One of the most important and toughest challenges managers have to face up to is motivating workers during the recession - and this is the subject of Emily Thornton's interview with John Katzenbach, CEO of Katzenbach Partners, at Businessweek.com.
Katzenbach, the author of the book 'The Discipline of Teams and The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization', believes that the key to motivating people is working out how to connect them emotionally to their work rather than enticing them with money or promotion.
Katzenbach believes the recession calls for change management skills. He says: "We see the same problems in turnaround situations. That's analogous to what happens during a recession. It's when companies have to restructure and do all sorts of painful things.
"If you don't also concentrate on the more positive aspects of motivation, you don't get nearly as far in terms of behaviour change and performance gains."
Katzenbach points out that the more successful companies in turnaround situations pay a great deal of attention to making sure people feel good about what they have to do in their daily work, which he says is more of an emotional challenge.
"No matter how crummy things are, [there should be] a master motivator down there who is taking care of his people by focusing them on the work they have to do each and every day, and finding a way to make them feel good about it," explains Katzenbach. "If you can find a handful of those, they're very insightful about what can work under today's difficult conditions."
Katzenbach believes that these "master motivators" recognise that each worker has a different definition of success - it could be tied more to their family or something else in their personal lives rather than climbing the career ladder.
He adds: "The other thing master motivators do is find and capitalize on local sources of pride. And they use multiple sources of pride. They might use company values... family reactions... customer feedback... peer interaction... because what they're trying to do is find something that is local and meaningful to a worker emotionally as well as rationally — and connect them to it in an individual way."
How to Inspire Workers in Tough Times
Emily Thornton, BusinessWeek, 23/01/09
