When Motivation is a Waste of Time
An independent contractor we work with recently lamented that he couldn’t find the motivation to finish a tough job. He made it clear that he doesn’t need motivation because he does things for people out of the goodness of his heart, but still he wanted to know, Where’s my motivation?
I agree that employees need to know their motivation, but I resist the notion that employees need to be constantly motivated with speeches and incentives to properly do their jobs. I may be making little more than a semantic distinction, but hear me out.
The kind of motivation embodied in the pep talk, the kind of motivation that stands up in front of a giant flag and invokes “the sting of battle”…that kind of motivation does have a place. It’s for getting people to do things they don’t want to do (like sacrifice their lives).
But motivation within a Small Giant comes at a deeper level than can be tapped with a rousing speech. If you hire self-motivated workers who believe in your Mission and Company Values–and you try to personally live out that Mission every day–most problems of motivation go out the window. The occasional Values refresher is enough to keep the motivational ball rolling.
So I have to concede that this independent contractor had a point. Yes, I still believe independent contractors should (and do) bring their own motivation to the party, but because he started working for us at a truly insane time (buyback season, babies being born), he didn’t get the full BookFool.com indoctrination lecture that explains who we are, what we value, and why we’re in business. Everyone who works for us, with us, or on us deserves to hear that spiel (if they’ll sit through it). Here’s an abridged version:
BookFool.com Values
For the last 9 months, we’ve been wrestling with what our mission truly is. Sure, we could write down something about “maximizing ROI” or “making people happy” and just call it a day, but if you don’t believe it or it doesn’t represent who you really are, you’ve just wasted everybody’s time. We want a mission statement we can paint large on every wall in the warehouse.
So we created a page in our internal wiki where we keep hammering away at our Mission document, refining and trimming the fat. The trick is to make it leaner, not longer! I think we’re nearly there.
Here are some notes toward our corporate Vision, Values, and Mission, out of which grows your company’s Culture.
Employees
We trust our employees and give them a great deal of responsibility for our success. We expect employees to be honest with us at all times, and we want to be a place where employees can grow personally and take on more responsibility over time.
We want to maintain a healthy work environment. This requires planning ahead for the busy times. We all work hard, but we provide clear goals and parameters for success. We want employees to be able to pursue their own creative gifts to help the company, even if the result of those gifts is not readily apparent.
We value our employees when they:
- Live out our mission.
- Treat every customer as you would treat a friend.
- Protect the Book Fool brand.
- Take complete ownership of projects and problems.
- Communicate often and clearly their progress, hangups, and plans of action.
- Work efficiently and independently when necessary.
- Collaborate effectively when needed.
- Add value to everything they touch.
Customers
Customer satisfaction is boring. We pursue customer delight. This is everyone’s primary responsibility. EVERYONE.
Success
Money is only one indicator of success. To us, success means independence, having control over our own destiny. We will use this independence to continue to grow our reputation for customer delight.
We are successful when our employees know their work matters and their thoughts are valued. Success also means we can stay local and become more deeply ingrained in the local community with each passing year.
What do you value?
We’d love to hear about it in the comments.
