Are you devoting enough energy to improving the success for yourself and your business? It is all about your people and their motivation, isn’t it? It is about creating a business where people want to work.
We are all very aware of the impact of a positive attitude on the performance of employees. Do you want to know or refresh the secrets to build and sustain a positive attitude?
Related: Creative Collaboration is the Solution for the Toughest Business Problems
You will perhaps have heard this very old story illustrating the difference between positive thinking and negative thinking:
Many years ago two salesmen were sent by a British shoe manufacturer to Africa to investigate and report back on market potential.
The first salesman reported back, “There is no potential here – nobody wears shoes.”
The second salesman reported back, “There is massive potential here – nobody wears shoes.”
This simple short story provides one of the best examples of how a single situation may be viewed in two quite different ways – negatively or positively.
We could explain this also in terms of seeing a situation’s problems and disadvantages, instead of its opportunities and benefits.
When telling this story its impact is increased by using exactly the same form of words (e.g., “nobody wears shoes”) in each salesman’s report. This emphasizes that two quite different interpretations are made of a single situation.
This is why doing the same type of project over and over or working on one thing for a very long period of time is likely to bore your programmers.
The best way to motivate your engineering team is making sure each one works on a variety of projects and, of course, allowing them to propose their own solutions to problems.
Extensive training
Every Zappos employee, regardless of department, goes through four weeks of onboard training across various departments, including the call center.
And because each Zappos employee is trained on the phones, the company does not need to bring in extra labor during peak holiday periods. Instead, all employees voluntarily take customer calls for 10 hours.
Provide consistent challenge
In the same vein, good programmers will welcome a challenge.
Engineers tend to “objectively measure themselves,” says Pinckney, so you should consistently move your employees up to harder and bigger projects.
People want to work … the offer
Tony Hsieh of Zappos wants all of his workers to be a good fit. So in the third week of training, each trainee gets “the offer” to leave (the offer varies from a few hundred to a thousand dollars).
If the employee does not feel Zappos is a good fit, he or she can take the money and leave, no hard feelings, no questions asked.
Don’t micro-manage
We advise managers to only plan for a few weeks in advance.
Trying to design a big system upfront is a fool’s game that requires programmers to be fortune tellers… and forcing them to be is going to make them discontent.
Let your hair down
For creative employees, Zappos encourages personal expression in many ways.
Workstations are marked with overhead license plates that carry the worker’s name and hire date. Employees decorate the conference rooms, and they take frustrations out on Bob, the mannequin punching bag.
Where’s the boss? Hsieh’s desk is on Monkey Row, covered in jungle vines.
Be flexible
Most importantly, understand that you should be flexible.
Imposing rigid deadlines, restricting creativity, and not understanding the needs of your employees are the worst things you could do if you wanted them to be happy and most productive.
Welcome input, encourage innovation, allow for the freedom to set priorities and timelines and let your employees have fun and be comfortable.
Coach
Life, play, and work should blend together. To help this along Zappos employs a full-time life coach to consult workers on business and personal issues.
Classes of 20 participate in goal-setting programs, and upon graduation, they write their achieved goals in a special hall of fame.
Look for subtle motivators
Employees really value working on something challenging that is actually useful, interesting, and going to make a difference.
Great employees take a lot of pride in their work and accomplishments that shine and make customers happy add considerable motivation. Everything else is a distant second.
People want to work … recognition
You must be flexible.
Zappos has a Desk of Epic Glory — need we say more?
In addition to this desk for outstanding employees, the company provides a throne for life coach graduates, and a monthly company parade to honor employee “Heroes.”
For those who prefer tangible recognition, there’s the Zollar Store, where employees redeem Zollars earned through goal achievement.
Many companies use similar types of recognition to show off the best of the best employees.
Use few goals and objectives as possible and allow employees to do what they believe is best for customers. Build a strong team and show trust wherever you can.
One of the few goals at Zappos call center is to answer 80 percent of calls within 20 seconds. After that, the clock is off.
The company trusts its employees to spend as much time as necessary to achieve the best outcome.
Call times and productivity are tracked, but there are no requirements, which can mean some long call times — the longest was 8.5 hours.
Promote good communication
Some employees can be rather introverted, which makes peer-to-peer communication more difficult.
They won’t always think to just go and talk to someone about something — instead, they’ll probably internalize everything more. Not something you want to encourage, obviously.
You can help by implementing ‘soft goals’ to promote further communication.
Delegate and empower
Every employee should be provided the tools and mentoring to help employee development.
At Zappos’ it is expected of employees to become a senior leader in five to seven years. But it is up to them to get there.
Workers are free to make career-defining customer decisions, even if that choice is to send free shoes or make personal greeting cards.
Continuous focus on culture
Culture is a big attraction, and businesses should work hard to foster it.
For example, at IBM consistent communications about company culture helped to instill certain beliefs within the employee population.
They often solicited ideas from across the business to continue cultural development.
At Zappos they have The Wishez Wall, to encourage employees to post wishes (a math tutor, a sewing table) and others fulfill them.
Each year, these activities are commemorated in an annual Culture Book.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your enablers for success for yourself and your team?
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you.
It’s up to you to keep improving your continuous learning. Lessons are all around you. In many situations, your competitor may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Do you have a lesson about making your continuous learning better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
More reading on continuous learning from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.
