Recently, on a corporate programme by Wide Aware, I had the opportunity to adress a frequent gap between intentions and actual experiences.
We were conducting a programme for a company, and the chief stated objective was to encourage innovation and individual performance. The company had tempting rewards for the high performers, and yet, these failed to cause the expected jump in individual performances. We were determined to get to the root cause of this puzzling occurence, and explored it from every avenue we could.
We finally realized that, while the rewards highlighted the outstanding performers, those who were hard workers, but lacked exceptional talent, were unaffected by them. Worse, they also were to some extent demotivated by the high targets that were required to achieve them, and actually lost interest in the whole thing, including the inclination to push their performance to greater heights.
Outstanding employees are rare, and the majority of an organization comprises of mediocre professionals that are pretty much similar to anywhere else. We saw the need to encourage individuals, at their level, and came up with options of less extravagant, but easily achievable rewards and a system of letting employees choose their targets in unusual situations. Needless to say, each employee, now was interested in making efforts towards a goal, that they knew they could achieve with the right efforts.
A year later into this situation, the previous lethargy and indifference is just a memory!
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