I recently had the opportunity to attend the ASU Compete Through Service Symposium.  During one of the breakout sessions, “Coaching For Service”, I listened to Dean Newlund, President, Mission Facilitators International, Inc. talk about what motivates people to improve or reach goals.

He shared information from the work of Daniel Pink, former speech writer for Al Gore, around intrinsic motivation versus extrinsic motivation.  In Daniel’s presentation, he raises some interesting questions for business leaders to consider when they create compensation plans, bonus plans, etc.

How do we go about truly motivating our people to achieve the business objectives we’ve identified that will help us improve year over year?  How do we motivate our teams that are not engaged with sales activities to move a needle or raise the bar?

Here is Daniel Pink’s presentation, at a recent Ted Conference, on the “Surprising Science of Motivation”.

Raises some interesting questions for us to consider as we work our way into a profitable year.

How are you choosing to motivate those around you and on your team?  Is it working?  Really?

M

Posted under Employees, General, Leadership

A-Ha….there is a great post on Customer Connection from Leslie Pagel at Walker Information sharing how missing an opportunity to capture a customer’s idea in an immediate and simplistic fashion can make a difference – perhaps a game-changing difference.

“The other night my husband and I sat at a bar for dinner when I overheard the following conversation between the bartender and another customer.

Customer: Can you put on the IU (Indiana University) football game?
Bartender: No hun. We don’t get the Big Ten Network.
Customer: That is too bad. I was hoping to watch the game while I ate dinner.
Bartender: You can go to our website and submit a request to add that channel. They do listen when customers submit feedback. They’ve implemented a lot of things that have really helped us out.
Customer: Oh. OK.

The customer had a cell phone with internet access, but did not take the next step to submit his feedback. Instead, he used his phone to check the score of the game.

While I don’t know for sure, I doubt this customer ever submitted his feedback, which got me thinking. How many ideas get lost because sharing feedback is inconvenient for customers? Think about it. How many times have you thought, “I should send them a message to tell them what a great job they did,” or “That was inconvenient. I should send them a letter?”

How many times have you been in meetings, social events or even “just hanging out” where you witness or have an “a-ha moment”?  How do you take action on that idea?  In that moment?  Do you write it down on a napkin, call yourself and leave a voice-mail, write a note in your cell phone?  None of the above?

Right, too often we find ourselves not able to take the immediate action needed to capture an idea that would improve the delivery of service or product.  Enabling communication with the powers that be within a company is a nut worth cracking.

We have the ability to access information immediately.  How we leverage that ability or create a link to that information to harness the ideas of our customers is our next challenge.  As Leslie points out in “How many ideas get lost because sharing feedback is inconvenient?”, a challenge doesn’t have to have a complex solution.  It can be as simple as taking an order.

Great article and great food for thought Leslie,

M

Posted under Business & Process Innovation, Customers, Employees, General, Leadership, Shareholder Value