Raise Performance with Progress and Respect

To lift professionals' performance, organizations must ensure progress and respect are easily discerned. One of the important findings by Teresa Amabile, a Harvard Business School professor, in her article “Inner Work Life”, describing her research on factors affecting professionals’ happiness and work motivation. She found the most important factor affecting motivation and performance was how clearly professionals sensed they were making progress in their work. The next most important factor was whether they felt respected for their contribution to the work.
How can we ensure professionals tangibly perceive progress in their work and respect for their work?
Daily, actually.

Daily Progress
We no longer work in factories where counting the number of good widgets produced is everything. Professionals collaborate on large teams to deliver outcomes which are often months or years away. Giving professionals a sense of progress, therefore, requires shifting the focus from merely delivering end-of-year targets to also providing examples of how professionals act daily, weekly, and monthly to move things along. Drucker affirmed this concept when he said “contribution” was more important than “achievement” for knowledge workers.
It is easy to see how examples of daily contribution would give a better sense of progress. When driving, objects on the horizon appear to barely move (especially in South Dakota) but the roadside signs zoom by (especially the stream of “Wall Drug” signs– if we’re still referring to South Dakota).
Professionals need to be given examples of observable actions which illustrate daily support for strategic objectives. Then professionals can clearly see their progress - their contribution as they act daily to deliver needed outcomes.

Daily Respect
Demonstrating appropriate respect for professionals’ contribution is the key, Amabile said. Inappropriate respect just makes matters worse. Her research found undeserved praise didn’t raise motivation but could increase cynicism and if deserving work didn’t receive some type of recognition or if it received criticism then negative feelings were created.
It is difficult to gauge appropriate respect and recognition activities without some realistic examples of strategic daily behaviors, and especially if it appears management only cares about end-of-year targets. It becomes easier for managers to unintentionally reinforce negative behaviors – like ‘diving catches’ (where poor oversight creates crises which are resolved in the nick of time through super-human effort). Without the guidance provided by a daily strategic framework, typical managers only see extra effort and positively reinforce those who create havoc for others and clients due to poor administration.

Increased Performance – Daily Strategic Framework
To get the most out of every professional, we need to create a framework which describes individual contribution to strategic outcomes. These examples help individuals to clearly understand strategy support within their roles and clearly perceive their progress, their contribution to the organization’s goals. As well, a daily strategic framework gives management a much more realistic model of behavior to guide recognition activities.
Such a daily framework is critical to successfully managing scarce professional resources in today’s business environment.

References:
Amabile, Teresa, and Kramer, Steven; “Inner Work Life”, Rotman Magazine - March 2008, pages 20-25 link
Edersheim, Elizabeth Haas, “The Definitive Drucker”, McGraw Hill - 2007. Page 174