Venture Adventure

The ExecuPundit (Michael Wade) posts about ascribing motivation in the Motive Mess. Ironically ascribing motivation himself, Michael says “I suspect the practice stems from a desire to blame instead of understand”.

When looking at public issues, say the issue of Scooter Libby and the leaking of Valerie Plame’s name, Michael may be correct.  In the business environment, however, he’s way off base.

For example, a good friend of mine is a senior software engineer at a very fast growing software company.  Having just moved into a new building, he’s been tussling with the IT group to get lab space and network connectivity from the lab back to his office, and with little success.  His next step was to bring up the issue with the VP of Engineering.  My advice was to frame the issue in terms that affected and motivated the VP.  If my friend just went and bitched that IT wasn’t cooperating, the VP wouldn’t be motivated to act.  However, if my friend noted that schedules and revenue would slip without this vital cooperation and support, the VP would be compelled to act.

As a manager in a startup, I’ve often been tasked with  getting my team to put in the extra effort to meet a very aggressive development schedule.  Over the years, I’ve come to realize that for most senior engineers, the company rah-rah speech rarely motivates.  After 10 years of listening to the same ‘motivation’ speeches and sessions, most are pretty jaded.

However, by talking individually with each engineer, I was able to understand their particular motivation, and to frame the issues and desired results in language that  matched their motivation.  Some were  motivated by the prospect of future huge rewards.  Some of my key engineers were much more interested in the challenge of solving the problem.  Others wanted fame and glory.  With each engineer, I was able to get them to make the extra effort at the last minute by providing incentives, rewards, etc. that matched their motivation.

Had I not put in the effort ascribe motivation to past actions in order to understand the core underlying motivations, I would not have been able to be successful, and to fulfill my motivations!