Ever since the first management consultants brought Uber out of the primitive corporate soup, they have wrestled business leaders with how to strike the delicate balance between comfort and tension needed to build and maintain a healthy company culture. I did.
Ultimately, successful organizations must strive to balance internal interests, drivers, interests, and outcomes with agility and constant interaction. Times change, cultures adjust, norms change, but nothing remains the same. But as companies try to attract younger generations, I sometimes wonder with frustration if there's a point where the pendulum swings too far into the warm and fuzzy direction that organizational performance suffers from.
I recently heard a story where a client of mine told a new employee who had just graduated from college that there were some mistakes in his presentation. In a calm but direct manner, she responded that the new employee was “not comfortable.” Huh? Record a scratch. Wow, it shouldn't be comfortable…that's the point!
Organizational systems benefit from moderate tension. Companies that are always focused on making people comfortable do not perform as well as companies that are motivated and focused on achieving goals.
Is my position outdated? perhaps. But perhaps “old-fashioned” is just another way of saying that an approach has stood the test of time. After decades of studying organizational behavior, it's clear to me that human nature hasn't changed all that much. I've been there for the past 30 years, or even the past 30,000 years. What moved people then continues to move people today.
I'm not saying all people are the same. Rather, it is the cohort. No matter what organization you work for, you'll see common patterns. Achievers who can't stop trying want to win above all else and will do it at any cost. A self-proclaimed perfectionist who believes it is the only path to justice (i.e. recognition and acceptance). Command-and-control types who crave power, people who are purely financially driven, and people who like attention.
There are about 12 different categories of internal motivation for self-motivated people. They create their own tension to play. And of course, there are those who are just trying to survive, trying to do the bare minimum to get paid and stay out of trouble. This doesn't mean they don't have the power to act. It just means that if you do that, you're focusing on something outside the organization's purpose.
In order for all these people to move toward the same goal, you need to understand each person's motivations. This creates the tension within the system necessary to energize unmotivated employees and, if necessary, sets up the guardrails necessary to keep motivated employees working together. means to. In part, this can and should be done through actions that result in positive outcomes, such as bonuses, promotions, and recognition. But people also need to understand that there are negative consequences if they don't perform. Sometimes it feels awful. When I was running a business and missed a “number” one quarter, it wasn't about the bonus that I was worried about. It was walking into a conference room with the CEO and his finance team and facing that fire.
Although most organizations have formal performance management systems, they are often not robust enough to thoroughly manage the balance between people's desire to be rewarded and their desire to avoid negative outcomes. This is where direct relationships between leaders and employees become important.
If an employee is expected to accomplish something and fails to do so, not only will that mistake affect their performance review six months later, but they will also have to go to their boss's office and say they “dropped the ball.” You should be worried that they will say it. Worrying about your boss' reaction when you don't do your job is a healthy and reasonable reaction, and not something organizations should avoid.
Understanding that a boss could reprimand someone in the heat of the moment, or worse, can obviously influence people's behavior. After all, if a manager tells an employee to accomplish five things and the employee doesn't do them or ask for help, there's a good reason for the manager to be furious.
Corporate culture, in its simplest terms, refers to the patterns of behavior that repeat within an organization. If leaders want to make their organizations more creative, collaborative, or innovative, they must first encourage and enable those behaviors, monitor them, and skillfully shift pressure points to influence both positive and negative outcomes. You need to set up your system to apply it. These formal systems must be supported by informal systems, one of which is applications for approval or disapproval by leaders depending on the situation. Friction creates energy, and that energy drives results, ultimately what separates good organizations from great ones.
