Natural Team Motivations

A VP of a company enjoying a high level of success may find its senior leadership isn’t motivated to aggressively pursue process improvement. Even so, most businesses have a budget for improvement initiatives, even if they’re not particularly forceful about it. An inspired leader can make significant improvement happen by tapping into the natural motivations that drive people within the organization.

For example, a VP can assemble a business process improvement team to cut costs associated with a particular process by 50 percent or more. This kind of breakthrough process improvement doesn’t have to be difficult, and the motivation doesn’t have to come from a forceful push made at the very top.

This can be done by tapping into the motivations team members bring to work every day. These motivations include:

• the desire to eliminate hassle from the job
• the pressure to learn and gain knowledge to accomplish other objectives – advancement, job security, etc.
• the fulfillment gained by making a difference
• the good feeling that comes from improving quality for customers
• the satisfaction enjoyed by earning increased respect from peers

Tapping into the team's natural motivations generates energy for success and enables significant improvements take place.

Next week: keep motivations high even when problems crop up along the way.