Motivation on the Run

How do we succeed? An interesting question with many answers, depending on your life circumstances and how you define success. Is it money, or wonderful kids? Is it a BMW in the garage, or a long marriage? Is it the biggest house on the block, or a life of integrity. Is it the admiration or your peers, or the admiration of your teenager? Is it a relationship with your banker, or the relationship with your pastor? How we succeed, depends on how we define success.

Once you decide on the definition of success, then you can decide how you get there, or what components are the most important. Success used to be defined as achieving a desired goal, but now more often means gaining fame or prosperity.

We keep score, and have sayings like “He who dies with the most stuff, wins” and “Money isn’t the main thing, it’s the only thing.” These sentiments seem to be quite prevalent in our culture today, and it shows in other ways, as well. As one pastor said, “show me your checkbook and I’ll show you what you think is important” and I have to agree with him. However, most of the time, you don’t need the checkbook, just listen to them talk for a few minutes. If everything they talk about revolves around the theme of money, or things they want or are about to get … they are of this ilk.

The poll asked if you thought it was one of four choices, which were; hard work, who you know, what you know, and fate and the results and comments seem to indicate “hard work.”

I think the answer to the question has changed over the centuries. What it took to be successful in the 1700 or 1800s is different than what it takes today. Right? In earlier times, working hard in what you knew was a good formula for success and in fact in the 1859 book “Self Help,” Samuel Smiles said just that. Workers learned a trade by working as journeymen under Masters and successful was the man that fit in the What you know camp, that was willing to work hard.

I thought today, in 21st Century America, we were supposed to work smarter, not harder. Isn’t who you know more important than hard work? The right people will get you the right introductions and invite you to the right events. Of course, this also requires What you know because at the end of the day, you still must deliver the goods.

Well at this point, I am totally confused and seem to have taken all sides on this one. But at least I know one thing, The person that is in the right place at the right time, with the skills, and the recommendation of the right person, that is willing to work hard, will be successful. So maybe it is all four and even more that determines success.

What do you think?

In looking back over the articles of the last few weeks, there seems to be a bent toward the serious. One would think that motivation and leadership was all work and no fun, but that is not an accurate description. The only touch (of fun) was talking about the fun things to do for getting people into the office early, but that was the only “fun” for a long time.

LET ME MAKE THIS CLEAR! If it’s not fun, it’s time to do something else. I think this has to be the first rule in most endeavors, whether professionally or personally. If it’s not fun, getting up and heading to work is dreaded. If it’s not fun, calling that customer back is impossible to do. If it’s not fun, you will not engage, and everyone around you knows.

Does this mean that at work, fun comes in place of work? Not at all … fun can help relax the mood, it can relieve the stress, it can lighten the burden of work, and if used properly, increase productivity.

That’s what I think.

 

 ToastmasterKeynote [17:49m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The premise of this Toastmaster speech is a “pretend” Keynote Address for a conference and since it was my speech and my conference, I decided the conference would be on motivation and so I developed the speech with that in mind.

My evaluator and the other gave me some good feedback and after listening to the speech this evening, I have some more things to say to myself, but overall, the experience was good. Difficult, but good. Now I just have four more speeches to go in this book, and they are all 15-20 minutes in length.

I welcome any constructive criticism to see how it lines up with the list I already have, but as I said yesterday … be nice.

My Toastmaster speaking assignment this week is to present a “Keynote Address” for a mythical conference, with the speech of about twenty minutes in length. In working on this assignment, I have decided the conference will center around motivation, and, as such, it will make a good podcast.

My goal is to record the speech “live” and upload it tomorrow evening, which is twelve hours later than normal. I record on Tuesday evening and upload the podcast and set it to post at 7 AM CST, so it will be about 7 PM this week.

I will be interested in how the speech sounds from recording it in front of a group, rather than staring at a wall. Also, I would appreciate any comments you have once you get the chance to listen, and I would expect you to be nice, but truthful.

Working on this has been the hardest speech, so far, because of the length. The normal Toastmaster speech is five to seven minutes, which qualifies at 4-1/2 and disqualifies at 7-1/2. This assignment from “The Professional Speaker” is to be 15 to 20 minutes, unless the club has more time.

You want to know the hardest part? Writing that much to say. I wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote and when I did a run through, it was eleven minutes, seven to nine short. So I wrote some more, and more, and more, and it was sixteen minutes. At that point, I knew I could fill in details and make it work, but twenty minutes is a lot harder than I thought. This makes me much more appreciative of the guys that do this regularly, although like everything, it gets easier with practice.

Jonathon wrote a comment about people being motivated either by fear or joy and used the example of people getting to work on time because of fear. Here is part of the comment (click link for complete comment).

I prefer however to break this down to a different group, a more polar list. Good vs. bad.

I say people do things for two reasons:
1.) People are motivated by fear/pain
2.) People are motivated by joy/pleasure

Many situations require a combination of both. The successful situations I’ve seen use fear as a motivator to set structure and lay the ground rules. Then pleasure is used as motivator on top of that to them draw out the wanted result. In fact, I think most situations are just that.

You don’t get a reward for showing up on time, but you will get punished if you don’t. You won’t get punished for not overperforming, and you will get rewarded for over-performing.

My first thought (Jonathon I’m not picking on you, you just hit a nerve) on this topic was how terrible it would be to have to show up on time because of fear. This is something I have never experienced personally, and at different locations I have worked and managed, there were reasons for people to arrive early that had nothing to do with fear. The unfortunate truth is that the statements are probably true to a greater extent than I care to admit.

INCENTIVES
Fun incentives can help boost morale and encourage early arrival. Things like: Last man in bring donuts … first one in gets a free steak lunch (bought by sales manager). If work starts at 8:00 AM, a contest for $100 cash that starts at 7:30 and ends at 7:50 will help employees arrive early (and it doesn’t have to be $100, just an example). Arrival closest to a secret pre-determined time, picks the morning music on the boom box.

If a company has to use fear to coerce employees to arrive on time, it must be a terrible place to work, and is not some place I want to work. Life is too short to dread going to work everyday and if a company can’t motivate it’s employees by any means other than fear, they have a bigger problem than employees arriving on time.

Now I admit that I have made several pre-suppositions. People that read this blog and listen to this podcast are people that are motivated and care about improving themselves and would not be guilty of showing up late for work. That is unprofessional and unacceptable for people with goals and a positive mental attitude.

On the other hand, I realize there are individuals that are not motivated and won’t show up on time for any reason. This is a problem with the hiring process not the motivation process. If the new hires have no desire to arrive on time and help meet company goals, hence their own goals, they need to be dealt with differently; once is warned, twice is gone. And yes, I can be a hard-nose when it comes to deadbeats with no time for them, if they persist in their behavior, but again, this is a hiring problem.

In the management meeting last week, conducted by Acumen Management Group, the one phrase that captures the thought on this is “Hire slowly, fire quickly.” If you have people that do not want to be there enough to show up on time (or any other issues) they are not people that are going to help, and will usually detract from productivity of the other workers.

To wrap up, I think that good hires will motivate themselves and good managers will motivate to the employees strengths.

My long time saying in this matter is, “If it’s not fun, we need to go do something else, because life is too short for misery.” Think about it…

I wanted to remind everyone to vote in the poll located in the right navigation bar. A lot of people have read the original post from last week and some comments have been left, but I know for a fact that a lot of you have been skating and have not voted.

The question now becomes; how do I motivate you to vote? This could be a whole series of posts looking at rewards and different ways to persuade people to follow your wishes.

It would be easy if I could enter every vote into a drawing for a car, but since I don’t have one to offer, that would not work. I could enter everyone into a drawing to have their profile written about on the site. Now that could work, but then I could only enter the ones that leave a comment so they could be identified and part of the influence of voting on the button, is the anonymous factor.

Hmmm … any good ideas on getting people to participate? Drop a comment and I may enter your name into a drawing …

I started working on an article about the effect of procrastination on motivation last week, but a link to this article in Psychology Today’s website from 2003 says it very well. The list of ten things to know is right on the mark and if you are a procrastinator, or know one, you need to read this article.

Psychology Today: Procrastination: Ten Things To Know

There are many ways to avoid success in life, but the most sure-fire just might be procrastination. Procrastinators sabotage themselves. They put obstacles in their own path. They actually choose paths that hurt their performance.

Why would people do that?

Thanks to Lifehacker for this link.

Three weeks ago yesterday, I made public one of my goals for the new year. The goal was to post more content on the blogs, which required more writing. One action item was to write for 1 hour each day, Monday through Friday, and this goal is becoming hard to achieve. Yesterday I did not write for the hour and will have to make it up tonight and tomorrow, but I have a good excuse. Really, I do. After all, it’s all about the excuse … right?

I had an appointment with my eye doctor, because of an injury, and part of the followup appointment was to dilate my eyes. The appointment was late afternoon and my vision did not return to “normal” until about 9 PM. Blurry, fuzzy, and out of focus best describes my vision most of last evening.

Other than that, I am still on track with this part of the goal, but may be falling behind on the number of posts stated in the goal. The goal is to post one major and two to three minor posts each week, and this is proving to be the most difficult part. This means I have to average more than one post (1.2 posts) written each day to meet the minimum level.

You would think that five hours each week would be plenty of time to generate that level of production, but that is proving to be untrue. All of my writing, so far, is for the blogs, but other items I want to write have not made the list yet.

The other part of the equation is the difficulty in finishing and editing posts in a timely manner. Right this minute I have five articles in various stages of completion just on Motivation on the Run. They range from a few paragraphs on different thoughts, to finished articles that still need editing. Editing takes more time than writing, but none-the-less, must be done.

I have said before, that goals must be adjustable because they must fit into your life, but I am not backing off yet, although it is harder than I originally thought. The writing part is fun, but getting them ready for hitting the publish button is hard work.

Now I know why authors have professional editors … they just have to write and prepare the story and the editor takes care of cleaning up the text. Build intrigue and interest and let someone else clean it up for print. Editor, editor, where forth art thou editor?

 

 Motivation35 [21:41m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

TaDa! Motivation35 is finished and a great time was had by all. All the kings horses and all the kings men had a roaring good time while listening to this week’s podcast.

I talk about the happenings since we last spoke on the 1st, about two books, one paperback, one audio, that I am listening to on motivation and management. Self Help by Samuel Smiles and The Essential Drucker, by Peter Drucker.

Also, a fresh look at the personality types and all because of an interesting lunch today. You’ll understand when you listen.

Have a wonderful week and make someone’s day, smile at them…

Hiring, Firing, and compensation packages were the highlight of yesterday’s all day seminar sponsored by Cisco and TechData, and I decided the long day was worth it as I dragged my tired body to the elevator and into the car for the hour+ drive home.

Acumen Management Group’s Ken Thorenson delivered two days worth of information in an eight hour day, with too few breaks and barely thirty minutes for lunch, but he kept the pace fast and tight, which controlled the group’s interest. We learned about hiring, firing, compensation packages, business building, leadership and management, and building market dominance, and yes, each of these could be a full day by itself, but our flight was at the 30,000 feet level.

Acumen Management Group was started nine years ago to deliver training and consulting to businesses, specializing in sales management programs. Thorenson’s company was hired by Cisco and TechData to present the training to their partners with the thought that better managed companies would produce more sales, and more sales would increase Cisco and Techdata’s revenue in the long run. I like their thinking and take advantage of these type events when possible especially when learning the cost is normally $1395/person. It was good stuff…

The discussion on slow hiring and fast firing was lively and spirited, with recommendations on testing firms and the many stages of the interview process with a lot of examples and thought provoking questions. From there we jumped right into compensation plans, talking about base versus draws, simple versus elaborate, and how best to apply the right motivation through the pay plans. This was extremely interesting to me because of the motivational component and how to build different packages for different corporate goals.

My favorite quote of the day from a sales manager perspective was:

My phrase is Price is the last thing you negotiate, which coupled with the above statement from Thorenson, makes a great one-two punch for your salesmen. They need to understand that you don’t compete against the strengths of the competition, but the weaknesses. Drill that home and success will follow as they realize price isn’t as important as they thought with most customers. Become the trusted adviser and price becomes a small part of the process.

I witnessed a lot of note taking by the audience, so I believe the seminar was a great success and I will remember the name, Acumen Management Group, for future reference. If you need a consulting company specializing in sales management, head to their website.