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|In: Career Management|Last Updated:

He was a screamer.

Every so often I run across one of these — someone who gets ahead by throwing public tantrums. Strangely, some companies do little or nothing to discourage this behavior. Why? On the rare occasion I’m in a position to ask, I’m told the screamer gets results or some such nonsense: Any results I’ve seen in these circumstances happen in spite of the outbursts, not because of them.

If you disagree, a question: Given a choice, would the best talent in your industry work in an environment like this? And the best talent always has a choice.

Screamers display their temper to intimidate. It’s a way to get their own way, which is, I strongly suspect, their definition of “good.”

And those on the receiving end don’t even have to be intimidated for the outbursts to be effective. They’re unpleasant, and most of us, most of the time, are willing to make concessions to avoid unpleasantness.

Anyway, screamers are merely the tip of the culture-of-fear iceberg. There was, for example, this response to a standard question I ask everyone I interview during the information-gathering phase of any organizational effectiveness assessment … always, by the way, with a promise of confidentiality:

Congratulations! You’re now in charge of the whole company. It’s just for one day, though, so you only get to make one change. My question: What would that one change be?

In most organizations the answers are about reducing the height and impact of organizational siloes, adding more staff because the workload exceeds current capacity, fixing a bespoke interface tangle … that sort of thing.

When I asked this question in a fear-driven enterprise, one respondent answered, “You’ll have to ask my manager. This is above my pay grade.” His answer should have been, “I’d get the company to buy me a spine.”

Then he complained to his manager about my having asked him such an inappropriate question. It created quite a ruckus.

There is, to be sure, more than one kind of culture of fear. Perhaps the most pernicious is the kind of fear that stomps out initiative. Dig into what drives this sort of culture and you’ll find the fear goes all the way to the top, with members of the executive suite more concerned about what might go wrong than about what might go right — who pay more attention to risk than to opportunity.

You have, for example, undoubtedly run across the phrase “analysis paralysis.” It’s unfortunately catchy, because it obscures what’s really going on. What’s paralyzing the organization aren’t the endless analyses. It’s what’s driving decision-makers to ask for them: Fear that their decision might not lead to wealth and glory and nothing but wealth and glory.

“So far we’ve asked how male customers who are 6′ 2″ or taller, between the ages of 21 and 40, and are in committed relationships will respond to this, but we haven’t looked at the impact of incipient male pattern baldness. Go back and run the numbers.”

Even worse, and even more prevalent, are those companies that make decisions based solely on measurable financial return on investment. They’re worse because they’ve carefully organized their priorities so as to avoid investing in competitive advantage: If every project has to pay off, right now, competitive advantage isn’t even a subject.

To illustrate the point: You’ve read about the Internet of Things (IoT). You conclude it’s real, and that it’s important: If your company adds intelligence to its products they’ll be more attractive than what’s currently available in the marketplace. The same is true of your competitors, and whoever gets there first wins.

But the company can’t just add smarts to the products themselves. IoT requires significant enhancements to the IT infrastructure as a prerequisite. Now’s the time to invest.

What’s the ROI? None. Beefing up the infrastructure is foundational. It’s the smart products that will drive ROI.

And even there, competitors will also pursue IoT-driven opportunities. So the most likely outcome is that the actual business benefit will be remaining even with the marketplace.

Sometimes, expending enormous effort so as to maintain your position is a difficult and valuable achievement, even though there’s no way to measure the value, only the difficulty. But a fear-driven enterprise will never make the effort. The result: It will fall even further behind.

The financial squeeze that results will have only one possible and inevitable effect:

Future decisions will be driven by even more fear.

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|In: Leadership|Last Updated:

Leaders are supposed to motivate employees.

Regular readers, and especially those who have read Leading IT: <Still> the Toughest Job in the World, might recall that I’ve become a strong proponent of autonomy, mastery, and purpose (AMP from here on in), Daniel Pink’s formulation for maximizing employee performance.

Pink’s book on the subject is Drive. Its subtitle promises, “The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.” What’s tricky is defining “motivate.”

When I hear the word, I think in terms of what gets me pumped up, full of energy, ready to take on tough challenges. I’m motivated.

Merriam-Webster.com’s definition is more tepid: “to give (someone) a reason for doing something.” It’s way too left-brain. Motivation is, to my way of thinking at least, an emotional thing. Reasons are … the word speaks for itself. They’re appeals to one’s reason.

“Studies show that soldiers who dig foxholes in 37 seconds or less have a 13.4% higher survival rate than those who don’t,” provides a reason to dig foxholes more quickly. “Dig fast or you’re gonna die!” motivates.

Which brings us to the curious case of AMP.

While AMP might or might not be the perfect formulation, the evidence is pretty solid that when a person finds the task itself intrinsically rewarding, that person’s performance exceeds what you’ll get from someone whose motivation comes from promised rewards like money.

It goes beyond that: The promise of an external reward interferes with the motivation that would otherwise come from inside. Promise a reward and performance is worse than when motivation is intrinsic.

We explored this effect in KJR some time ago, and concluded that when offered a reward for accomplishing something, those receiving the offer immediately deposit it in their psychological bank account. As it’s already theirs, the best possible outcome is that the person offering the reward doesn’t take it back.

Which means the motivation that comes from a promised reward is the fear of losing it, not the gratification of receiving it.

And as fear, while it does result in enormous energy, generally makes people stupid, this explains why the net effect of any promised external rewards is poorer performance, not better.

There’s also this odd bit: In conversations about motivation, when I bring up AMP as motivator, very few people find the promise of these to be energizing. The reaction is more along the lines of, “Yeah, that would be nice.”

All of which leads to a conclusion:

Motivating employees isn’t the same as getting better performance from them.

Most of us, as leaders, think of motivating employees as action and reaction: If I do this, employees will be more motivated than before.

But AMP doesn’t work as a way to motivate employees. If, in a staff meeting, you tell everyone, “From here on in, you’ll have more autonomy, mastery, and purpose,” you might expect great things as a result, but you won’t get great things as a result.

Try this and you’re offering AMP as a reward — the exact approach we just found doesn’t work.

AMP only works if you use it to guide how you set up the work environment and management culture, while never actually presenting in terms of your hoped for causes and effects.

Motivation isn’t the result of your actions. It’s the result of your reactions.

Praise is a motivational workhorse. Among the reasons it’s so useful is that there’s no way to make the mistake of offering it as a reward.

Not directly, at least.

“Do a good job and I’ll give you a public pat on the back” is so ludicrous a promise that it’s hard to imagine any manager uttering it, no matter how pointy-haired or naïve. But there is a risk — that praising someone creates an expectation of future praise — praise becomes an implicitly promised reward. See above.

Praise only works as a response to something praiseworthy. Your standards have to be high enough that earning your praise means something.

It has to be, that is, an accomplishment.

Which is the common thread that connects AMP to praise.

With AMP, an employee has improved his or her skills and achieved something important. Check.

With praise, an employee must have accomplished something important (check), and as a result has received your not-too-easily-given recognition of it — an accomplishment in its own right (double-check).

Whether the employee was more motivated really doesn’t matter. What does matter: the employee has accomplished something important, and is likely to accomplish something else important tomorrow.

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