The Old Boy.

In early 2008 Starbucks was reporting negative daily comps—meaning sales were down compared to the same day a year earlier—in the double digits. Sales were in a free fall. Every day around the country, fewer and fewer people were coming into Starbucks stores. And those who did were spending less money than in the past. This was the worst period in Starbucks history. Things looked bleak and it seemed that Starbucks had lost its magic.

Starbucks needed a leader, and that leader was Howard Schultz, the original visionary behind the company. He would comeback to return as the CEO and rekindle that magic that had been lost.

Howard Schultz is a transformational leader. He leads employees by aligning employee goals with the leader’s goals. He uses charisma, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration to influence his followers. He leads employees by aligning employee goals with his goals. Thus, employees working for him start focusing on the company’s well-being rather than on what is best for them as individual employees

Howard Schultz uses the four tools of a transformational leader.

Charisma: Once he returned to Starbucks the first thing he set out to do was build confidence. He took the blame for the failure of Starbucks and rather than blaming others he focused on moving forward. He said “the number-one priority in the next weeks and months was to instill confidence in our future. Without confidence, people could not perform.”

Inspirational Motivation: When confronting competition, he did not back down from his original vision to compromise with the other low cost coffee competitions such as McDonald's or Dunkin' Donuts. He stuck to his vision and stated “We cannot allow competition to define us. We have to play offense, proactively defining ourselves by sharing the full story of Starbucks' value proposition: Behind every cup of Starbucks is the world's highest-quality, ethically sourced coffee beans: baristas with health-care coverage and stock in the company: farmers who are treated fairly and humanely; a mission to treat all people with respect and dignity; and passionate coffee experts whose knowledge about coffee cannot be matched by any other coffee company.” “ If we can't do all that, then same on us and they deserve to take our business.” Howard Schultz stuck by his clear vision and thus gave motivation to the thousands of workers that Starbucks is special and that they are working toward a valuable goal.

Intellectual Stimulation: Employees at Starbucks have the opportunity to learn more about coffee. They are trained how to make the perfect coffee, and if they complete a course they can get the famous black apron and become a certified Coffee Master. There is no extra pay for those who get a black apron, but this does provide intellectual stimulation for employees and thus encourage motivation and hard work.

Individualized consideration: When he was 7 years old his father, an uneducated war veteran, had fallen and broke his hip and his ankle. His father lost his job, had no worker's compensation, no health-care, and no severance. So, in one of the most famous examples of individual consideration Howard Schultz offers health-care coverage and stock options to his workers even though many are part-time workers He believes in creating an engaging, respectful, trusting workplace culture.

Howard Schultz uses Charisma, Inspirational Motivation, Intellectual Stimulation, and Individualized Consideration, and this makes him a transformational leader.

by 

Brodie Monical

Seeds of De-Motivation

Free trips, annual bonuses, giving time off seems nice to a person who never had them, aren’t they? While these types of extrinsic rewards may cause a short-term burst of productivity, they also contain the seed for de-motivation in the long term.  Now let us imagine an employee who starts getting these extrinsic awards every time he performs well. He keeps on doing well even in bad economic times. He will not get those probably now and the unsatisfactory level of the employee rises because once they are awarded, they become expected. Company’s profit will dictate the terms of these awards. A ladder with rungs of dissatisfactions leads to the ceiling of De-motivation.

            So how managers prevent that to happen? A noted psychologist and one of the most influential names in business management, Herzberg's research showed that real motivators include achievement, recognition, meaningful work, responsibility, advancement and growth which is also called 'The Two-Factor Theory of Motivation'. Effective managers invest time in knowing people also. They not only focus on tasks but they focus on people also. Some managers do make the mistake that they care about work a lot more than people. This makes the employee feel insignificant. Every individual has a subconscious need that his work should be appreciated by others because recognition is a kind of feedback which lets the employee knows that his work is meaningful.

            Why do we want that our work should be meaningful? It is because every time we do something we want to add a value to ourselves. We look that what we are adding to the society. In order to make the employee’s work more meaningful a manager should make the transition from problem solver to coach. He lets the employee take charge of the problem and provide support and delegation. This not only makes the employee feel that he is adding value also the manager is allowing his employee to flourish to a new level, as a professional and as an individual too. This offers a greater level of satisfaction to an employee as compared to short term extrinsic awards. This style of managers can also be termed as ‘The Transformational Leadership style’ as the leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation.

Another thing which is very important from the standpoint of a manager is to be supportive towards employees which are sincere.  Jack Welch (Former Chairman and CEO of General Electric) was once asked in an interview that “Did you have a particular boss who inspired you?” He replied in his first job he had a disaster once when a plant blew up in Pittsfield. He had to go down to Connecticut to see his bosses and explain what had happened. He was expecting criticism, people yelling at him, get fired but they couldn't have been more supportive and encouraging to him which motivated him towards his work and leveraged his loyalty towards GE.

Innovative culture in engineering - Siemens

Siemens is the engineering group that is behind many of the products and services people take for granted in their daily lives. The list of products designed and manufactured by Siemens is almost endless. It includes traffic lights, gas turbines, superconducting magnets in medical scanners, wind generators, automated factories as well as domestic appliances like kettles and fridges. It generates about 40% of the UK's wind energy and it hosts, supports and maintains the BBC's website including the development of the BBC iPlayer. The company has been operating in the UK since 1843 and employs more than 18,000 people. Across the world Siemens employs over 427,000 people.

Engineers use scientific principles to develop products or systems to solve real life problems. Much of engineering is about innovation rather than invention. This means that engineers transform creative ideas into improved products, services, technologies or processes.

Motivation is the driving force for a successful company and motivated employees are a company’s most important assets. Each individual is motivated through different factors and its as unique as one’s personality. A creative environment, such as that provided by engineering, can be very stimulating. Some staff at Siemens thrives on the problem-solving aspect of their roles and respond to challenges. Other employees find the varied nature of the work motivating having the opportunity to try different roles. Siemens employees also value the fact that they are allowed to be imaginative and can influence their own work. The structure of Siemens motivates individuals by empowering them to improve processes. Siemens provides the sort of environment where workers can learn new things and are given the opportunity to progress within the business. This culture demonstrates that Siemens values its employees and helps to recruit the next generation of engineers.

Perhaps the earliest attempt to design jobs came during the era of scientific management. Taylor’s scientific management theory involved observing workers to see how they carried out tasks. As a result of his work tasks were broken down into smaller scale units of work, requiring little understanding from employees of what they were doing. This job specialization meant that workers undertook tasks with a narrowly defined range, for which they were rewarded according to how much they produced. Payment systems rewarded those who produced the most. Today, engineering needs people with greater creativity, capability and flexibility. Taylor’s way of working is very different from the needs of the modern working environment. However his work has helped form a scientific understanding of how work is organized.

Siemens have succeeded in creating an innovative culture in the engineering process which is quite challenging in this particular industry. At Siemens, the culture encourages employees to be involved in their work, suggesting and implementing possible improvements. Control as originally suggested by Taylor, which removed personal responsibility, is not what modern engineering is about. Controls still exist but the person doing the job is encouraged to work as part of a team and become involved in deciding the best way to do or improve a task. This is because in engineering there is a continuous need to develop new and better products and processes. They cannot be confined to one way of doing things. For example, a new product or process may open the way to new markets.

One of the most famous theorists on motivation is Abraham Maslow. In 1954 he developed a “hierarchy of needs”. This he represented as a triangle. The most basic needs are at the bottom. The more complex needs are at the top.

Siemens provides their employees with opportunities to improve their higher order needs. Mostly, engineers have a high priority to fulfill such needs due the creativity demand of the job. Esteem is about having self-respect and the respect of others. Feeling that one’s work is making a difference can improve self-esteem. Recognition of an employee’s achievements by the employer also helps to meet esteem needs. For example, Siemens runs schemes in which suggestions and projects for improvements are rewarded. This could be financially, either individually or as part of a team, or in terms of peer or management recognition of their achievements.

Self-actualization refers to the need of becoming all you are capable of becoming. Siemens offers engineering staff training and development opportunities. This links with self-actualization as it helps engineers to extend their capabilities which may lead to a progression up the career ladder. Training and development also helps individuals to meet the changing demands of the business global markets.

Frederick Herzberg approached the question of motivation in a different way. By asking individuals what satisfies them on the job and what dissatisfies them, Herzberg came to the conclusion that aspects of the work environment that satisfy employees are very different from the aspects that dissatisfy them. Herzberg labeled factors that cause dissatisfaction of workers as “hygiene factors” (company policies, supervision, working conditions, salary, safety and security on the job). In contrast, motivators are factors which are intrinsic to the job such as achievement, recognition, interesting work, increased responsibilities, advancement and growth opportunities. Herzberg’s theory showed that managers need to attend to the motivating factors and personal development aspects to improve employee performance. They also need to ensure that hygiene factors are met or managed in order to avoid dissatisfaction in the workplace.

To remove dissatisfaction, Siemens follows the method where they raise awareness of issues with employees and encourage their involvement. They then understand and recognize the need for change. This has helped Siemens to manage change programmes. Motivators at Siemens are the factors that stimulate engineers to work in the best way possible. They enjoy the characteristics of their roles. Being empowered helps them to manage their roles and enables them to use this power to change things. Whether individuals enter the organization after they have taken their A-levels, as apprentices or as graduates, the work they undertake is stimulating.

By 

Sonu Soney Joseph

Some Thoughts on Motivating Employees

Motivating employees can be very difficult work. People come to work to fulfill certain needs. The most basic of which, according to Maslow, would be physiological needs. A job provides money for shelter and food. Following the theory, people will work their way up from there to fulfilling self-esteem needs. Unfortunately the real world is not that simple. Every starving artist, writer, and Mother Teresa like figure pokes a rather large hole in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs theory.  Rather, I think, motivation at work is swirling mix of achievement, affiliation and power needs (from McCelland) on the higher aspirations side, and a mix of Maslow and Expectancy theory on the basic needs sides. (Note: this is my theory, as all three theories above are used to explain the entire spectrum of motivation).

The last time I was a manager, I supervised a diverse group of employees, several Baby Boomers and some Gen Y (I was the only Gen X), tenured and new, men and women, with fair amount of surface and deeper diversity. Finding the valence, or what was valuable for each employee, was very difficult. Furthermore, as I worked for a large company with a rigid performance and reward system, establishing instrumentality between the effort that an employee made and the reward was difficult. Monetary rewards could be given only yearly and only after a complex process.  This often resulted in a strong immediacy bias in rewards, and sometimes ‘sand-bagging’ of achievements so they will fall closer to the review processes. Non-monetary rewards were very limited and often taxed as cash! Although I hate to stereotype, for that particular circumstance, the difference between generations and employee tenure (which were often related) made the biggest difference in discovering how to motivate my employees.

Generation Y were a very young group at that time (still are), and several in this group were worried about basic financial issues like college loans and the cost of living. Although public recognition in team and department meetings seem to motivate most, it was particularly important to Gen Y employees. Their preference for this social/self-esteem goal contradicts Maslow’s theory. Also, time off seemed very important. Baby Boomers were more difficult to motivate. Most had been with the organization for some time. Many were near the top of their salary ranges, making the instrumentality between extra work and monetary rewards almost non-existent. Public recognition sometimes fell flat, as I managed in a finance department, which contained a lot of introverted personalities. Also, fault lines would quickly form between the older employees (mostly white, introverted, and promoted from support jobs) and the newer employees (more diverse, slightly more extroverted, and hired directly into higher level roles). Despite the fault, older employees were often able to quickly jade the younger employees and themselves on non-monetary incentives. However, active, direct and honest communication about department/company direction and goals did motivate the Baby Boom generation. Being long term employees and very committed to their jobs, feeling that they were included in decision making and understanding why decision were made was very important to this group.

Christian Hunt