We’ve all experienced it. The loss of motivation at work. Sometimes it comes in waves. Sometimes in perpetuity. But why? What are the factors that influence motivation?

This is the question posed (and answered) by this article by David Sirota, recently reprinted in HBS’s Working Knowledge.  It’s often said that employees leave jobs because of their managers, but that’s just at the end of the line. Managers also have a tremendous impact on motivation levels. Regardless of whether organization wide policies are healthy or not, individual managers can, all by themselves, motivate or demotivate people.

But there’s lots that can be done to make sure things stay positive. According to the article, there are three separate and equally important spheres of influence for motivation – Equity (the need to be respected and compensated fairly), Achievement (to be proud of the job, one’s achievements and company) and Camaraderie (good relationships with coworkers).

The article goes on to outline 8 tactics for maintaining and enthusiastic workforce. They’re worth both reading and doing.

That’s right. A break. I’m off on vacation for a week. A whole week.  But don’t worry. I’m not going to leave you without things to think about. In my absence, I refer you to the following blogs to keep the mind moving and the ideas coming.

SystematicHR – A comprehensive and compelling blog centered on HR technology but free roaming around all sorts of issues that affect HR practitioners. One of the best around, period – from a guy who knows what he’s talking about. 

HR’s Brand New Experience – Regina covers some of the softer issues in HR, with consistently insightful stuff that has you clicking the subscribe button about 2 seconds after the site loads in your browser.

The Human Capitalist – Jason Corsello of The Yankee Group is one of the most respected analysts in the space. This is his personal blog, so you can find pictures of his dog alongside thoughts penned by one of the guys finding clarity in the ever-changing and sometimes confusing world of performance and talent management.

Software as Services – An unabashed advocate of SaaS, Phil Wainewright highlights some of the obvious (and not so obvious) things to know about Software as a Service and notes the hottest news in the space.

Presentation Zen – We all have to do them, so why not spend some time thinking about new ways of making your stuff pop! Presentation Zen inspires and focuses as it entertains.

Bona tempora volvantur by Guy Kawasaki – After just a few months blogging, he’s already considered one of the most popular bloggers around. The well known venture investor and author brings fresh ideas and perspectives to all kinds of business and workplace issues with his trademark writing style and incisive wit.

You can also take a click-walk through the blogroll on the right, mess around with the poll on the left, and don’t forget the archives. Have a great week!

Enjoy, and I’ll see you soon,
Max

Over the weekend, the NYT (again) tackled the subject of top executive compensation. But this time, they added some cool charts and graphs to illustrate how utterly out of synch pay has become with corporate results.

My favorite is this one which contrasts some of the worst offending companies (where pay went up when a company’s performance went down) with some of the best values in CEOs (where performance went up but pay didn’t keep pace).

As more and more companies move to a system where performance is correlated directly to pay for their employees (as well it should be) it seems only logical that the same would be true for top executives. One would think that a scenario in which employees are denied raises of a few percentage points because the company didn’t have a good year, while the CEO walks off with bundles of cash would make “employee engagement” somewhat of a difficult job.

The Times also questioned the impartiality of compensation consultants in a separate piece, from which I truly enjoyed this particular quote from Warren Buffett:

Too often, executive compensation in the U.S. is ridiculously out of line with performance,” he wrote in his most recent annual report. “The upshot is that a mediocre-or-worse C.E.O. — aided by his handpicked V.P. of human relations and a consultant from the ever-accommodating firm of Ratchet, Ratchet & Bingo — all too often receives gobs of money from an ill-designed compensation arrangement.

Here’s an article at Baseline that talks about some of the ins and outs of talent management applications by showcasing some of the companies that have chosen to implement them. We’re mentioned in there, as are competitors Authoria and Vurv.

My most favorite bit includes a quote from (our customer) Gary Short of Kimberly-Clark:

Human-resources professionals caution, though, that it’s important not to use such systems to replace face-to-face meetings, which are vital for evaluating candidates or reviewing employees. “You want an efficient process,” says Gary Short, senior consultant for talent management at paper-goods maker Kimberly-Clark, “but you want an effective process.”

This hits on something I’ve been thinking about lately – the idea of “conversations.” Technology is an excellent enabler, but I’m moving towards the belief that the real point of any of these HR related applications is to support more and better conversations between people. Results come from conversations.

The technology serves, among other things, to provide the supporting data to enforce a process. But the value will remain in the conversations that take place as a RESULT of the technology. The better, more sophisticated and more usable the technology, the better and more sophisticated the conversations.

Note: This post was written by SuccessFactors’ Director of Customer Results, Erik Berggren.  Erik is leading a team focused on understanding - through detailed, data-driven analysis - how specific talent management behaviors drive business results – and then working to build those learnings into our product for the benefit of our customers. I’m excited to host his thoughts here, and I look forward to sharing more of our new knowledge via this blog in the future. So please enjoy Erik’s contribution and as always, I encourage comments. We want to know what you think. – Max

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I read the McKinsey Quarterly Article “Competitive advantages from better interactions” with delight today. It is a great article and raises a few interesting issues for me.

Let me explain.

Over the years, I have had the opportunity to work in numerous countries around the world on dozens of projects as a management consultant.  Sometimes, working in different industries and across disparate geographies makes you feel like you are traveling in time, as it occurs to you that some places are just so far behind others when it comes to business practices.

It is always correct and sometimes popular to promote the idea of relentless teamwork. But frankly, I don’t believe it.  My hypothesis is that there is a diminishing return on the margins when it comes to teamwork. There is such a thing as too much. I have had consulting experiences in which an idea or new concept was evaluated by senior executives based on a  “did she see it?” or “was he involved?” analysis. The obvious assumption in the thinking is that the more interaction, the more “teamwork,” the better the result.

Recently, we conducted some rigorous research leveraging our vast customer data on performance and talent management behaviors, including the aggregate usage of more than 1.5 million users. We studied in detail the financial performance of our clients both in terms of profitability (Return on Equity) and in terms of  top line growth. The idea was to understand what over and under-performers were doing in terms of steering and measuring teamwork as a core competency.

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Jason Corsello of The Yankee Group (who writes a blog in his spare time and has a nice looking dog called Larry) in his growth forecast for the talent management market says: “”As the workforce becomes increasingly mobile and global, companies that invest in talent management solutions and examine it from a worldwide perspective will reap tremendous benefits for their business organization and operations.”

As such, Jason’s firm is forecasting that the market for talent management applications will be growing by 25% year over year (from $2.3 Billion in 2006)for the next 4 years, reaching $4 Billion by 2009.

That’s some wave.

Interestingly, the release also mentions that while Yankee’s definition of of talent management includes “Recruitment management, performance management, compensation management, succession management, learning management and other (knowledge management, self-service, analytics and reporting),” the market is largely being driven by the “the performance and succession management segments.”

A Note: this post was written by a guest writer, and does not necessarily represent my opinion. That said, I think it’s important to host a variety of thoughts and perspectives on the blog and thus, I give you the following article written by David Harper, Principal Member and Directing Manager of The Advisory Alliance. As always, please feel free to comment.

Your Best Talent:  Not Just an Asset, But a Machine. 

If you’ve stopped repeating the mantra “Our people are our most important asset.  Our people are our most important asset.  Our people are…”, because you truly believe it and don’t need reminding, you’re in good company.  Six out of seven global business executives view talent as the leading contributor to their company’s profitability.  In their recent global survey of more than 5,800 business executives from 128 countries, McKinsey asked “How much does each of the following assets contribute to your company’s profits?”  The number one answer?  “Talent”, with 86% of respondents answering “moderately” or “substantially”.  This is doubly impressive in view of the fact that Talent came in ahead of “Brand” (74%) and “Intellectual Property” (55%).

However, notwithstanding the fundamental Profit – Talent connection, many U.S. employees are not feeling the consequences of being the most important asset.  In a recent survey of 225 U.S. middle managers, Accenture found a significant drop in their level of satisfaction with their own organization.  In 2004, two thirds of middle managers were extremely or very satisfied with their organizations.  This year?  Fewer than half are, 48%.

So what’s going on?  On the one hand executives say Talent’s important, but on the other hand, executives may not feel it.

We know there’s a fundamental connection between better talent and better performance.  And yet for many leaders, that knowledge is insufficient to drive their talent development decisions.  I’m reminded of a doctor I once knew, a radiologist who read and interpreted X-rays.  He also was a chronic smoker who ultimately died of lung cancer, a condition he diagnosed innumerable times.  The irony is tragic.  And although the issues facing our companies are not truly life and death, the consequences do have life-altering impact.  We know that talent affects corporate performance.  But does that knowledge make a difference in what we decide to do about talent?

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Don’t know if you’ve caught any of Microsoft’s spiffy, new $500 million business-targeted campaign.  Themed “People-Ready” it asks businesses to consider whether they embody that ideal. Or, in other words, whether they have the tools in place to enable their most important resource – their people. Here’s a press release and an article in AdWeek.

The TV spot I saw had a bunch of business people doing business-y things and talking about differentiation. They ask themselves about operations, about marketing, etc. And they find no opportunity for optimization or advantage. Then, they pose a question that goes something like: “so what IS our competitive advantage?” Then one of the business-y guys nods through the glass to the people working at their desks and says “them.”

It’s no surprise that the push is to convince CEOs and the like that “Microsoft technology can help them get their employees to succeed” in the words of the AdWeek article. But my (obviously skewed and probably simplistic) reaction is to wonder if more word-processing software and an upgraded operating system are really what’s going to help drive people to perform.

As a loyal PC user, I’m excited about Windows Vista and the new Office. They look cooler and seem like they will make some computer things easier and more efficient. But will they “get employees to succeed” in ways they haven’t been able to before? Probably not.

It’s very en vogue these days to focus on people. Companies do it in their annual reports, FastCompany’s “Why we hate HR” article spawned volumes of comment and criticism and software vendors like SuccessFactors are gaining popularity as we help organizations manage talent in new ways. “People” is popular in the business world. But let’s take a minute to understand that people + technology can = many different things.

Spreadsheets, databases, operating systems and word processing software help people do tasks better. Talent management software helps organizations do people better. With all the people-talk these days, don’t get confused. Only one type of technology is truly focused on driving success through people. The rest is just marketing.

Guess what? Senior executives and managers are stressed at work. No, seriously.

This is an obvious conclusion for many of us, but nevertheless the result of a nationwide survey from last month. The top three sources of stress were “deadlines (52%), interruptions (42%) and conflicting responsibilities (37%)” according to this ground-breaking research.

The last one is the only one that made my ears perk up. Conflicting responsibilities. Certainly we all have things pulling us in different directions. That’s a normal part of any job. Prioritization. But I wonder to what extent it relates to the idea of goal alignment.

If it were clear which actions were in line with overall corporate goals - which work would most drive the company forward – perhaps it would help make “conflicting responsibilities” less conflicting. Perhaps.