Performance Principle

A Practical Guide to Understanding Motivation in the Modern Workplace

Mackenzie Kyle

• Publisher: Figure 1 Publishing
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781927958667
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Historia empresarial

The Performance Principle is written for any manager, supervisor, or business leader who feels there must be a better, more systematic way to motivate their team and achieve phenomenal results. It tells the fictional story of Will Campbell, the newly promoted executive in charge of the Hyler manufacturing facility. The company has fallen on hard times and Campbell is given a year to turn around Hyler's fortunes, a feat made all the more challenging because of the discontent among all of Hyler's employees, from management to sales to the unionized shop floor. Over the course of several tumultuous months, Campbell and his team learn the unique principles of performance management and the powerful results it can deliver.Unique, lively and powerfully effective, The Performance Principle illustrates the fundamentals of performance management, providing a model that allows the reader to understand exactly what motivates people in the workplace, and how to align this with the organization's strategy.

THIRTEEN

Will Applies the Framework at Home

I RAISED MY glass of wine to toast my wife. “To more days like this one!”

Jenny raised her eyebrows at me. “Things go well today?” She sipped her own wine with less ceremony.

I nodded. “They did. The whole last week has been pretty good. At least I think so. We won’t know for sure until we’ve had these new programs in place for a while and seen what happens with the results. But we’re already seeing some behavior changes, and assuming we were right about which behaviors will give us the results we want, life should be sweet. We’ll just have to stick with it now and reap the rewards.” I was certainly hoping that would be the case. We’d invested quite a bit of time going down this particular road, and it wasn’t as if we had any better ideas. I wasn’t worried. Not at all. No, wait, I had it backward. I was completely worried. But then, that’s what the wine was for. I took another sip.

My wife gave me a speculative look. “Now that you’re a professional at this, why don’t we take a moment to apply it to the home front?”

My worried feeling notched upward. “What did you have in mind?”

Jenny pursed her lips. “I’ve got lots of stuff in mind, mostly related to the kids.”

“The kids? Those two little angels who float about our household spreading good cheer and happy dust? What possible application could this performance management stuff have for our lovely children?”

“Yes, hard to imagine, isn’t it? But if the whole system of rewards and punishment and learning history and results is improving things at work, why wouldn’t we try it at home?”

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. “I don’t know, honey. Wouldn’t it seem as if we were training them like pets or something?”

“Oh, so it’s OK to treat your work people like pets?” She shifted gears. “Anyway, when it comes right down to it, we are. And I have no issues with it. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with analyzing the situation around some of their behaviors and changing some things so that we all get the results we want.”

I was still hesitant. Somehow it seemed different to apply this stuff to our kids, even though the intellectual part of my brain (small though it may be) was telling me the way the whole world runs could be explained by this framework. “How about an example?” I suggested. “What kind of behavior are we talking about? Is someone peeing on the carpet?”

Jenny laughed. “It’s hard to start with just one. But yes, let’s not try and change the world overnight. Let’s start with some simple things that you don’t see. Like your son.”

“Our son,” I corrected.

“He’s your son in these discussions, Will. And you don’t see a lot of these behaviors because I’m the one who looks after our kids most of the time. Like getting them up in the morning.”

“OK,” I said, unsure exactly whether she was saying it was my fault she was the primary caregiver. “What’s the problem there?”

Jenny made an exasperated noise. “If you asked me what the most stressful thing is about my day, apart from hearing you talk about moving the family to Indonesia every night after work, it’s nagging the kids out of bed every morning. You never see it, because you’ve already left for work by then.”

“Seriously?” I asked. “It’s that bad?”

“You have no idea, my dear.”

“But they have alarm clocks,” I said, puzzled. Well, they have phones that act like alarm clocks not to mention every other small household appliance. “How can this be an issue? They set their alarms, the alarm wakes them, they get up.”

Jenny doesn’t generally get mad enough to shout at me, but she’s even scarier when she talks quietly. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing, Will. I’m telling you, this is a problem. It’s a problem for me. I don’t sit here and tell you you’re an idiot for paying your salespeople to sell products below cost and putting yourself out of business, do I? We all find ourselves in situations that aren’t what we’d like, and I thought Martha’s coaching was supposed to be applicable to all kinds of situations. Maybe what happens around here isn’t important enough for you to think about?”

I wasn’t so thick I couldn’t work out the answer to that one. “OK, honey, I get it. I’m sorry for being an idiot. I’m overly focused on work these days, you’re right.” I took a deep breath and tried to look both thoughtful and confident. “Well, then. Let’s start with what’s going on now.”

“OK,” said Jenny.

“So, what’s going on now?”

Jenny looked annoyed. “Not listening so well? I just explained that!”

I decided to paraphrase. “Well, you’re saying the kids aren’t getting up in the morning, despite having their own alarm clocks. But what happens exactly? They just lie in bed?”

“Yes,” said Jenny. “Their alarms go off, but they either turn them off and go back to sleep or, in Jake’s case, they sleep right through it. I’m downstairs in the kitchen, making breakfast and fuming, and finally I go upstairs and yell at them to get moving. Then I make a second trip, more nagging, maybe a third trip, and they finally get up. Then there’s a mad rush for the bathroom, fighting because they both need to be in there at the same time, a scramble to eat breakfast, and then they run for the bus. Half the time, one of them misses it.”

“So what happens then?” I asked.

Jenny blew some air out between her pursed lips. “I end up driving them to school, which makes me late for work.”

“Honey,” I interrupted, “you’re a freelance writer. You work from home. How can you be late for work?”

“Will, as you well know, I treat working from home just like I’m going into an office. I want to be sitting at my desk, working, by 9:00 a.m.! When I end up driving the kids, I mess up my morning, and it frustrates the hell out of me. I have deadlines to meet and a household to run. In case you haven’t noticed, I take care of all the errands, housekeeping, shopping, and cooking for the family. Plus I do writing assignments. I may not go to an office, but I still work!”

I held up my hands. “I’m sorry. I do get it. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. What matters is we have a situation that isn’t working and we need to change it. Let’s apply the model. What’s the result we want to get?”

Jenny thought about it for a minute. “Well, I want to get the kids out the door on time. And I don’t want to be the big nag I always am. I want them to get themselves up and ready for school without me hounding them. I’m happy to make breakfast and get their lunches together, but I want them to get themselves out of bed and downstairs in time to eat and get out the door on time, so I don’t have to drive them. And I don’t want to own the whole process. I want them to take responsibility for it.”

I nodded in what I hoped was a sympathetic manner. “OK, so that’s where we want to get to. Let’s look at what happens now.” I went to the drawer beside the sink and pulled out a piece of paper and a pen. “If we’re going to analyze this, let’s do it right.”

At that moment, Jake strolled into the kitchen. “Whatcha doing?” he asked.

I looked at Jenny. She shrugged. “Why shouldn’t he hear this? It’s not as if we’re going to do anything he isn’t going to know about.”

Jake looked from me to his mother and back again. “How many glasses of wine have you guys had?”

I said, “Not that many, Jake. Have a seat. We’re just applying some ideas that I’ve been using at work to some stuff here at home.”

Jake looked suspicious. “What kind of stuff here at home?”

“The morning routine,” I told him.

“Really? Do we have to?”

Jenny looked as if she might be about to throttle Jake, so I slapped the paper down in front of them and quickly sketched out:

“What’s that?” Jake asked.

I quickly walked him through the performance model, starting with “Result” and working backward. When I was done, he complained, “I’m not sure I like where this is going. That consequence thing sounds bad.”

I said, “Don’t worry about good or bad. Let’s ...