The programme or the practitioner
The programme or the practitioner? - Incentive & Motivation magazine January 2006
One of my best friends from university days came to visit recently with his lovely wife and their beautiful daughter. For the past ten years he has been working with one of the country’s largest employers as an in house lawyer. Prior to that his first and only other employer was a city law firm.
Upon arrival he announced that he had just signed on the dotted line for voluntary redundancy and in doing so had brought to an end the most difficult two-year period of his working life. Instead of being downcast (being out of work is not something that will feel at all comfortable for my friend ), he was remarkably chipper.
For the first eight years with the organisation he’d had a thoroughly enjoyable time, working hard, adding value, making a difference etc. Then he got a new boss. Within weeks his self-confidence was crumbling and so began a two-year period of self-doubt and nagging uncertainty. The decision to go, agonised over to begin with, had ended that uncertainty. His mindset now (hooray) was that he had been given the opportunity to break out of a negative cloud that had darkened his horizon for simply too long.
Apart from being delighted to see my old friend back to somewhere near his bubbling best, I was reminded of one of the surest facts of working life: the line manager relationship is everything. At Grass Roots we think we know a bit about motivation and performance improvement - the importance of balancing communication, learning, measurement and reward. Get these things aligned and you’ve got a great chance of energising your people and being successful.
But there is a vital fifth ingredient and it’s called good management. It doesn’t even have to be inspirational, just the ability to get the best out of people….to let them shine A recent survey suggests that 70% of HR managers don’t feel their reward and recognition programmes are working…a waste of time perhaps. Okay, check the design by all means, but one can’t help wondering to what extent the real issue is one of poor craftsmen blaming their tools.