Day 196: How to speak to people's hearts

We've all seen them. Corporate slogans, usually displayed in a factory as a large banner or similar, with some catch phrase that is intended to encourage employees to: 

I dunno - you tell me - is it?

Do the Right Thing

We Care about our Customers

Safety First

We Build Perfect Quality Products

Quality Starts with You

Our Customers are our #1 Priority

The list goes on and on, of course... but I often wonder how effective these banners are...

Isn't this about what motivates people? Don't we need to understand what motivates people before we can attempt such brazen messaging, if we want it to be effective?

What motivates employees to do a good job? Typically, we answer with a short list of things like money, recognition by peers/status, pride in workmanship, fear of job loss/unemployment, and so forth.

What motivates employees to do a great job? Oooooh now that's trickier...

But a different way to ask this question is to look at what makes us FEEL GOOD about working. I found a great summary from a TEDx talk by Dan Ariely (link to video/blog here). Ariely, a behavioral economist (how's that for a job category!), summarizes his research into seven key points (taken from his blog post):

• Seeing the fruits of our labor may make us more productive
• The less appreciated we feel our work is, the more money we want to do it
• The harder a project is, the prouder we feel of it
• Knowing that our work helps others may increase our unconscious motivation
• The promise of helping others makes us more likely to follow rules
• Positive reinforcement about our abilities may increase performance
• Images that trigger positive emotions may actually help us focus

It isn't just money, that's for sure. In fact there's even a lower appreciation for financial incentives by women in the workplace - money holds even less sway for most women than some of the other factors above. And there is a growing amount of support for the theory that if companies focus on making their employees happier about their work, the end result will be improvements in most key indicators across the board (quality, safety, delivery). And that should benefit the customer, right?

So what's an organization to do? Focus their internal motivational messaging on the Customer? On the Employee? On both? I've seen some loooooong banners but who has time to read and be motivated by a paragraph?

Tell me about myself?

I know what motivates me, but N=1 is not statistically significant. I know I am an anomaly in many respects in this area. So trying to craft a more generic message to motivate a large group can be tricky. Maybe I need to step back a bit and think about what does the average employee control, compared to what they only influence. 

But first thing's first - I need a cuter desktop picture...

This'll do - I feel more productive already!

AMac