Staying Motivated – How to Rise Above the Daily Grind

For most of us, running a business is about a lot more than just making the numbers.  If that alone was the sole reason for turning up at work then I’d wager most of us would find it hard to get out of bed in the morning. 

We spend a lot of time doing it so work should be enjoyable – it should be a creative pursuit, it should be personally fulfilling and it should keep us growing.  Such aspirations are not just altruism they are the key to productivity for most of us in the workplace - entrepreneurs but also for the people we employ.

The problem, of course, is that it’s easy to lose sight of these aims in the daily grind as we negotiate the endless tension between doing rewarding work and just getting things done. It’s therefore worthwhile taking time to gauge your company’s culture and assess your own ability to help both yourself and your people stay intrinsically motivated at work.

Do not throw money at the problem

Do you and your team stay on top form and keep productive when the work just piles up? How do you all remain inspired by your working environment when the tyranny of bottom line is ever present?

If you feel you might be wanting in either respect the last thing you need to do is throw money at the problem.  Extrinsic rewards like more pay or bonuses are unlikely to resolve motivation problems or increase individual enjoyment of labour.  In fact, a recent study by the UK Association of Accounting Technicians (AAT) found that eight in ten people would turn down a big salary increase if it meant working with people they loathed or an environment they didn't like.

In contrast, the top reasons reported in the survey for wanting a job were responsibility and recognition whilst the top two reasons for staying with a company were having a good relationship with colleagues and enjoying the job role. Experience tells me that these aspirations are in no way unique to Accounting Technicians, existing in pretty much all of us.

The implicit bargain

It’s always struck me too that the implicit bargain that is struck in any employer/employee relationship is that a company's ultimate commitment to an employee is to grow their personal market worth in exchange for the employee’s work in increasing the firm's market value. So how does your company grow its employees, not just I terms of their capabilities but as individuals?

There are, of course, good and bad ways to achieve this. Career paths dictated by specific benchmarks or pre-determined timelines smack of the industrial age `nose to the grindstone` attitudes that certainly won’t attract and develop the best teams these days.

The reality is most significant people development happens not on periodic training courses, in seminar rooms or in response to targets but as the product of day-to-day experience and challenge.

So it’s important to assess how you balance risk and reward in your team. Do you allow or even enable people to take risks? Do you push people outside of their comfort zone into leadership positions? Do you give people projects for which they don’t appear wholly qualified? Do you trust people with big decisions, even if they are initially intimidated by the task?

Stretching without fear

This is important because for everyone the opportunity to deepen and add to skills is the key to staying stimulated.  That means ensuring the mentoring needed to develop skills in leading projects, managing team dynamics, and constructively giving or receiving feedback exists in spades throughout the company. And that means you as well, entrepreneur.  Consider hiring non-executive directors, get a personal business coach and make sure you learn from your people.

Personal development apart, as an entrepreneur few things are more motivating than enabling personal and professional growth in others. The freedom to stretch themselves without fear and seek original and creative solutions will ensure their day-to-day work is replete with exciting and challenging opportunities for learning and ownership.

Conflict minimisation

The aim is always to minimise the conflict between the work that people want to be doing and the work that must be done so it doesn’t turn into a stultifying unfulfilling downward spiral. Try also removing the quotidian goals and tasks from yourself and your team, at least for a few hours, so that you can re-connect with the principles and work that inspired you originally.

By participating in activities or tasks that are outside of delivering the bottom line or involve different behaviours than the day-to-day, such as a non-profit work, academic teaching or a `blue sky` thinking projects, people  of all sorts can become dramatically re-energised and refocused.

Of course, as any entrepreneur battling to keep their business afloat will attest, the ability to self-motivate in this respect is critical and essential to identify in people selection.  But the impact of self-motivation alone can be limited if company culture, structure, and growth potential don't support it.