Conclusion

We commented in the Preface on how strange it was to be writing a book on motivation and teams when this topic seemed to have been covered so thoroughly before in earlier volumes. For those who have read the four prequels to this volume – congratulations! – you may have noticed something a little different or perhaps more developed in this one: namely, the increased cross-textuality of this book compared with its predecessors. This is manifested in two ways.

First, the number of Endnotes actually referring back to the first four books seems much greater than before. The other books in comparison seem more stand-alone; here, as we press on into deeper levels of motivational understanding, we do need the backstop of earlier ideas, tools and techniques, and the basis on which they were founded. So this makes this book richer and more complex. It can be read on its own, but clearly it’s also part of a bigger development of the theme of motivation within team building. Perhaps this should not surprise us: team building is hugely important, and if understanding the dynamics of one person is intricate, then how much more their groupings and gatherings? Let’s not forget the reason we want to do this. It can be summed in James Ferguson’s observation,¹ referring to the 2012 Olympic Games – ‘Team GB came second in the medal table, taking 9% of the medals despite only having 0.8% of the world’s population’. In other words, the massive performance and productivity surge that comes when real teams – top performing teams – start taking centre stage.

Second, the cross-textuality also refers to the number of times work or ideas in one chapter elicit a reference to another chapter within the book. To give an example of this: in Chapter 8, dealing with accountability from a motivational perspective, we were able to bypass the issue of accountability to each other by referring back to Chapter 6 and its theme of interdependency. And in this book, this sort of thing is happening all the time. The truth is, that developing a top performing team is a complicated and ambiguous process; and whatever else it is, it is not, and is never going to be, linear. For one thing, change happens. Part of the real difficulty of change goes way beyond the managerial; it is a spiritual matter to perceive what is necessary, of which one aspect is constant sense of alertness and a refusal to be complacent.

The theologian H.A. Williams² succinctly captured the essence of the problem when he said: ‘Love, for instance, is always looking for new idioms of expression as circumstances change: a son aged twenty is not to be loved in the same way as a son aged five’. We immediately know this to be true – if we have ever loved our child or children. Indeed, we regard as infantile those parents who attempt to keep their children stuck in the nursery of their parenting. But if this is true of children, it is also true of teams: they need nurturing, and to try to treat a team that is 5 years old in exactly the same way we did when they were 5 weeks old is clearly fatuous and ineffective. Teams develop, and if we have done our job (which, incidentally, means we will have developed), then our approach, methods, reward strategies will also reflect that, and rise to the occasion.

Keep in mind what we keep repeating, that this book is about top performing teams from the unique perspective of motivation and Mapping Motivation; it is not therefore the whole story of how one creates a top performing team(s). But the word ‘unique’ here is important, for as we have established so often in this book and the others in the series, motivation is systematically not addressed when ‘experts’ consider how such teams are formed. There is lip-service to motivation, but rarely any specifics as to how to go about generating it.

Thus, this book in one sense must not be construed in a linear fashion. The real question might be: where does one start if one wishes to build a top performing team? There can be no easy answer to this question; for one thing, as we have said, the cross-textuality means the issues are ‘dense’. But as a conclusion, what should we be thinking about?

If we follow the logic and chapter headings of this book, a modus operando might emerge. The first thing of all is to consider: do we have a team here or a group? Either way, work will need to be done. In the former case, how effective as a team is it? And in the latter, how do we form a team from this group – what needs to be done? Handily, Chapter 1 shows how using Motivational Maps can help get a clearer picture of your team dynamics and what some of the problems might be.

Then, and this can almost be a standalone itself, we review our reward strategies. Every team, everywhere, is rewarded, even if that is merely being paid the agreed wages. But it should be clear from Chapter 2 that rewards need to be far more wide-ranging: and the understanding of performance’s odd, ‘disjointed’, correlation with rewards is pivotal. As is the idea of the Total Reward Package. And taking into account ‘change’, how does this change – develop – over time? What are your reward strategies? Remember, ‘When rewards are perceived as recognition for competence, they increase intrinsic motivation, probably because they fulfil a psychological need’.³ In our view, all the nine motivators can be intrinsic to any given individual, or even team and their sense of identity.

Perhaps the most difficult area of all comes next: The Remit. We have devoted three chapters to the exploration of this topic from a motivational perspective. For some the starting point might well be the customer focus. But keep in mind even with relentless customer focus, Bob Garratt’s observation⁴ remains true: ‘If retention of customers is a key to increased profitability, retention of key people, their experience and developing personal capabilities, is the best way of retaining customers’. The motivation of the staff, then, more generally is the key and we explore this motivationally in a number of ways.

Equally, what we do is part of The Remit, and what the motivators are has a big influence on how well we are going to do it; it also feeds back into what we should be doing. In other words, so that what we are doing and our motivators are aligned. Not to have this alignment would be like accelerating a car with one foot on the brake at the same time; the constant friction would be exhausting, inefficient, and ultimately debilitating. The churn rate of the team would go up, alongside absenteeism and presenteeism.⁵ It is a recipe for ultimate failure.

Lastly, on The Remit, we considered the values we insist on, and of particular importance was the PMV tool we discussed and demonstrated. We think this one tool has huge implications for change management, and for developing appropriate strategies even, though the chapter stopped short of that. In essence, the PMV tool encapsulates that wonderful literary critical principle: ‘only compare’. How do our motivators, our productivity, our manageability and our values, within a team, compare? And of course, it can be used across teams and for the whole organisation.

After The Remit, we looked at Interdependency in Chapter 6. Here the importance of recruitment surfaced; we need to get the right people on the bus at the start, not once the journey is underway. We saw here how Mapping Motivation could make a massive difference to the recruitment process and increase the chances of getting the right hire. Following on from that, we studied in detail the difference, motivationally, between a high and a low performing team within the same organisation. We identified motivational issues to look for within a team that either strengthened or weakened it.

The penultimate issue was that of Belief. Here we did two things. First, we used a non-motivational tool, the NASA experiment, to help ground belief in the team via this very powerful simulation. Second, we tracked a high performing Administration team over a 7-year period using the Maps. We showed, explained, and discussed in considerable detail how this team was able to retain motivation and performance levels, despite its status within the organisation, and also the overall weak leadership.

Finally, we came to the Accountability of the team to the whole organisation from a motivational perspective. Here, we’d like to think we came to the highlight of the whole book: namely, the understanding not only of the team motivators, the comparisons of teams through the Organisational Motivational Map, but the satisfaction rankings set against the motivational rankings in order to get completely new insights into what is going on. This advance too, again like the PMV of Chapter 5, has huge potential for change management and to help direct appropriate reward strategies throughout the whole organisation.

If we look at the above, we see whole cornucopia of ideas, techniques and tools that can turn round, as well as fine tune, any team. Remember: motivation is the fuel that powers the car. Without it, your team is not going anywhere much.

We cannot motivate another human being directly, but we can create the conditions in which their self-motivation is possible; indeed, the team’s self-motivation is possible. We must do this because as Andrew Carnegie observed,⁶ ‘People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents’.

So Figure C.1 provides us with a route map to where we might begin to find some motivational traction to enable us to create and sustain a top performing team. Tom Peters⁷ said, ‘The amount of performance improvement that is possible from these turned on teams is not small – it is enormous’.

To make things work for us, of course, we have to do ‘something’, and usually something different from what we have done before. What we have done before may have worked then, but this is now. As I write this the world is in lockdown from Covid-19, and when we come out of it, the world is going to be a different place; work is going to be a different place.⁸ We are going to have to work extra hard, and be extra innovative, and be even more bottom-up rather than top-down, if we wish for our teams and organisations to be motivated, engaged and effectively lead. Only in this way, can they be value-driven, profitable and ultimately successful. This requires, therefore, an investment of time, money⁹ and effort; and Motivational Maps are the ideal tool to help steer you through this morass of change that is threatening to overwhelm organisations everywhere.

We wish you well as you strive for outstanding performance and the highest levels of motivation in your work and in your life. Now go to the Resources section to find out more about Motivational Maps. May you always be motivated!