill down to a few sheets of paper underestimates the competency level necessary of their employees.

Standard Work Prevents Deviations

Another myth is that with standard work and visual postings employees will not deviate from the standard. This couldn’t be further from the truth. There is nothing in standardized work that will prevent deviation by the operator except the visual awareness of others. The visual reference is utilized by management for monitoring adherence to the standard which is done through periodic and regular audits of the standardized work. To ensure compliance to the standard, it’s necessary to poka-yoke or mistake proof the process to prevent deviation and make excursions highly visible.

Standard Work Only Applies to Shop Floor

Lastly, there are those that believe standard work is only for the shop floor. Standard work has been proven effective in many industries from the military to healthcare and everything in between. In particular, I think this is a technique that management teams must adopt. How we run the business should not be any different than how we do business. In my experience, those organizations that use standard work at the management level are more productive and effective.

Standardizing the work adds discipline to the culture, an element that is frequently neglected but essential for Lean to take root. Standardized work is also a learning tool that supports audits, promotes problem solving, and involves team members in developing poka-yokes. While standard work can be an effective foundation for continuous improvement it is important to recognize that it is not a one-stop shop for all that ails you.

Standard Work Enables and Facilitates

Standard work is a written description of how a process should be done. It guides consistent execution. At its best, it documents a current "best practice" and ensures that it is implemented throughout a company. At a minimum, it provides a baseline from which a better approach can be developed.

The definition of standard work is "the most effective combination of manpower, materials and machinery". Standard work is the method, and thereby you have the four Ms of manufacturing (manpower, material, machinery, methods). Standard Work is only "the most effective" until the standard is improved.

Standards to a company are like scales and sheet music to a musician. Our team members help develop and maintain standards, which are not static. Standards change as we get better, just as a good band will incorporate chord and melodic variations if they sound good. Thus, standards do not constrain creativity – they enable it, by providing a basis for comparison, and by providing stability, so we have the time and energy to improve.

Standardized work comprises:

• Content
• Sequence
• Timing
• Expected outcome

It should also contain tests, or red flags, which tell you when there’s a problem. That way, you won’t ship junk. The tests could be physical, such as a torque check on a bolt, or it could be administrative, like a blacked-out template that fits over a standard form and highlights the critical information.

Standard work enables and facilitates:

• Avoidance of errors, assuring that lessons learned are utilized and not forgotten
• Team learning and training
• Improvements to make the work more effective
• Reduction in variability
• Creation of meaningful job descriptions
• Greater innovation by reducing the mental and physical overhead of repetitive or standardized work

Standard work does not preclude flexibility. You can still do a lot of different jobs, and be able to address new problems. Standard work just takes the things you do repeatedly and makes them routine, so you don’t waste time thinking about them.

Standards are an essential requirement for any company seeking to continuously improve. All continuous improvement methods leverage learning to get better results from their business efforts. Standards provide the baseline references that are necessary for learning. A standard operating procedure supplies a stable platform for collecting performance measurements. The standard and its profile of performance yields the information people need to uncover improvement opportunities, make and measure improvements, and extract learning.

Lean Quote: Employee Appreciation Day

On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on this journey because without learning we can not improve.

"It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed."   —  Napolean Hill

Today, March 1, marks annual Employee Appreciation Day, which has taken place on the first Friday of every March since 1995. Employee Appreciation Day encourages managers of all levels to support and reward their employees, and to show their appreciation!

Employee Appreciation Day is all about your employees. Celebrating the value they bring to your organization as individuals is a great way to increase employee engagement, commitment, and motivation. It's important to make employees feel valued.

It seems like a simple concept: Make employees feel appreciated, and they will work harder and be more loyal. But there is often a disconnect between the type of appreciation employees want and what their managers think they want.

Employees should be appreciated each and every day, but hey – why not make them feel extra special with these ideas.

Focus on Fun 

Employee Appreciation Day is the perfect excuse to have fun at work! Your employees are used to the everyday work grind. If you throw in some fun activities or games, it will be a memorable and refreshing break from the same old, same old.

Snacks are Essential

Food is a great motivator. Present me with a cupcake and I will remember it for the rest of my life. Throw a celebration with no food at all? I will remember that for the rest of my life, too. Okay, I might be a little dramatic BUT either way, food is a celebration must. Food brings people together. It’s the centerpiece. It’s what connects us all at the end of a long workday.

Recognize Publicly

Recognizing your employees publicly for a job well done is an underrated idea for showing employee appreciation. As a boss, your positive words can greatly boost employee morale, especially if the praise is given in front of colleagues and peers.

Simply Say “Thank You”

This one might seem super obvious. Make sure to take some time to say thank you with intentionality. A heartfelt thank you can make employees feel valued, motivated, and appreciated for their efforts.

Recognition cannot be an afterthought. It must be deliberate and timely. Whether it’s a simple thank you or more formal recognition, people want to feel appreciated at work. They want to feel a sense of purpose, and that they are part of something bigger than themselves. The right employee appreciation program can help make those connections and much more.

Lean Roundup #177 – February 2024

A selection of highlighted blog posts from Lean bloggers from the month of February 2024.  You can also view the previous monthly Lean Roundups here.  

 

Introduction to Toyota Kata – Mark Rosenthal introduces Toyota Kata as a way to start to nudge the culture in the direction we want it to go.

 

The Problem (737 MAX and Beyond) at Boeing Isn’t “Idiots.” It’s Far More Complex Than That… But Fixable – Mark Graban asks and answers what can we do to prevent mistakes and protect ourselves from human error.

 

Toyota’s job rotation policy - Michel Baudin focuses on the specifics of Job Rotation as a policy that sets Toyota apart from most other manufacturing companies.

 

Strategy in a Time of Explosive Change – Pascal Dennis discusses how to develop and deploy strategy in ‘interesting’ Technological times.

 

The Power of Perception: Transforming Challenges into Opportunities – Ron Pereira talks about how our experience is shaped by our perception and reaction.

Asking the Wrong Question (for Decades) – Bob Emiliani says we have challenged people with the wrong question.

Understanding the Customer Experience is a Keystone in Process Improvement - John Knotts says ensuring satisfaction through the entire journey a customer undertakes with your business is essential for process improvement and, ultimately, business success.

 

Different Aspects of Seeing a Shop Floor—Introduction - Christoph Roser goes through the steps for understanding the shop floor to see what’s going on in the production system.

 

Coach’s Corner: How can Lean Product and Process Development enable the creation of environmentally sustainable products? - Katrina Appell shows how following LPPD principles and practices enables teams to consider sustainability when making decisions early in and throughout the design process.

 

The Ongoing State of Agile Transformations - Christopher Chapman reviewed and analyzed the annual State of Agile industry survey to see how peers were doing in adopting this “new” way of delivering software, what impediments they were facing, and what trends were emerging.

 

Lean Leadership in Action: CEO Larry Culp’s Journey to Revitalize GE at the Gemba – Mark Graban discusses the importance of leadership action in Lean with recent example from GE’s CEO Larry Culp.

Learning is Not Enough – Bob Emiliani explains learning is a foundation, a launching point, but one has to go much further to gain know-how.