In over three years of blogging (this site and others) I’ve never really taken a break.  I never needed one.

Or so I thought.

But as I look back on the last few months, I realize just how important rest is.  It’s not just that time we waste.  It’s not just the time where we feel guilty for “not getting anything done.”  It’s actually a vital component of the creative process.

I suppose I’ve always known that.  It’s not as if I’m telling you some secret that you didn’t know.  After all, even God rested on the seventh day.  And if it’s good enough for him, I guess it should be good enough for me!

Now things have slowed down and that I own a house and have a wife, the question becomes, “how do I keep this rest momentum going?”  What SMART steps must I take (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound goals)?

As it stands now I really am going to take at least one full day a week completely away from blogging, the internet, and writing.  Specifically that day is going to be Sunday.  It’s also the one day that I rarely have some commitment (work or otherwise).  I plan on resting, working on my house, reading, watching TV, and generally anything that doesn’t tap into my creative processes.  My hope is that when I come back to work on Monday, I’ll be in a good creative place to enter (once more) the create on demand fray.

So that’s my plan.  What’s yours?

photo provided by flickr user Crystl

Why do I do all that?

Recognition.

When you find rare armor, beat a difficult boss, or get the top score on solitaire you get recognized.  It’s no different than trying to get the best marathon time, beat a personal record for cycling, or maintain that 240 bowling average.  We push for these things because we get recognition for those achievements.

Recognition has always been important.  But it’s becoming more important in our highly specialized, service oriented, possibly failing – recovering – failing economy.  Most of us are create on demand professionals (people who make stuff out of nothing for a living, by a deadline) it can be difficult to have a sense of accomplishment.  You don’t always get to pick up a tool or piece of food that you’ve helped create and say, “I did that”.

But recognition can fill that void.  When we recognize our employees, we validate their efforts.  And we find that they actually want to work harder, because they know someone cares.

We are all like that.

We all want someone to care about what we do.

If you are a boss, or even part of a team, you can help people grow just by recognizing what they do in a meaningful way.  And when people feel recognized they will engage in ways you never thought possible.  And isn’t that what we really want our employees to do?

photo provided by flickr user oskay

For most of my life I’ve loved technology.  I remember walking to elementary school during the summer with my Dad to play Oregon Trail on an Apple IIgs.  I remember fondly hacking my old x386 Windows 3.1 computer.  I’ve tweaked programs, downloaded software, and written code from my XP machine (which I even built myself.)

But these days something has changed.  I’m just not interested in doing all of those things.  I still love the idea, but these days I just want things to “work.”  I’ve become one of THOSE people!  I don’t have the patience, and more importantly, time to trouble shoot all of my problems.

Frankly, I find this a little depressing.

I’ve been a PC advocate for my entire life.  I love the open nature of the platform.  The freedom to do what I want to do.  And the flexibility to have choices.  But these days I find myself actually wanting a Mac.  I like my Android phone, but I’m not thrilled at how I need to micromanage certain applications.  The design of the iPhone is so much better even if the iPhone 3GS isn’t nearly as powerful as my Nexus One.

At some point efficiency has become the rallying cry of my life.

While this conversation is about phones and computers, it can easily be applied to work.  Employee goals are changing, but companies aren’t recognizing this.  How we are motivated, how we want to work, and even how we choose to work is changing.  No longer do we want to work 9-5 in a cubicle (did we ever really?).  We want flexibility and freedom.

Apple has been successful because it’s recognized the change in the customer base.  Apple sees that people are overwhelmed by the information that comes there way, and they create designs that simplify our lives.  That’s why they are successful.  Maybe it’s time your company took that same approach.  Because if you don’t, you’re likely to lose out on the best employees.

photo provided by everystockphoto

There I said it.  Now I can enroll in Learner’s Anonymous.

Why is this a problem?  Because learning isn’t the same as doing.  And it’s in the doing that greatness happens.   Go ahead and pick anything you want.  A thought, a belief, an opinion.  But I can tell you it didn’t matter until someone did something about it.  You might have a great idea for a new TV product, but it won’t matter until you do it.  Do you have the next Great American Novel?  That’s awesome, but it doesn’t count until you write it.

All of that takes action, and that’s where I can get bogged down.  Even as a kid I loved thinking.  I even loved school.  In fact I would give just about anything to be paid to go to school forever.  Which, I suppose, is why I once applied for a job as a Text Book study guide writer.  (I can feel most of you falling asleep even as I type the job title!)

Learning is important.  But so is doing.  Because in the end, without doing, it’s as if you didn’t learn anything.

image provided by flickr user ckhamken

The argument against working from home tends to revolve around “building relationships” and “being seen” at the office.  Both of these are good things, and work-from-home proponents tend to gloss over how important they are.  But a lot of times the underlying current of work-from-home-is-evil is an issue of control.

The organization wants to know what their employees are doing at all times.  It doesn’t surprise me that as we install more and more cameras in buildings and on roads we find we are less trusting of our employees.

While issues of trust run deep and can’t be solved in a 300 word post, let me propose a question: is it better to mistrust your employees so that they don’t get any work done while in your building?  Or should you give them the benefit of the doubt and let them work?

In a world driven by intrinsic motivation, external sources of motivation become less and less effective.    When your job is to create something out of nothing, how does having your boss stand over your shoulder improve your productivity?  Does punching into a time clock make you more effective?

Of course it doesn’t!  In fact, it actually undermines our productivity.

Times have changed, yet how we are “motivated” in the workplace remains the same.  Almost all of us work on a “project” basis.  But we are still judged for hours worked and not quality worked.

As we move into the next decade of work (one where the news repeatedly says we won’t recover all the jobs lost in this current recession), companies are going to need to look at getting more productivity out of less people.  While this will be a challenge for organizations and workers alike, I can guarantee you one way to destroy productivity is to prevent people from working at home.

At some point we need to learn to trust our employees.  Because if you can’t trust your employees to work from home, you probably can’t trust them to work at the office.  And if you have so little trust in your employees, that tells me one of two things:  You either have the wrong people working for you.  Or your management style is destroying their productivity in the first place.

photo provided by flickr user wetsun

But if you want a more sophisticated answer it’s have an attitude of “it’s not my job.”

I get paid to bring change to organizations.  That’s my job.  And I love it.  There are very few drawbacks to that line of work.  But one of the biggest is the fact that I can’t read a story about something without noticing organizational culture at work.

Such was the case with a post written by the Mailchimp Blog talking about a Twitter-based promotion of free T-shirts.  Apparently their office manager ran into a problem with the post office not allowing her to mail more than 15 packages at a time.  This meant that as she mailed out a 1000 packages, she had to mail 15, get back in line, and repeat the whole process.

Or as Mailchimp says, “The real hero in all of this is our office manager April. She developed what you might call a rather special relationship with the employees at the post office down the block.  Apparently they have a rarely enforced rule that you can only mail fifteen parcels at a time.  And since April was a “chronic offender,” she had to endure dirty looks and lots of attitude while spending hours at a time standing in line.”

In one, throw away sentence, Mailchimp captured the typical customer experience at the post office.  “dirty looks and lots of attitude while spending hours at a time standing in line.”

Who among us doesn’t have a story like that about the Post Office?  Is it any wonder they are hemorrhaging money?

Even my individual mail carrier has gotten into the act.  After delivering mail they dislodge the locking mechanism on my (apartment controlled) mailbox.  I didn’t notice this for two days and when I checked my mail I received an angry note from the mail carrier demanding that I keep my mailbox locked at all times.  Because, you know, I always like to keep my mail accessible to random people.

Everything about the Post Office epitomizes the “not my job” attitude.  It wasn’t the Post Offices job to help April deliver Mailchimp products (1000 packages is a lot of money for a company losing billions).  After all, it’s not like she was buying 16 first class stamps.  And it wasn’t  the “job” of my mail carrier to shut and lock the mailbox – but it was his / her job to leave me an angry note apparently.

If we spent less time being angry and giving dirty looks, we’d find our organizations would run more smoothly.  But that, my friends, is a post for another day.

photo provided by flickr user dbking

Yet we don’t always treat them that way.  We can easily lose sight of what drives them, what motivates them.  This isn’t a condemnation of us.  We often have good intentions to work with volunteers, but we are busy too.  And sometimes volunteer things get pushed to the bottom…

When this happens volunteers start to see the organization differently.  What was once a place of community becomes something else.  We start to develop a discrepancy between our vision and reality.

Of course this is one of the worst things that can happen to a volunteer.  Volunteers are motivated because they want to be part of the team.  They want to feel part of the organization.  People don’t work hard and give up their free time so that they can be ignored by disinterested leaders!

A lot of research has been done on this discrepancy theory.  And in each case it shows that when expectations aren’t met people are less satisfied and less committed.  Which naturally leads to volunteers looking to move into another organization.

There are many organizations that rely heavily on volunteers.  If you’re one of them, make sure you aren’t disconnecting from your volunteers.  Build into them.  Create community.  Stay in contact with them.  Make sure you are meeting their expectations.

photo provided by flickr

Nothing can overcome someone who is feeling lazy or apathetic towards learning.

Isn’t this true in all areas of our lives?

If we aren’t motivated to learn we’ll never excel.  Because there isn’t anything you do that doesn’t require some level of learning.  To play a new game you need to learn.   To get a new job you need to learn.  To read a book you need to learn. Everything requires learning on some level.

Yet we only end up doing those things that truly motivate us to learn.

We can help people be motivated to learn.  We can help them understand how to bring personal meaning to their work.  We can even present information that is easy to digest and interesting to hear.  But at the end of the day, motivation is often an individual choice.

photo provided by flickr

The problem is, this leads us to cater to the lowest common denominator.  We built programs, create art, and design communications for the people who are least likely to benefit from our efforts.

We do this in part because we are a compassionate people.  Part of our culture is to care for others.  We genuinely want to help.  But what if going after the lowest common denominator is the exact opposite thing we should do?  What if “dumbing things down” is harmful?  What if it’s our expectations that help to shape someone’s behavior?  If that’s true, the lower we set our expectations, the lower the performance.

Psychologists actually have a term for this: the Pygmalion effect.

Perhaps the most famous example of the Pygmalion effect is in the movie Trading Places.  At the start of the movie two brothers argue over whether someone is born successful or someone is made successful.  It’s the nature / nurture debate.  To settle their bet they destroy the life of Louis Winthorpe (Dan Aykroyd) and bring in Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy) to replace him.  Essentially they take a well educated Aykroyd and put him no the street while encouraging Murphy, a “street hustler” to become something more than he ever dreamed.  Essentially they trade places.  Shockingly Murphy finds himself succeeding.

That is what the power of expectations can do.

Now, a word of caution before we go much further.  This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t build programs for people who are struggling.  Or that we should ignore serious problems because we’ve somehow defined that as “lowest common denominator.”  Instead it’s to emphasize the fact that we need to build special programs that reach just them.  We need to set realistic goals for our programs, art, and speeches.  A program, a piece of art, or a speech that is so broad that it captures everyone will lose the vast majority of people, because it doesn’t hold them with high enough regard.  The same is true of something too technical.  If our audience is so small, we can’t take that to anyone else.

The Trading Places example obviously fictional, but the Pygmalion effect has been demonstrated in studies in a variety of settings.  It’s been seen in school, courtrooms, and the military, and the workplace.

Our expectations play a much greater role in shaping  behavior around us then we think.  When we expect someone to perform poorly, they do.  What incentive is there for them to succeed if we tell them they can’t?  Imagine what more you could do with your art, your communication, your project at work if you expected more from people, not less.

Motivation is more than just what someone brings to the game.  It’s how we treat them.  It’s the respect we show them.  It’s how we value them.  So if you want to motivate people to change then don’t cater to the lowest common denominator.  Set your goals at a reasonable, yet high level.  And watch them flourish.

Photo provided by flickr

Resources

Pygmalion Effect – Important Management Secrets

Wikipedia: Pygmalion Effect

*yes, I realize that mathematically this is not really the correct phrase, but colloquially it explains the phenomenon

But those jokes always stuck with me.  Even to this day whenever I encounter an employee who clearly hates their job I think back to those times.  It made me start to realize that you will never be truly successful in something until you make it meaningful to you.  In fact, those trips are probably the first stages of what’s become MeaningToWork.com!

So how do companies improve the customer service of their employees?

Well one company in Japan is taking “service with a smile”  to a whole new level!  They have introduced the idea of “smile police“.  Yes, you read that right.  Smile Police.

Using a computers to scan someone’s face, software determines the “quality” of the employee’s smile.  For people who fall below a pre-established line, they get additional smile training.  The idea is simple: if you have a better smile you’ll be more customer friendly.

On the surface level this is entirely true.  By nature we respond more warmly to someone who gives us a genuine smile.  And if someone in customer service seems to care about our problems, our satisfaction with the whole process will be higher.

But do Smile Police actually improve customer service performance, or does it end up being a distraction?

To be honest, I can’t see how employee’s would perform better under these conditions.  You can not bring meaning to work by forcing people to smile.  They will not be more competent or more motivated because you are measuring their smile.  In fact, things like this usually drive down employee satisfaction and employee commitment.  Which, in turn, drives down employee performance.

Technology is great and wonderful.  It can be used to improve working conditions and productivity.  But it can also be used to stifle passion.  The reason smiles work is because a genuine smile reveals passion and empathy.  When you are enthusiastic about your work, you will smile naturally.   Forcing you to smile does not make you want to work – it makes you want to be fake.

Humans are remarkably good at detecting genuine smiles.  We know when it’s genuine, and when it’s forced.  If companies are serious about their customer service problems they should remove the barriers employees face when solving problems.  Not spend their money on teaching fake smiles.

photo provided by stock.xchng