My motivation does not come from my parents and their comments about excelling in school. I think this transfers to the business world. People have to want to be motivated. They have to want to have an inner drive to succeed and do better than they did the previous day. It almost seems like managers cannot really motivate their employees unless the employees take the first step by being motivated themselves.
This is not to say that managers cannot motivate employees at all. I am a strong believer in the value of a dollar, and I do think money works in motivation. Money represents different things to different people. Now, money represents my savings fund for studying abroad, and down the road, a big house and provisions for a future family. At work, if we meet our goal, we get an extra $0.65 for each hour we worked that month. This goal is effective for us. We would all like that extra money. However, I do not think that is the only motivational factor I have in working. I work because I like to be productive with my time. Honestly, I am not thinking about meeting the goal every day while at work. So while this goal is effective sometimes, I cannot say I have completely adopted it into my heart as a driving factor of my work ethic.
An article solidified my thoughts. The article says that the goals need to be something that the employee can own and really believe in. I truly think this is the most important part of motivation and goals. Goals only work when the employees are actually motivated. Motivation comes best from within, so the goals need to be something that employees believe in. If the employees do not believe in the goal, they may try at first because they are getting paid and that is what they are told to do, but soon they will lose focus and the drive to perform and achieve the goals set.
The article suggests different steps to take in setting goals so that the goals are effective. A big component is researching. Reviewing expectations of stakeholders and then deciding the importance of fulfilling these expectations and what responsibilities this leaves the company with is crucial to research. Another important step is to prioritize objectives for the company. Goals tend to fail when a company tries to take on too much. This makes sense. When there are so many objectives, it can be hard to fulfill all of them. There is a lack of focus because there are too many things to focus on and pay attention to. As the article says, “It's better to prioritise and hit fewer targets than to fail a wide range of objectives” (2). At my work, we focus on daily sales goal and return percentage goals, and that is all we really focus on. If we had more goals than that it would be hard to excel in any of the goals.
Works Cited
Bourne, M., and M. Franco-Santos. 'PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT. ' Financial Management 1 Mar. 2010: ABI/INFORM Research, ProQuest. Web. 10 Sep. 2010.