Activity 2.1

How many levels of performance are there? Clue: re-read the Summary of Motivational Maps section. And why are there this number of levels?

Because, as the Summary makes clear, there are four levels of motivation, then there must be four levels of performance, since motivation drives performance and is correlated with it. So, there are four ‘real’ or meaningful levels of performance, although that does not prevent individuals or organisations establishing less of more levels. Thus, we can obviously contemplate two levels: good or bad; three levels: high–average–low; or we can consider five levels: excellent–good–average–weak–poor, and so on. Indeed, we can have seven or ten levels if we choose, and a scoring out of ten is a frequent phenomenon that we encounter in organisations. But the reality is that four levels corresponds to the workings of the Pareto Principle,⁶ which is 80/20 or 4:1.

This is important to grasp for a number of reasons, the most important of which is that it gives us an intuitive understanding of what the ‘levels’ – or the numbers – mean. If we were to say, for example, that there are ten levels, then what would it mean, verbally, to be at level 3? We could write out definitions for all ten levels, but this would be difficult to keep in mind at all times, since it would be more complicated than remembering a ten-digit telephone number!

On the other hand, too few produces too simplistic a rating. With three levels, for example – high–average–low – we do not really have enough range. But with four it is easy to create memorable designations and furthermore it avoids having an odd number, which is important as it circumvents the opportunity for managers to rate everybody exactly in the middle! A sort of comfortable, non-committal kind of rating. An even number of levels requires a more decisive interpretation of how someone is doing.

In terms of wording, our preferred terminology is: Outstanding–Excellent– Good–Poor.

Activity 2.2

We have said that there are four levels or zones of motivation and performance, but looking at Figure 2.1 there appear to be five! The bottom row of the chart, and which is separated by a thick black line, seems to be another level or zone. Why do you think this is? What explanation might there be for saying there are not five levels or zones, but four, plus 0 (4+0)?⁷ What is ‘+0’?

The reason quite simply is that zero is not a number or level; the absence of motivation, of skill, of performance, is precisely that: an absence, a nil.⁸ Thus we refer to the levels or zones as ‘4+0’, aware that the ‘+0’ is not a level at all.⁹

So the question we have to ask ourselves from the Reward Strategies perspective is how, typically, people are rewarded for their performances? Keep in mind, they are not – we are not – rewarded generally – for our high motivation levels. Motivation is – in sales-speak¹⁰ – a feature; but we are rewarded for performance, which is the benefit that occurs most frequently when the motivation levels are high. This applies individually and for each team. If teams are not rewarded appropriately, then they will cease performing over time.

Activity 2.3

Most would agree that at level 0 – no performance at all – the rewards are likely to be zero too, or even punishment. Certainly, no-one can survive long in an organisation without performing at some level.¹¹ But consider level 1, what we are calling a poor performance level,¹² what rewards do organisations typically award poor performance? And your answer needs to be framed in the terminology of the performance levels themselves: so, does poor performance generate 0, poor, good, excellent or outstanding rewards? When you have done that, consider good, excellent and outstanding performance; what level of rewards do they each generate, defined using the same terminology?

The most common answer to the question what do you get if you perform poorly is: you receive poor rewards! In other words, the rewards are commensurate to the performance, and that does seem sensible¹³ – at least until you really look at it and what happens in the world of work and in life more generally. So, equally, too, people think that if they perform ‘good’ (grammatically, that is, well) they will receive ‘good’ rewards; excellent performance generates excellent rewards; and outstanding performance creates the icing on the cake, namely outstanding rewards. This all seems fair and right, because there is a kind of parity between the performance and the rewards. But this ignores the startling fact that no-one really finds the world full of parity, fairness and just rewards! Indeed, we are always complaining of, and observing, the exact opposite. What really, then, is going on?

The reality is that poor performance actually produces no rewards or zero; we drop below the think black horizontal line in Figure 2.2. Indeed, all organisations, except the most dysfunctional (which are therefore on the tipping point of collapse), seek to remove or, if they cannot, to mitigate poor employee performance. And this is true of poorly performing teams as well. The most obvious methodologies for dealing with poorly performing teams is, firstly, to appoint a new leader, or secondly, to reconstitute the team, changing personnel, removing certain individuals and bringing in fresh blood (see Chapter 6 for more on recruitment). Thus, in a sense, poor performance is like no performance in that the rewards are the same: that is, there are no rewards! The major difference really is that there are far more poor performers than no-performers, because even a moderately random selection process¹⁴ usually weeds out those who have absolutely no skills or aptitude to perform in the area necessary for the organisation’s future. The idea of changing personnel in a team, of course, is precisely what Motivational Maps can help enable far more effectively than simply considering skill sets. However, we need to keep in mind that whereas new leadership or a change of team personnel may be the automatic default methodology for dealing with poor performance, the review of appropriate Reward Strategies may be the third and, in the long run, most effective solution.

But to return to Activity 2.3, if poor performance receives no reward, what about a ‘good’ performance? This is perhaps the trickiest level to answer, for we need to understand something highly counterintuitive. Namely, that a ‘good performance’ really means something quite different! So, the answer is: a good performance usually produces a poor reward! Yes, awful and as unfair as it sounds, this is the situation that the vast majority of individuals and teams encounter on a daily, weekly and annual basis. The reason for this is to understand what ‘good’ here means: it actually means ‘average’ performance.¹⁵ It means doing the job – getting the job done, which is ‘good’, but that is all. Hence, when bosses come to consider rewards for their teams and staff, they reflect that they are paying X to do Y, and X has actually done Y; a good performance, but there is nothing ‘extra’ about it, so why would one need to reward any person or team for ‘just doing their job’? And this, of course, is why so many staff feel underappreciated: ‘I am doing a good job’ they cry. Why yes, they are; but they are being paid for it. Why give more? In a sense doing the job is ‘good’ but it is also ‘average’, and even ‘mediocre’. Nothing distinguishes the performance.

To fully understand the import of the above paragraph is to begin to understand why there is an epidemic of complaints about management, and a worldwide situation in which disengagement and demotivation are rife.¹⁶ People and teams rarely feel that their efforts are being appreciated; but on the other side of the coin, not enough managers are providing an environment in which ‘going the extra mile’, seeking to contribute in a way that exceeds the contractual arrangement,¹⁷ is made sufficiently clear or even inviting. There are, as might be expected, problems in doing so, since what we are suggesting in a way seems to be a license for bosses to exploit staff and their teams: to wit, whatever your contractual role is, we expect you to go far beyond it. This, then, can create a new ‘norm’ of performance, which itself becomes the ‘average’ and staff and teams can get locked into a spiral of performance that can lead to burnout. However, that does not obviate the need for individuals and teams to outperform, since doing so is not only good from a career and monetary perspective,¹⁸ but actually is also intrinsic to high levels of self-esteem. In other words, feeling good about ourselves. Furthermore, let’s keep in mind David Kolb’s observation¹⁹: ‘A company staffed by “cheated” individuals who expect far more than they get is headed for trouble’.

Thus, ‘good’ performance leads to poor rewards; furthermore, excellent performance only leads to ‘good’ rewards. We regularly see this latter phenomenon in action too. The individual or team performing at an excellent level – going way above their job description(s) – sometimes being the mainstay of an organisation’s overall success. But then, after 1 or 3 or 5 or 7 years, they become increasingly aware that their rewards are ‘good’ but, given their contribution, insufficient. If they stay in post, they begin to experience burnout, as the mismatch between performance and reward creates a form of cognitive dissonance. If they are a team, then the turnover starts to accelerate: organisations start shedding their excellent performers, and the scramble begins to recruit anew and do the same thing all over again.

Before coming to the outstanding performance, perhaps you may have noticed a pattern?

Activity 2.4

What is the pattern you notice in Figure 2.3? Given you have correctly identified it, revisit your answer to Activity 2.3 and what are the rewards for outstanding performance? Give your final answer to this question: what sort of rewards do you get when you are an outstanding performer?

The pattern is, of course, that rewards lag the performance by one level²⁰: poor performance gets nothing, good performance gets poor rewards, and excellent performance only achieves good rewards.

But at the top, outstanding performance does not get excellent rewards, for here the model flips. For outstanding performance gets outstanding rewards, or perhaps more dramatically, outstanding performers get it ‘all’. In other words, they receive a massively disproportionate share of the spoils: the lionesses and junior lions may get their dinner, but not before the king lion – or top dog²¹ (to mix animals if not metaphors)! – takes his or her pick of what, and all, he or she wants. We see this in virtually every sporting match or competition we ever watch: the outstanding performer, the winner, who may win only ‘by a nose’^22, still takes not only most of the money, but the acknowledgement, acclaim and recognition too.²³

Hence, if we but knew it, we all want to be outstanding performers because that’s where the real, full rewards are. And if we are a team, then we need to appreciate that fact, and also understand both the four criteria that enable teams to function at an optimum level and the importance of motivation overall.

But saying all that, there is something else to understand about these four levels of performance and reward.

Activity 2.5

If we ask ourselves the question, what is the gap between poor performance and good performance, what would your answer be? To answer this question, consider some skill that it may be necessary to perform: say, speaking French, or writing software programs, or understanding financial spreadsheets, or speaking in public, and so on and so forth. Imagine in any one of these, you perform ‘poorly’ – how big a gap is it to perform well (aka, good)? Is it a small step? A substantial step? A large step? Or a very large step?

Clearly, this is not an exact science and in any case may vary from skill type to skill type; for example, some micro-skills may be relatively easy to improve upon in a short space of time. But for any significant skill set, there is probably at least a large step to undertake before our level of performance shifts upwards. Thus, we would say that to move from a poor level of performance to a good level is a significant or large jump. Similarly, to move from being good to being excellent is also a large manoeuvre. Equally, we would say that to move from no performance level at all to a poor level is a large jump.

So the movements look like Figure 2.4.

As we review this, we notice that at the final and top level of performance – the level of being outstanding – we have a question mark. Why is that? Is it because the stretch from Excellent to Outstanding is not a large jump, but perhaps a very large jump, which is why so few attain it?²⁴

Actually, the exact opposite is the case: the difference between an Excellent and an Outstanding performance is very small, or a small step, in terms of the performance (though not of course in terms of the rewards), and the clue to understanding how one transitions from one to the other is contained in the wording: the outstanding performer and the outstanding team (as with the outstanding organisation) not only performs at an excellent level but also ‘out-stands’ or, to give it its full etymological significance, ‘stands out’. This ‘standing out’ is, as it were, something not strictly always part of the performance itself²⁵ – though it does enhance it – but more a communication’s job, a Public Relations (PR) type of messaging for oneself or for the team, as one undertakes to achieve a specific result or objective; for in the end, all performance is geared round achieving a specific outcome. In other words, outstanding performance is most frequently seen where performers direct attention to their own excellent performance, and this itself boosts the performance!

How is this possible? On the one – and cynical – hand we have all observed the employees in organisations who draw attention to themselves and ‘big up’ their performance, often at the expense of others; and these usually have to move on quickly before their absence of results finally catches up with them. So this type of apparent or false performance is not what we are talking about here. But rather we have in mind the kind of performance that starts with what Virgil²⁶ observed some 2000 years ago: ‘Success nourished them; they seemed to be able, and so they were able’.

Success nourished them – they saw what they could do, they believed (see more on belief in Chapter 7) in what they could do, and this became empowering for further achievement. And this ‘success’ is a form of visible demonstration – a PR to themselves as it were, as well as to the world. Notice that the quotation is referring to not just the individual but to ‘they’, a team, and furthermore that this links back to our point about the importance of ‘belief’ within teams: this becomes effectively a tangible force or power that others can see and feel.

Also, we need to realise that this belief goes back to the motivational triangle; for belief fuels motivation, which is the energy necessary to perform.

We know that performance derives from the confluence or combination of direction, skills and motivation,²⁷ so that motivation directly impacts the ability to perform. But in Figure 2.5 we see the three sources of motivation itself within the human psyche, and we are reminded that beliefs about the self (and here we can add, beliefs about the team from within and without) and about the future (expectations) are crucial for high energy and emotional drive. In mentioning ‘without’ we are of course going beyond merely the team’s perception of itself to others’ perception of the team: this is where the expectation of others drives higher levels of performance (for example, high parental expectations create high performing children) and also create an internal pressure to do even better, to achieve even more, until at the very top end of performance many others cannot compete against you (or the team) because your reputation precedes you and intimidates others. We see this in sport all the time. Until their bubble bursts, the top performers seem unstoppable.

Putting this all together, then, we have Figure 2.6 where we consider how the performance and reward levels correlate. What is most important to understand here is that if we wish to get beyond the point where our staff feel ‘cheated’, we have to ‘over-reward’, which, if we understand Motivational Mapping, is not the same thing as ‘overpaying’²⁸ them. But we have to get into what might be termed the ‘majority’ mind-set – the mind-set of the ‘good’ performers, meaning average, which will be the majority of employees, especially in larger organisations – and see that the poor rewards that they typically receive are never going to get them to move to another level. On the contrary, poor rewards are going to encourage them to do less, to obstruct or sabotage, or to move employment elsewhere.

We need, then, to over-reward if we are to have any chance of obtaining superior performance from our employees and our teams. To be clear, research indicates²⁹ that when employees feel totally rewarded and engaged then their performance and productivity is likely to be higher. Notice the word ‘totally’ – this circumvents the ubiquitous sense of never being rewarded enough, and also that resentment which is bred through the perception that only the ‘outstanding’ star performers are ever really being rewarded.

Activity 2.6

Before going any further, then, what might ‘over-rewarding’ look like to you? How might one over-reward a member of staff, or a particular team? What specifically would you do or give to someone or some team you wanted to ‘over-reward’? Think about this as widely as possible: what might the tangible rewards be, and what intangible rewards might be important?

Keeping in mind our model in Figure 2.6, we now need an overview of how a typically total rewards model might appear. A good example is from the work of leading consultant Duncan Brown.³⁰ Brown observes that

many [organisations] talk about total rewards yet do little beyond copying what other employers are doing and, perhaps, introducing flexible benefits plans to make employees feel well recognised, rewarded and engaged. Indeed, some employers may even have used total rewards terminology to disguise cost savings, pay restraint, benefits cut and reductions in their total reward costs …. This helps to explain the growing divorce between productivity and real wage growth.

Do little beyond copying? Disguising cost savings? And perhaps explaining the absence of increased productivity³¹ as real wages grow? This is a pretty bleak picture. Duncan advocates– with the interaction of financial and non-financial factors – tailoring an approach for each individual organisation, and not to develop a ‘single pay practice’. His total rewards model is useful.

This model, of course, takes no account of actual motivational factors, except in the familiar and, we think, simplistic idea that there are intrinsic and extrinsic motivators. Motivational Maps, by way of contrast, regards all motivators as intrinsic: base cash is a motivator, and we call it the Builder motivator. But as we have pointed out before: at a certain and low level people work not for their motivators, but to suffice their needs – they need cash to survive, and so at that level the idea that their ‘real’ motivators might be met is not really an option. The kind of work where this principle applies will be low grade, low skill and usually a non-professional type of activity. To discuss these situations here is inappropriate for there is little to discuss, since the Map motivators will not apply in the usual way: clearly, what subsistence workers require is their ‘daily bread’ so that they can continue to subsist! Their needs need to be met, full stop. Whether an employer or organisation chooses to do that is outside the remit of this book, except to say that the ‘labourer is worthy of their hire³²’ and so should be paid fairly.

So let us take this model in Figure 2.7 and superimpose on it the Map motivators and we find Figure 2.8.

Note that varying motivators occur in each of the three sections, the full RAG spectrum is only in the Achievement section, probably because performance is most geared to ‘achievement’.

This model, I think, more accurately develops what Duncan Brown is really seeking to achieve, especially when he writes that employers need to:

1. Research the drivers and determinants of their own employees’ engagement levels;

2. Explore how rewards can and could influence their engagement levels;

3. Give employees some options and choices to tailor their own packages where possible; and

4. Train managers to communicate about reward and ensure that practical implementation matches policy intention.

The drivers and determinants are simply their Motivational Map profiles; the exploration of rewards and the options and choices are what we are considering in Figures 2.7 and 2.8; and training managers to communicate this, is the follow-through.

Employers, then, are perhaps misdirected as they get their HR departments (or is that teams?) trying to create a one-size-fits-all ‘best Reward Strategies practice’. Of course, it’s important that whatever is developed is fair and affordable; but critically, what this is suggesting is the importance of flexibility.

Also, we note that at the base of the Reward Strategies stands the Builder motivator, not the Defender in the usual Maslow type configuration. And this of course kicks in because, although the employees are not working for their daily bread and are beyond subsistence level, the salary – wages – need to be enough. Hence, at this point, the money – Builder motivator – is foundational. And this corresponds to the ‘common sense’ view that many business owners and executives³³ consider that it is only about the money. Clearly, it is not, but we have to take it into account in a Reward Strategies package.

Activity 2.7

Since this book is about top performing teams, what might be the ‘team awards’ (see Figures 2.7 and 2.8) we could make at the Builder level?³⁴ What ideas do you have that might reward a Builder orientated team?

The full repertoire of Team Rewards for all nine motivators is to be found in the Resources section of this book. But in order to conclude this chapter with one set of examples – and a foundational one – let’s look at five ideas for motivating a Builder Team.

Activity 2.8

Consider a team that you have either been in or know that is particularly commercially – or Builder – orientated; in other words, in your opinion, they are heavily motivated by money. Study Figure 2.9. Choose the best three motivational ideas contained in the figure and explain why you think they might work for the team you have in mind. What might be the drawbacks, reservations or issues that might occur?

What we have done in Figure 2.9, of course, can be carried out with the other team motivational rewards that we list in the Resources section. The key thing is to be sure what the team’s actual motivators are; and here the Motivational Map is indispensable.

Keep in mind the whole idea of Reward Strategies as we progress through this book. At the end of the day, knowing the motivational profile is not enough in and of itself. We have to know what the triggers are that are going to get the best performance from employees. Even if I fail to mention Reward Strategies in some particular context, since I may be focusing on some other issue, make sure you always consider it. Remember, we are conditioned from childhood to work for rewards we want.

In the next chapter we move on to addressing the first of the four characteristics of a top performing teams: The Remit, part 1!