I am pleased to share a new article “How did Strategic Planning help during the economic crisis?” published in the March 2010 journal Strategy & Leadership. My coauthor, Jim Wilson, and I presented these findings at the annual conference of the Association for Strategic Planning (ASP) in February. The article is based on a survey we did last year where we asked several hundred managers how strategic planning helped during the economic crisis. Among the key findings:
Organizations that use strategic planning to make critical decisions are better able to pursue growth opportunities during crisis.
Organizations that rely on strategic planning during crisis are more confident about their prospects for near-term growth.
Organizations that involve the entire executive team in strategic planning expect revenue growth over the next 12 months.
The data suggest that organizations using strategic planning were better prepared, more optimistic and confident, and better able to pursue growth opportunities. You can find the article by following this link Strategy in Crisis.
Free Personality and Style Inventory
Free Personality and Style Inventory. Get to know key aspects of your personality and style with the FREE Innate Index. The Innate Index is a brief personality inventory developed by our associate Dr. Ken Nowack at Envisia Learning. The inventory is based on the five factor personality model that has been shown to be associated with a variety of school, life, career and relationship success outcomes. Link http://www.kollnergroup.com/free-resources/assessments-free/
Book Review
Daniel H. Pink: Drive – The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us
In this inspiring book, Pink sifts through human psychology research on motivation and makes the argument that the time has arrived to focus much more on intrinsic awards in the workplace. Coming on the heels of the economic crisis, this book adds fuel to the fire that traditional extrinsic rewards particularly in the form of gigantic bonuses often won’t work in the 21st century as motivators to produce sustainable triple bottom line results for businesses.
Our human drive of survival and our rational drive to seek award and avoid punishment underlie Motivation 1.0 and 2.0 operating systems, as Pink calls them. In 20th century scientific management schools, we became experts at creating reward systems atop of these motivational drivers that assumed the way to improve performance is to reward the good and punish the bad. Pink writes, “Motivation 2.0 still serves some purposes well. It’s just deeply unreliable. Sometimes it works; many times it doesn’t.”
Pink shows with examples when to use the carrot and stick rewards and that the approach in other situations comes with “The Seven Deadly Flaws.” They are:
They can extinguish intrinsic motivation
They can diminish performance
They crush creativity
They can crowd out good behavior
They can encourage cheating, shortcuts and unethical behavior
The can become addictive
They can foster short-term thinking
A big fan of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi of Claremont Graduate University, Pink shows how Csikszentmihalyi’s research on flow has great implication for how we construct work assignments with clear goals, immediate feedback and challenges well matched to our abilities so its more enjoyable and allow for a deeper sense of engagement. He also draws on the research and work of Teresa Amabile of Harvard Business School who has found that, “intrinsic motivation is conducive to creativity; controlling extrinsic motivation is detrimental to creativity.»
The Motivation 3.0 operating system that Pink suggests, “concerns itself less with the external rewards to which an activity leads and more with the inherent satisfaction of the activity itself.” This approach is based on three elements: “(1) Autonomy – the desire to direct our own lives; (2) Mastery – the urge to get better and better at something that matters; and (3) Purpose – the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.”
Towards the end of the book, Pink’s “Nine Ways to Improve Your Company, Office, or Group” fall a little flat and didn’t reveal much new. I enjoyed the concept of a turning “your next off-site into a FedEx day.” Pink suggests replacing your next offsite event with a day where employees can work on anything they choose, however they want, and with whomever they’d like. Impose just one rule: People must deliver something – a new idea, a prototype of a product, a better internal process – the following day.
As with most books, Pink does not offer anything entirely new. Anyone with a little insight in to developmental psychology theories will notice that Pink’s observations largely follows Maslow’s hierarchy of needs while making the argument that our postmodern world has moved beyond motivation solely based on the “deficiency” needs and we are ready to cater to the “being” needs and self-actualization. Perhaps, now forty years after Maslow’s death, we are ready for this message.
About Newsletter
"People Create Excellence" is a newsletter aimed at promoting individual and organizational excellence. Content is based on the leadership, strategy, and organization-development consulting work of Soren Eilertsen and Kollner Group associates.
Latest Newsletter
Newsletter: People Create Excellence
Strategic Planning during the Crisis
I am pleased to share a new article “How did Strategic Planning help during the economic crisis?” published in the March 2010 journal Strategy & Leadership. My coauthor, Jim Wilson, and I presented these findings at the annual conference of the Association for Strategic Planning (ASP) in February. The article is based on a survey we did last year where we asked several hundred managers how strategic planning helped during the economic crisis. Among the key findings:
The data suggest that organizations using strategic planning were better prepared, more optimistic and confident, and better able to pursue growth opportunities. You can find the article by following this link Strategy in Crisis.
Free Personality and Style Inventory
Free Personality and Style Inventory. Get to know key aspects of your personality and style with the FREE Innate Index. The Innate Index is a brief personality inventory developed by our associate Dr. Ken Nowack at Envisia Learning. The inventory is based on the five factor personality model that has been shown to be associated with a variety of school, life, career and relationship success outcomes. Link http://www.kollnergroup.com/free-resources/assessments-free/
Book Review
Daniel H. Pink: Drive – The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us
In this inspiring book, Pink sifts through human psychology research on motivation and makes the argument that the time has arrived to focus much more on intrinsic awards in the workplace. Coming on the heels of the economic crisis, this book adds fuel to the fire that traditional extrinsic rewards particularly in the form of gigantic bonuses often won’t work in the 21st century as motivators to produce sustainable triple bottom line results for businesses.
Our human drive of survival and our rational drive to seek award and avoid punishment underlie Motivation 1.0 and 2.0 operating systems, as Pink calls them. In 20th century scientific management schools, we became experts at creating reward systems atop of these motivational drivers that assumed the way to improve performance is to reward the good and punish the bad. Pink writes, “Motivation 2.0 still serves some purposes well. It’s just deeply unreliable. Sometimes it works; many times it doesn’t.”
Pink shows with examples when to use the carrot and stick rewards and that the approach in other situations comes with “The Seven Deadly Flaws.” They are:
A big fan of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi of Claremont Graduate University, Pink shows how Csikszentmihalyi’s research on flow has great implication for how we construct work assignments with clear goals, immediate feedback and challenges well matched to our abilities so its more enjoyable and allow for a deeper sense of engagement. He also draws on the research and work of Teresa Amabile of Harvard Business School who has found that, “intrinsic motivation is conducive to creativity; controlling extrinsic motivation is detrimental to creativity.»
The Motivation 3.0 operating system that Pink suggests, “concerns itself less with the external rewards to which an activity leads and more with the inherent satisfaction of the activity itself.” This approach is based on three elements: “(1) Autonomy – the desire to direct our own lives; (2) Mastery – the urge to get better and better at something that matters; and (3) Purpose – the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.”
Towards the end of the book, Pink’s “Nine Ways to Improve Your Company, Office, or Group” fall a little flat and didn’t reveal much new. I enjoyed the concept of a turning “your next off-site into a FedEx day.” Pink suggests replacing your next offsite event with a day where employees can work on anything they choose, however they want, and with whomever they’d like. Impose just one rule: People must deliver something – a new idea, a prototype of a product, a better internal process – the following day.
As with most books, Pink does not offer anything entirely new. Anyone with a little insight in to developmental psychology theories will notice that Pink’s observations largely follows Maslow’s hierarchy of needs while making the argument that our postmodern world has moved beyond motivation solely based on the “deficiency” needs and we are ready to cater to the “being” needs and self-actualization. Perhaps, now forty years after Maslow’s death, we are ready for this message.
About Newsletter
"People Create Excellence" is a newsletter aimed at promoting individual and organizational excellence. Content is based on the leadership, strategy, and organization-development consulting work of Soren Eilertsen and Kollner Group associates.