The power of motivation

Motivation has a direct effect on team performance, and indirectly affects customer satisfaction. Therefore, for any project-based organisation, employee motivation becomes a critical factor in achieving superior business results. A motivated team will outperform an unenthusiastic one, every time.

This makes the clear understanding of the team-dynamics concept of motivation an essential business need for project teams, project managers and business leaders. It only takes a little effort to actuate the power of motivation, and the reward can be enormous.

Motivation is broadly defined as the driving force by which humans achieve their goals. According to Harvard University professors Paul Lawrence and Nitin Nohria, in their 2002 book Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Our Choices, people at the workplace are driven by four elements, namely to acquire, bond, comprehend and defend.

Acquiring: Employees want to acquire roles that boost their self-image leading to a better reputation. An effective motivational technique here would be recognition and reward. That may not necessarily be financial. Basic things like addressing team members by name and acknowledging superior achievements in private or in staff meetings can have a long-lasting impact and generate a great deal of motivation.

Bonding: This is about the employee’s human tendency to belong to an organisation and to have connection with co-workers. This tendency could be satisfied by promoting teamwork values, and encouraging employees to exchange knowledge and best practices. Semi-formal social activities also help a lot in this regard by promoting employee’s work/life balance.

Comprehending: This is about the employees’ aspiration to understand how their own roles fit within, and affect, the performance of the organisation. This requires basic techniques such as clear and well-designed job descriptions, along with vivid organisational charts describing the linkage between business units, as well as between individuals. Maintaining a close and transparent continuous communication with staffs is also a best practice.

Defending: That is resistance to change. Employees commonly tend to hold on to tools and processes they are most familiar with. This might stand in the way of applying corporate governance, especially if you have a process-driven management scheme.

Tackling such tendency requires clever management. Employees should engage and feel safe expressing opinions about new processes. Communicate face-to-face and arrange for training opportunities. Realising the above factors helps a lot in managing teams effectively.

Another aspect of motivation is that it varies along the project lifecycle (PLC). Research conducted by Dr. Jonathan Adams and Bernhard Schmid at Florida State University, involving project management experts from across the globe, and utilising PMI’s online research network, revealed that project teams’ motivation diminishes gradually as project progresses along the PLC phases, and so does the efficiency of rewards.

That could probably be due to scope changes, project issues or missing some interim deadlines. This research finding suggests that project managers need to consciously plan and implement a sensibly escalating motivation effort as the project time goes by along the project lifespan. This is required in order to maintain motivation levels as high as they were at the project’s outset.

Motivation is a primary leadership quality. Let us take it a step further; it is the difference, ultimately, between project management and project leadership. Motivation is an area that needs to be fully recognised by organisations and become part of their core way of doing business.

Dr. Sherif Hashem, PMP is technical director at WSP Middle East.