There is a tendency towards “simplifying the state of things” which can often be harmful, since organizational phenomena - which have to do with human behavior - are complex.
Some participants and readers thank us for including an important list of experts in each of the Organizational Development topics, such as: Decision making, Selection and Recruitment, Leadership, among others, and now with Motivation.
We also receive feedback from other participants and readers who let us know that the “articles are long” and that there is too much material, and that they are used to “shorter” readings in the media that interest them.
Both points of view are valuable and important; anyway we want to share with you that the phenomenon of motivation within the world of companies and organizations has not yet been definitively resolved; at www.gestiopolis.com you can find an article on
Bibliography in Motivation where we exhibit more than 400 important contributions showing in this way that there are various theories and practices that differ from each other.
Taking this fact into account, we must try to be comprehensive enough both in terms of the scope of the motivational topic and in terms of its depth.
The self-help elements and materials are extremely useful for some specific situations, but the intricate world regarding what happens between organizational participants and your company often requires going further.
If we know that a single person "does not change" even under the assistance of a therapist who treats him for many years, and it is known that companies are made up of different groups that are interconnected on both sides, upwards and also downwards, and that as a result of some common aspects that exist between them, they come to constitute an additional unit of analysis that receives the company or organization name, we begin to have an idea that the behavior of that entity, its levels of efficiency and effectiveness, and its performance cannot be left to chance or to some “three key steps” of some self-help element.
To do this, we must introduce ourselves to everything we have learned so far within the Behavioral Sciences, including everything we know about what we "don't know."
In a Workshop previously developed for entrepreneurs of medium and small companies and which are the organizations that generate the greatest amount of genuine jobs in all the countries of the world (Workshop on "Emotional Intelligence: Is it useful for Entrepreneurs?" - see in www.gestiopolis.com) - so it is paradoxical for me that they are referred to as small and medium-sized companies when in reality they are "Really Ingenious and Creative Companies" - many of the participants who lead this type of company and are characterized by their "Practical Intelligence", they had bought the book by Daniel Goleman ("Emotional Intelligence"; Bantam Books - 1995) and they let us know of their concern about how to put Goleman's ideas into practice.
Even a couple of these highly entrepreneurial and creative people asked us for help regarding “what we can do in practice” and how we could help them in what they called a “down to earth”.
Even many of these participants had attended the Emotional Intelligence and Organizational Development Workshop (see: www.gestiopolis.com) where a general review of Daniel Goleman's work was made including the five (5) practical skills, and they had - according to them - trouble understanding the need for Motivation to "be the third practical skill" in the overall sequence.
There is no doubt that Daniel Goleman is the author of one of the best-selling books and that it is also characterized by the fact that very few of its buyers have finished reading it.
Hence, we received many inquiries that have been especially linked to its practical applications within companies and organizations.
All those who from the academic, professional and business world are interested in improving organizations know about the importance of the 5 practical skills.
All of them in one way or another have had to appreciate the importance of understanding and awareness of what is happening, motivation, the way to regulate our energies since resources are limited, the importance of empathy above the others patías, and how leadership ends up energizing and propelling a group towards the best achievement of its objectives.
These concepts, thus contemplated within the Behavioral Sciences long before the work of Daniel Goleman, were later re-defined by him who has selected five main variables: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills.
Daniel Goleman's success is not the product of chance. In addition to his successful work as a consultant in a world leading firm in the commercialization of mass products such as Johnson and Johnson, he has been able as a result of extremely meticulous work to integrate many of the variables that scientists and researchers in the sciences behavior they had previously considered, but in an isolated way.
The fame and subsequent success of Daniel Goleman find their foundation in the way he integrates the different variables. Different scholars of the Behavioral Sciences Jack Gibb, Chris Argyris, Locke, Peter Drucker, D. McClelland, Skinner, Fiedler, Adams and even different institutions such as NTL (National Training Labs), Ohio State University and the University of Michigan had previously focused their interest in these variables.
Daniel Goleman's enormous contribution consists in having developed a method that will allow them to put Emotional Intelligence in Action, and in particular within the organizational / business world.
Daniel Goleman suggests that stopping for a moment represents the first step, for only then can one lead. Without "knowing oneself", any undertaking can be a totally sterile effort, waste of energy and resources.
It makes it clear to us that even so it may not be convenient to launch the attack prioritizing the deployment of energies, both our own and those of third parties. It is also necessary to know the intensity of the energies that we have to put into action.
It is necessary to know within what limits we have to operate. The propeller planes that crossed a mountain range to join two places had the need to fly below certain clouds due to pressurization problems and on the other hand they had to fly above the mountains.
Those were its limits and all maneuvers had to be exercised within those parameters. Daniel Goleman suggests that this is what we must take into account, and that the definition of these limits must be done before pushing (motivation as a third practical skill).
Once the requirements related to the first two practical skills (self-knowledge and self-regulation) have been satisfied, we can take into account the impulse, thus giving rise to the third practical ability known as “motivation”.
Once the phase of self-awareness and self-regulation has been successfully completed, people and also organizations are in a position that will allow them to give appropriate direction to their energies.
Motivation has to do with aspects such as intensity, speed and persistence; but as a prelude to the action of these three we must always keep in mind the "direction" or main focus.
If you do not pay attention to the address, we will not only be moving away from the point of arrival but we must also be further from our original starting point.
By satisfactorily fulfilling the requirements of these three practical skills, we achieve what we could call the maximum achievement at the individual level.
Now, what is the reason for the enormous importance assigned to the motivation factor?
Although it is not easy to make a “reduction” of the different theories of motivation, we can suggest that motivation arises as a key variable as a result of the famous equation that tells us that performance is a consequence of the multiplication of skills by force motivating. It is not the sum but the multiplication of both factors.
In fact, no organizational and business leader can ignore the importance of the abilities, skills, knowledge and competencies that the different organizational participants must possess.
What happens is that companies operate within a context that is competitive and not all of them have to grow and sustain themselves; some of them have to disappear as suggested by Hannan & Freeman.
Assuming that the competences, capacities and knowledge are appreciable - or at least that is what the educational system tries to do, although not with much success - the "competitive advantage" between the different companies must only be the consequence of motivation.
And from there arises the enormous importance of this factor.
According to Daniel Goleman's perspective, “A view of human nature that overlooks the power of emotions is woefully short-sighted. The very name of Homo Sapiens, the thinking species, is misleading in light of the new assessment and vision offered by science regarding the place that emotions occupy in our lives. For better or for worse, intelligence may not matter in the least when emotions dominate. "
We know the importance of the "cognitive model" and especially knowledge, but there is too much evidence that shows that those who have the knowledge are not always the ones who act better or more efficiently. Those of us who are linked to the world of Training and Training of executives, managers and professionals in companies have known for more than 50 years that the learning of those named has almost nothing to do with what they receive from the exhibitor; Rather, it is from their feedback, and the feedback from the facilitator, that knowledge is energized to propel it towards action (Eric Gaynor Butterfield; Congress of Organizational Development - Year 1997).
Entrepreneurs with whom we have connected tell us that "it seems very difficult to put into practice" what Goleman suggests.
For us, "Emotional Intelligence is the ability to feel - perceive, understand, control and modify both one's own emotions and those of others."
And this is where the enormous advantages of putting the concepts and ideas of Emotional Intelligence into practice are beginning to be seen.
In those situations where we can learn about the feelings of our employees, Clients and suppliers, and we can also get to feel- perceive, understand, control and modify their emotions as well as ours, we could then be able to stop running unnecessary risks and assimilate ourselves to what banks do: operate with a risk rate that is practically zero.
There is no doubt that it is possible to energize and motivate people through knowledge and the cognitive. But we must also take into account what we have learned from Charles Darwin ("On the origin of species" - 1859).
Darwin notes that from very early in life for us as a species, emotions have developed primarily for the purpose of preparing us for action. Even more important, this is especially true when faced with emergency situations.
How many times as entrepreneurs have we had danger signs that we have not paid attention to as in the case of gazelles where there is always one of them that prefers to eat an extra portion of grass - lack of self-regulation - to end up being the gazelle that is eaten by a lion?
How many times in our capacity as entrepreneurs have our impulses managed our actions and then we find ourselves in situations that are harmful to our body or where we position ourselves vulnerable to others (lack of self-knowledge and self-regulation)?
Hence, Socrates stated that both passions and whims can lead us to a meaningless life, where instead of being free and powerful leaders we become slaves and dependents of third parties.
As we have previously highlighted, motivation is one of the two most important factors for achieving results; the other is the capacity of the people that includes the abilities, skills and knowledge.
Knowledge is not acquired quickly, rather, it takes many years, and this is especially true of the knowledge required by organizations today that are endowed with many professionals. Professions usually require having completed first studies (about 7 years), secondary studies (about five years) to which it is necessary to add around 6 years on average to complete university studies. The total years is then around 18 years.
And yet - in the vast majority of cases - they have not had a practice consistent with the profession. On the other hand, motivation as the second main factor has the enormous advantage that the manager, executive or professional as well as the employer, has it at their disposal at every moment.
It is fascinating that so little use is made of something that costs so little, that it does not run out, and that it is within our reach at every moment.
Emotions are a source of energy and through it they are in a position to motivate others, which often has a synergistic effect even for oneself.
It is that emotions are characterized by their power of contagion since they transmit moods and persuade, even producing attraction (or rejection). And through emotions, communication can also be motorized, which allows facilitating the transmission of data (or its obstruction).
In companies, not all organization participants are always fully aware of the practical implications regarding the opportunities that energy, communication and contagion factor open up for us.
And this may be one of the reasons that does not allow companies to achieve the results that they want and need for their survival since the way in which the information is transmitted has a lot to do with the fulfillment and achievement of the task..
Many times people do not keep in mind that for many thousands and thousands of years all the species where we are also included, we have been subject to learning through how we are shown how things are done (teacher - apprentice). As we have in today's world a great formal apparatus called Educational, we assume that this is the only and most appropriate channel for learning.
With the purpose of illustrating the importance of the contagion factor as a consequence of emotions and the non-cognitive, we are going to share a finding that we find interesting. It is about a monkey that was isolated on an island - it was actually a monkey - that used to eat its food with sand and other elements that were attached to it.
However, one day he learned that he could eat his food without the sand and the elements that were attached to him every time he soaked it in the water and from then on he always enjoyed his food by feeding on it without foreign materials.
We can say that this is an interesting find but the most surprising is the fact that monkeys that were on another island and that could not in any way have direct contact with this monkey since they could not move from island to island, began to see the benefits of washing your food and cleaning it before eating.
It is common for people to associate knowledge and also learning with the formal educational system even though the relationship between formal “diploma” education with business or life success has not been proven. Larry Ellison in his capacity as President of the Oracle company gave a commencement speech that some people may or may not agree with, but which has the courage to showcase the importance of non-formal learning.
There he points out that the richest person in the world did not finish his formal studies (Bill Gates) and that neither did the second or third richest people on the planet (being himself in third place). And it seemed Dell was on the rise… Perhaps we should consider that other options are available to us. Species can teach us through non-cognitive means other options that are linked to emotions and that we have a great tendency to discard.
It seems that people are oriented to privilege conversations, conversations and cognitive dialogues and on the other hand we are giving less importance to other effective forms of transmission, which sometimes manifest themselves through different signals.
We can also cite as an example of effective communication - contagion - transmission what happens with another animal species, in this case the giraffe. And the way it relates to the plant species; in this case, the trees.
In the publication of the "Argentine Institute of Finance Executives" of September 1995, Eric Gaynor Butterfield highlights an interesting case: "With the purpose of illustrating the importance of an effective transmission (and dramatizing the importance of it), We mention an experiment recently carried out by a researcher (New Paradigms, Culture and Subjectivity: Dora Fried Schnitman, Paidós - 1994), where the participants are not human beings and yet they had an efficient information transmission system. " "In this experiment conducted by" sadistic "scientists all the leaves were removed from a tree to study its behavior.
The tree's reaction was predictable: it began to harvest sap more intensively to replace the leaves that had been removed as quickly as possible. And it also secreted a substance that protects it against parasites.
The tree had understood very well that it was being attacked by a parasite, only that it believed it was an insect when in fact it had been attacked by the "human parasite."
But the most interesting and revealing thing is that neighboring trees of the same species began to secrete the same antiparasitic substance as the attacked tree! "
Humans are going to have to reconsider - more than once - about the importance of emotions about what is happening and how we can mobilize energies and motivate people through them. What signals we transmit and how we do it has been largely relegated to the background as a consequence of privileging spoken communication.
Giraffes in South Africa usually feed on the small, young leaf shoots of a tree; and it is interesting to learn that the trees that are in the following direction - taking into account the same direction of the wind that operates as a signal and transmission medium - begin to generate a sage that is anti-attractive to the giraffe to de-stimulate it in your action. It is a good lesson in stimulation and anti-stimulation that we receive from outside of formal education.
Energy thus represents a true source of motivation at practically no cost, which we have at our disposal. It is an accelerator of what is happening, and, of course, it is also a de-accelerator. See if the energy that entire armies devote - and also sacrifice - to many of their forces by assigning them the roles of flaggers or musicians is important.
The Titanic dedicated an entire orchestra to mobilizing energies for hundreds of passengers in the dramatic moment prior to its sinking.
In an article devoted exclusively to motivation (see: www.gestiopolis.com) we have highlighted the multiplicity of approaches chosen by notable experts.
In any case, and by way of synthesis, we can now share that there are three basic approaches that have a lot to do with the management philosophy that managers - executives and entrepreneurs have.
We can assume that organizational participants are autonomous and free beings and that to the extent that we put options for actions to follow, they may be induced to choose some of them instead of others. These people are in a position to evaluate the expectations of success to be achieved and also the value to be obtained.
We are talking about the approach that has commonly received the denomination of "Expectancy Theory" or theory of expectations.
On the other hand, we can come to think that what really matters has more to do - initially - with what the person does rather than with what the person has in his head (actually it is in his mind but we use this metaphor).
And as a consequence of what the other person does, the manager - executive or businessman, makes available some type of reward or reinforcement of the subject in question. Skinner has been the notable expert to stand out under this option as a result of Pavlov's preliminary research.
Much less attention has been paid to the contributions of Adams (1961) that have to do with what the person contributes (at work) and what they receive, which includes not only specific aspects but also intangibles.
But the mobilization of energy is much more complex for Adams since, in addition, the subject in question makes a relationship of what he contributes and what he receives "in comparison" with what a significant other contributes and also receives.
In other words, people mobilize our energies taking into account our income vs. contributions with income vs. the contributions of others that we take as references. This theory has been called "equity theory" or equity theory.
It seems that it is not easy to understand and even more difficult to apply in the world of companies and businesses, but it is not. To explain the simplicity of this approach - and how it works in the real world - let's try to give an example.
We are all parents and many of us also have more than one child. When the Christmas and Three Kings holidays come, we usually give gifts to all of them.
It is very common for children to be opening their gifts, and tearing the paper in which "their" gift is wrapped, instead of concentrating on "seeing" their own gift, they dedicate themselves to observing the gift of their brother or sister.
In the business world, many managers and also businessmen fail to explain the low productivity that occurs and neither the reasons why an excellent, highly productive worker has ceased to be so.
It is possible that the reason has more to do with the manager and the employer than with the person in question; And this happens when the employer and manager do not reward different people who produce differently.
In this sense, trade unionists have a better notion about how to demotivate the worker than what managers and employers have about motivating.
The energies that union leaders spend in matching rewards (collective bargaining agreements) are proof of this and leaving out merely an incentive for "compliance with regard to attending the company" such as the attendance award, they only privilege the anti-productivity.
To find out about the negative consequences on productivity, employers only have to turn to a single treatise: “Organizations” (Wiley & Sons - 1958).
In this work its two authors - James March and Herbert Simon - clearly show that the factors oriented towards the decision to produce are not related to the employee's decision to attend or simply attend.
The productivity drops in Argentina in industry and companies that require a lot of personnel, have been a consequence of mobilizing more demotivating than motivating energies, which has led the country to the greatest decline and setback among all the countries of the world (from seventh richest country in the world in the 40s of the last century to a disadvantageous position that is accompanied by an unprecedented unemployment in its history).
And here the question that many managers and entrepreneurs ask us often arises:
If this is really the case and apparently the facts show it, what can I do as an entrepreneur? And here again we must turn to both the contributions of experts such as the Hannan & Freeman conception, as well as practical circumstances. An advantage of the competitive world makes this situation - of undoubted business disadvantage - "also have the contenders."
Thus, organizational growth and development within a competitive context always offers possibilities and opportunities for those who take advantage of them. The other managers - executives - professionals and also the other entrepreneurs experience the same problems and difficulties, and therefore making use of emotions and motivation as a low-cost source of energy is something that cannot be discarded.
Bill Gates lets you know in his annual “treat” speech to his entire staff that “We are only a couple of years away from our possible extinction”. When the reporter asked him if he feared IBM, Oracle, Sun as adversaries told him no way; that he feared 13 or 14 year old boys who had a lot of free time and could take many risks.
I have been known among many entrepreneurs for the phrase "The only certainty of our arrival at success and to the top, is that we now have more probability of descending. Eliminating motivation as a source of energy and privileging "security" and protection is the surest source of setback. In a Shakespearean play, the king asks what is the greatest evil that he can do to his alleged enemy. And "the different witches" offer you different options, all of them full of evil. But eventually he opts for advice from another source that suggests that "Try to give your enemy a sense of total protection."
Many managers then ask - like entrepreneurs - what they can do in their companies. And they ask for some practical examples of it.
We can suggest among the various options available to you that you look at the changes that have occurred in the way sports teams drive and the way that has changed in the last generation.
It was common for a soccer technical director to remain in office for years, which is not the case today (usually more than 50% of soccer technical directors are not renewed in their positions beyond one year).
And soccer players - who sometimes formed a lead for many years without any change - already meet new teammates during the same year. In the same game there are many changes and the players already accept that the rules of the game are not the same.
Therefore, it is not surprising that some companies are hiring soccer coaches to train and train their managers. The company itself is in constant motion.
We have already seen at the beginning of this talk that “emotere” is the Latin root of emotion and that it means to move. And to move is to change.
Motivation is intimately linked to Change. And possibly change is one of the things that we pay less attention to and for that reason we pay a high price when we remain static.
The important thing is to know what we have to do in relation to Change, Motivation and Movement. We can suggest that the Motivation cycle is made up of about six main phases:
- Motive Confidence Optimism Enthusiasm Persistence Resistance
It is impossible to move someone from their position, without a Reason and especially in relation to a new Reason.
And people to move from one place to another need on the one hand to leave what we call "our comfort zone" where we are currently comfortably installed. Our thinking in the "comfort zone" tells us:
If now I am well and comfortable here, why should I move? To do this I have to be confident enough that by leaving my comfort zone I will be in another new zone of "greater comfort". And the question that plagues the different organizational participants at this time is related to the new competencies that they must have to carry out the new task.
How is it possible that doing things right here, now it must be moved and transferred to another place, with other people, to perform other tasks? For this, Albert Ellis suggests a path that he calls the ABC model where A corresponds to adversity, C to consequences. And its interesting contribution has to do with the fact that we can anticipate the consequences of adversity not because of it itself but because of the B ("beliefs", beliefs).
Therefore we must pay attention to our beliefs as they may be the ones that are leading us to adversity.
Another very important aspect to take into account is the Achievements. Locke has worked on the achievements and objectives and has had to fight against a strong tendency of many people who assume that the people satisfied and happy with their jobs are the ones who are really in a position to get closer to the objectives and achievements.
That is, they assume that the independent variable satisfaction is the one that must lead to achievements and therefore the greater the person's satisfaction with the job, the greater the achievements. However, the behavioral sciences have shown no evidence of this; on the contrary, we have learned that those people who are satisfied and happy are those who have previously achieved. In other words, the causal relationship is exactly the reverse.
And this is something that managers - executives and professionals in organizations as well as entrepreneurs should know.
Something that we also know - and thanks to the behavioral school that is so widely criticized - that variable rewards are an important source of motivation.
To do this, they only have to remember the example mentioned by Bateson where they refer to the dolphin trainer who gave the dolphin variable reward and also - after completing the formal training - he dedicated himself to playing.
When Bateson asked why he was playing with the dolphin after finishing training, the trainer told him why he learned that in this way the dolphin increased its performance when they made a presentation to the public. The fact is that the coach was creating a mechanism to strengthen the bond; Directors and managers as well as entrepreneurs must bear in mind that the bond with the other is essential to mobilize motivating energies.
We must bear in mind VJ Wukmir who has developed the possibly most accurate formulation regarding the function of emotions some 30 years ago, although, unfortunately, it has been, and continues to be, ignored by traditional psychology. How many misleading messages try to alter our emotions?
Currently we are literally surrounded by messages whose sole purpose is to alter the proper functioning of our companies and of us as entrepreneurs. Oral, written and image media bombard us minute by minute and it is very difficult for us to make our company survive in the face of such a siege that is systematically practiced on our emotional system.
In general, those who are not entrepreneurs like you, and who have a lot of free time to emit signals, can live without working as much as you, negatively altering your life, taking resources from your company and of course damaging your health.
As Wukmir said, "emotions are always real, but they may not be true" and that "the important thing (to survive as an entrepreneur) is that emotions are true."
The mechanism of emotions can easily be understood if we imagine that we are a ship that is governed by an automatic pilot, guided by a compass that points out the path we are going to follow at all times.
The ship always obeys the compass (emotions), that is, it goes where the compass points, which is specially designed to lead us in the difficult task of survival.
Leadership and Motivation are possibly some of the main variables that allow us to transcend beyond individual growth or craft entrepreneurship, to move to Organizational Development. In this case we are focusing exclusively on the Motivation variable. There is no doubt that the high productivity and organizational performance exhibited by organizations in the United States of America, Canada and those in developed European countries, have been linked to the different incentive programs that were implemented in these companies. But more recently other countries "to the East" such as Singapore, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and also India,they have been introducing incentive systems which have managed to begin to threaten the competitive advantages that their western peers were enjoying.
Apparently, Latin American countries have been determined to do exactly the opposite and today we see how anti-motivational practices have generated the highest unemployment rate in the history of these countries.
Genuine work has been reduced to a minimum and different governments insist on saying that they "defend natural resources" when - paradoxically - they insist on selling and exchanging those natural resources vital to the life of communities, for money.
Many government regulations strive to make labor regulations even more rigid, which makes the job of the creative entrepreneur even more difficult.
And, in their search to solve the labor problem, many government leaders have failed to notice that new, more rigid regulations in contractual labor relations and greater labor stability, as well as a fixed compensation system independent of individual production, what it does is discourage those who are really the engines of genuine growth: entrepreneurs.
And, please, we ask readers not to put in the same group the contractors of the State (who work under the philosophy of a cost plus a plus positioning their company as a monopoly) of those who are really entrepreneurs and that create genuine work.
North American organizations have in this sense more than two generations of advantage over their peers in Latin America, and apparently this difference does not seem to be shortened taking into account the institutional framework within which organizations and companies operate.
We hope with this contribution in terms of contributions from notable experts in motivation to illustrate the enormous accumulation of material and options that are available, to incentivize both employers, management and workers, regarding the spirit and action that they can deploy. in their companies to be more effective and efficient.
In "Ironies in Organization Development" (New Jersey: Transaction Publishers - 1990) Robert Golembiewski points out that there are three main possible exchange rates. The first type of change is the one he has called Alpha, which implies a “constant” type of progress where both the variables and the measurement methods remain unchanged.
Following Robert Golembiewski, we have a second type of change to Beta that implies variable progress where both the variables and the measurement methods are modified. An example of this type of change situation occurs in the work of the business advisor who, when introducing the first changes in his consulting intervention, identifies that new variables and aspects emerge that until then were unknown.
That is why we must be extremely cautious with the "Long-term Projects of Change" suggested by consultants in their advice proposals; ensuring that changes in one part of the system will have a punctual and only impact is a super-simplification and consultants should take this into account if they are interested in providing the best service to the Client (usually the programs are followed at the foot of the letter of the consulting proposal that was approved, which has led me to define this type of consulting work as those "where things have been done well but according to a wrong program."
The third type of change that Golembiewski proposes is Gamma where, in addition to the Beta change, there is a radical change that takes the name of transformational change that implies a quantum leap and a paradigm shift.
We are here in the presence of a revolution regarding how things are done, regarding how what is desired to achieve is visualized, and regarding the positioning that leaders adopt in this situation.
Organizations in the past started from what the top manager or businessman "had in his head." The industrial revolution has been based, as its name implies, in the industry of concrete and tangible products that were designed and marketed primarily on the basis of what the managers and businesswomen planned.
In today's world we find that the corporate world dedicates a very small percentage of its time and resources to products; today services already represent a much higher proportion. And most of the services and even the way in which the "delivery" of the products is developed, are One Service.
We deliver cell phones to Clients but nowadays the cell phone that a company sells is very similar to the cell phone of another company; what differentiates both companies and what each one of them has to look for is a competitive advantage, and that competitive advantage has to do with the “delivery” of the service. The accommodation of people to the industrial revolution has taken several generations and so much so that almost a century after the Industrial Revolution we find notable experts who refer to the social.
Furthermore, as in the case of Eric Trist, what has been known as the school of thought and organizational philosophy was born under the name of the "socio-technical school." And please, we appreciate that there is no reference to a "technical-social" school but rather it is exactly the other way around: a "socio-technical" school. And within the socio-technical school, motivation has a main role.
Emotional "Intelligence" is defined as the "Ability to know, direct and control both one's own emotions and those of others" (Daniel Goleman - "Emotional Intelligence"; Bantam Books - 1995).
And the direction is intimately linked with the motivation since any motorized energy in the wrong direction not only takes us away from our goal and achievement to be achieved but also takes us away from our starting point.
After defining the appropriate direction, attention should be placed on:
- speed, intensity, persistence.
The incorporation of the Emotional Intelligence skills mentioned by Daniel Goleman (already mentioned) must allow the reader to go beyond Cognitive Intelligence and therefore can enjoy a competitive advantage (see Michael Porter: “Competitive Strategy”; Editorial CECSA - 1992).
They must be in a better position to deal with the transformational changes that have already surpassed and surpassed the transitional changes to which we were used (see R. Golembiewski - already cited).
Organizations and companies can no longer predetermine what is going to happen to their Clients, nor to their suppliers. The impact of the context - what moves and has movement outside of your company and therefore is beyond your control - force you to make continuous and permanent accommodations.
And in this way the previous order based on specialization and division of labor where each member reports only one more person, no longer exists.
And it is very difficult for people to report to two bosses, which is the least that happens to an executive and professional in a corporation.
The same biblical passage has engraved the image of us reporting only one boss, so that this single image is not easy to transform. If the organization now does not move and remains static, it must perish. And mastering motivation and its implications is now vitally important.
This is how the "processes" - which advance laterally - can dramatically alter the "original" plans of the hierarchical pyramidal organization that were based on verticality. And - as happens with earthquakes - it is the sum of vertical displacements plus horizontal displacements that produce the highest fatalities (both in towns and in companies).
Emotional Intelligence - as well as Organizational Development and Behavioral Sciences - represent the most powerful columns on which organizations can sustain and grow when excellence in the "hard sciences" is not sufficient to sustain competitive advantage. The behavioral sciences and what is known about organizational behavior and organizational development provide us with a method to create, sustain and grow businesses.
Various field studies in the United States of North America have shown the significant level of familiarity that corporate managers have with the ideas, conceptions and practices of notable experts who are specialists in introducing organizational improvements. The same does not happen in the countries south of the United States where the vast majority of corporate executives as well as businessmen are largely unaware of these important contributions.
Once we are aware and know how to regulate our emotions and impulses, we are in a position to focus on where we should go. We are in the presence of Motivation.
Managers and entrepreneurs ask for “something practical” that is related to Motivation and that can be used in their daily work. Let us then recall a simple and practical definition regarding a motivating force (Eric Gaynor Butterfield; Organizational Development Congress - 1997): “An unmet need is a motivating force”. Therefore, as managers and entrepreneurs we must stop to find out how different are the "unmet needs" of each of the different people who work in the company.
The manager or businessman who in his management philosophy and also in his daily actions considers that this "is not part of his task", has to pay a very high price for it.
One last suggestion as we are nearing the end of our time. Motivation is closely linked to the fact of distinguishing that all people are different and therefore there is nothing more unfair than treating different people the same.
The employer and manager must be oriented to motivate taking into account the different unsatisfied needs of their organizational participants, there are already too many people who outside the scope of the same organization, are dedicated exactly to doing the opposite (many leaders and many trade unionists).
To the extent that the different Latin American countries continue to focus on massing rewards regardless of the contributions of different people, they will move away from creativity and innovation that are indispensable sources in the world of companies and business. Finally, we must mention that in an educational project the students themselves suggested a more equitable and participatory practice, even in the decision regarding what they had to study and formal study hours.
It was suggested to them that then the ratings would also have to be participatory, that is, someone could take from the other (a couple of points) who had a higher rating, and finally they accepted this last position. The end result was that those students who obtained better grades gradually became demotivated - as part of their grades above passing were transferred to other students who got lower grades below the passing level.
To make a long story short, in a very short time practically no student got the highest and highest grade.
What had been achieved in terms of making everyone equal was accompanied by the mediocrity of those who previously stood out.
