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Normal Crouse contacted me Friday to ask if I'd be interested in reviewing his book on Motivation. It's excellent. Instead I'll post a few paragraphs of his clear writing and common sense:
Motivation Is An Inside Job:
How to really get your employees to
deliver the results you need
Norm Crouse
iUniverse, Inc. 2005
Most managers struggle every day with how to motivate some or all of the
employees they manage. The problem of how to better motivate his or her
direct reports is the most significant challenge for every manager. Most top
executives are aware of the challenge and invest substantial money in bonuses,
incentive plans, stock-options, and training and motivational programs trying
to address it. That concern cascades down to front-line and middle managers
who also feel the pressure of the motivational challenge. They are frustrated
because they are not satisfied with the answers they have about what to do
about it.
Problem One: Theory Doesn’t Go Far Enough
So why do managers face such a difficult challenge in trying to motivate their
employees?
Theory is interesting, but it doesn’t give them the practical tools and skills they need to apply the theory in the real world. In some cases the theories address factors that are, for the most part, beyond a manager’s direct control. For instance, most managers have little direct control over salaries and benefit programs.
Other motivational theories address factors within the manager’s direct
control, but the manager doesn’t know how to apply the theory to create
behavioral change. While coaching one manager, he put this problem very
directly. After reading about Victor Vroom’s Expectancy Theory, he turned to
me and asked “But what do I say to Sally tomorrow? How do I use this?” So I
wrote this book to provide an answer to that manager’s question about how to
translate theory into management actions to motivate Sally.
Problem Two: Lack of Training in How to
Motivate Employees
The second contributing factor to the challenge of how to motivate an
employee is the fact that our business schools aren’t doing a very good job of
preparing managers to manage. Professor Henry Mintzberg, in his book
Managers Not MBAs cites a Business Week survey (March 24, 1986 pg. 63)
titled “How Executives Rate a B-School Education.” One of the key findings
of that study was that 86% of the top executives surveyed agreed with the
statement “Business Schools teach students a lot about management theory
but not much about what it takes to run a company.” Of course, a key competency in running a company is how to motivate the employees you manage.
So, I wrote this book to provide a toolbox to help managers more effectively
motivate their employees.
Problem Three: A Changing Work Ethic
The third contributing factor is that the expectations of the workforce are
changing.
The most dramatic evidence of this shift is the work that
the Gallup organization has done on employee engagement. Data from a Gallup poll shows that 19% of the workers surveyed reported being actively disengaged.
Another 55% reported that they were disengaged.
Basically, actively disengaged means that an employee is motivated to slow
business down and deliberately undermine the organization’s effort to deliver
productivity and quality to its customers. Disengaged means simply that the
worker is doing the minimum amount necessary to keep from getting fired. In
other words the vast majority of the workforce (19% + 55% = 74%) is not
motivated to fully contribute what they can to an organization’s effort to
deliver results!
Here is the author's summary of why you should buy and read this book.
Summary: Three Questions Readers Ask
Why Motivation Is An Inside Job was written
• Theory doesn’t go far enough in helping managers motivate employees
• Management training is inadequate to teach managers how to motive
employees
• A changing work ethic is creating increasingly difficult employee motivation
challenges
Why you should read the book
• It provides a useable framework to address employee motivation problems
• It provides easy to use tools and guides
• It provides specific examples of how to use the framework, tools, and
guides
The author’s qualifications to write the book
• Widely educated and has broadly studied the subject
• Years of consulting and coaching experience
• Tested and proven tools and guides
Here's to your reading enjoyment!
Patsi
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